When Jo Johnson joined a battered Boris for a chat in Downing Street on Wednesday night, you might have thought he’d have been there to console his brother who had endured the worst couple of days for any Prime Minister in recent memory.
Instead Bro-Jo launched an Exocet, a missile aimed with deadly effect. He was resigning from Government as he could no longer support the PM.
The next day, Jo followed it up by sanctimoniously tweeting that he was torn between ‘family loyalty and the national interest’ and had no option but to step down.
We’ll have to take Jo’s word that it was an act of principle. But we could be forgiven for thinking it was pure malice. The timing could not have been worse, nor the tweet more theatrical.
Why couldn’t Jo have waited to resign at a time that would not so harm his brother? He knew there would be a General Election, and that he could have gone quietly after Parliament had been dissolved.
Bro-Jo launched an Exocet, a missile aimed with deadly effect. He was resigning from Government as he could no longer support the PM.
Why did the committed Remainer accept a place in Boris’s Brexit Government in the first place? To my mind, Boris should never have offered Jo the job — it was always a huge risk.
We’ve all seen the damage — both personal and political — wrought by sibling rivalry in politics. Ed Miliband stabbed his older brother David in the back for the leadership of the Labour Party in 2010, only for it to end in tears for both of them and their poor mother. The family has never fully recovered.
The Johnsons insist nothing can shake their family bond, but even the closest of blood ties can have a bloody ending. Ever since Adam and Eve’s son Cain became the first murderer in the Bible, killing his brother Abel, fraternal bitterness has been especially toxic.
Often it’s because the younger brother, like Jo, is resentful after years of feeling treated as second best, the kid brother walking in big bro’s footsteps.
Jo has always been in Boris’s shadow. He may be taller, cleverer and have more hair, but he does not have Boris’s magic touch. Could that have been a cause of anger when he was growing up? Did he feel jealous when Boris achieved his goal of becoming PM?
We can’t know — but whatever the case, Jo’s untimely resignation comes across as nothing less than a calculated act of brotherly sabotage. And it’s left Boris feeling even more isolated.
One can’t help wondering whether the PM’s soon-to-be ex-wife, no-nonsense Marina, would have knocked some sense into those bone-headed Johnson boys if she had moved into Downing Street with him — and been there when they met on Wednesday night.
Sir Paul McCartney, 77, suggests he’s up for performing at next year’s Glastonbury Festival. With all due reverence Paul, since your voice is now as thin as your grey locks, performing to a crowd of 200,000 people is probably not the most sensible career move. Perhaps best to just Let It Be.
Slimming? It’s a piece of cake
The children’s classic The Large Family: A Piece Of Cake, about a family of elephants headed by Mrs Large who attempts to get her kids to lose weight, has been condemned by modern mothers as being a cruel exercise in ‘body shaming’.
The Eighties kids’ story has sold five million copies, yet one mum even wrote that she couldn’t bring herself to read it to her DD — that’s ‘woke’ talk for ‘dearest daughter’.
Mrs Large made the cardinal sin of encouraging her baby ellies to ditch junk food and take more exercise.
Far from banning it, A Piece Of Cake should be compulsory on every school’s reading curriculum given our childhood obesity crisis.
A father’s tender touch
Adorable pictures of the Cambridges taking Charlotte, four, to her first day at school. She’s clearly inherited the Middletons’ looks; that girl is going to be a heartbreaker.
But just as beguiling was the image of Prince William holding his son and heir George’s hand. It was a tableau of modern life and showed how things have changed for the better.
My dad said one thing he always regretted was when, taking my older brother to school for the first time, he told him when he reached up for a hug: ‘You’re a man now, son — men shake hands.’
Michael was just five.
![Beguiling: the image of Prince William holding his son and heir George’s hand. It was a tableau of modern life and showed how things have changed for the better.](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2019/09/06/23/18173754-0-image-a-2_1567810474104.jpg)
Beguiling: the image of Prince William holding his son and heir George’s hand. It was a tableau of modern life and showed how things have changed for the better.
Now we know why the Duchess of Sussex turned down a second invitation from Her Majesty to spend time with her in her cherished Balmoral this summer. Megs has flown off to New York — on a commercial jet this time — to watch bestie Serena Williams in the U.S. Open. Hurrah for the sisterhood! Although with her popularity plummeting, Harry’s wife may come to realise that the queen of the tennis courts can’t hold a candle to the Queen of our Royal Court.
Super(role) Model Cara
Having coined around £21.5 million last year, Cara Delevingne is our highest earning model. It’s not just her beauty that’s worth millions, but that she’s such a shining example for other young gay women. Her partner is actress Ashley Benson. Cara’s not just a supermodel, but a super role model.
![It’s not just her beauty that’s worth millions, but that she’s such a shining example for other young gay women.](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2019/09/06/23/18173780-0-image-m-5_1567810531272.jpg)
It’s not just her beauty that’s worth millions, but that she’s such a shining example for other young gay women.
The NHS is overstretched. Most appalling is the lack of funds for mental health, especially for the young, with suicides among teenagers at a record high. So why are its precious resources being spent providing counselling sessions for fans of Bury FC experiencing ‘emotional distress or upset’ after their club was kicked out of the league.
Seriously, PTSD for the demise of a footie team? It’s an own goal for stupidity.
Almost two years since Ant-car-crash-McPartlin ditched his wife of 11 years, he and Lisa Armstrong meet for the first time to battle out the final divorce deal. He’s already loved up with his former PA Anne-Marie Corbett and wants to ‘move on with his life’.
Message to Lisa: Forget Ant, a small insect with a tiny sting. He’s a washed-up celebrity, get thee out of there.
Easy mistake, Helen
While having the greatest sympathy for TV presenter Helen Skelton, who lost £70,000 to a scammer pretending to be from her bank, what was she thinking when she gave her financial details to a stranger?
Though I’m a fine one to talk. Recently, when I was arranging a transfer with Barclays, the woman on the line asked me for the second and third numbers of my online banking code. I proudly gave her all the numbers — at which point she politely told me I was stupid, careless, that my secure ‘code’ was now void and I had to create a new one.
![While having the greatest sympathy for TV presenter Helen Skelton, what was she thinking when she gave her financial details to a stranger?](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2019/09/06/23/18173782-0-image-m-7_1567810559144.jpg)
While having the greatest sympathy for TV presenter Helen Skelton, what was she thinking when she gave her financial details to a stranger?
Westminster wars
- Of the 21 expelled Tory rebels, only six plan to fight the next election. Seven of the jellyfish had no intention of standing and the rest of them are dithering. Invertebrates, all of them.
- When Tony Blair and David Cameron lost the plot, they not only resigned as PM but as MPs. Not Theresa May. Just weeks after being toppled, she was dutifully voting for her replacement Boris Johnson — something he seldom did for her — even attending drinks for backbenchers in No 10 and sitting through his first, disastrous PMQs. Say what you like about her, the MP for Maidenhead certainly has style.
- Boris’s girlfriend Carrie Symonds introduced their new pooch Dilyn to the world, he wearing a pink ribbon, she wearing another full-length floral monstrosity dragged out of Laura Ashley’s vintage collection. Where has that sexy Carrie of the mini skirts gone? Boris hooked up with a sassy little fox and has ended with an extra from The Little House On The Prairie. No wonder he’s discombobulated.
I’m a secret Scouser
Bafta’s new exhibition Behind The Screens displays the designer outfits worn by Killing Eve star Jodie Comer.
Which made me think.She’s widely regarded as the sexiest woman on TV, yet has never taken her kit off as Villanelle — and, indeed, said she wouldn’t take the part if she had to appear nude.
What a class act. But then I’ve found a new soft spot for the Scouser, having just discovered my ancestors were not the noble Frenchmen I’d been led to believe, but German shopkeepers who settled in Toxteth.