sweet effay

So Boris Johnson is out of favour. Not that I care one way or the other really, although I think it was a smart move on his part to force Howard to sack him rather than resign quietly.

What caught my eye was this twisted bit of reasoning:

The party leader's spokesman said the decision was made because he lied about the claims, not because of the allegations themselves.

The spokesman said: "It was nothing to do with personal morality but rather with his personal integrity and honesty."

Now I know that not everybody in the Conservative Party has studied moral philosophy, but I don't think you really need to have done so in order to grasp the fact that integrity and honesty are moral characteristics. Even if you want to draw a distinction between what people do and what they say they do, if Boris has been fibbing to Michael, the odds are that he hasn't been entirely straight with Mrs Johnson either. Do they really want to draw a moral distinction between lying to your leader and lying to your wife? I doubt that will endear them to the sort of people they are so desperate to attract.

Morality is always a sticky wicket for politicians; it is best avoided if you want to avoid looking either shifty or a prat. Consequently what they should have said was:

"Look, Boris is a constituency MP, editor of The Spectator, shadow arts minister, party vice-chairman, and spends more time on TV than Michael. Now we find out that he's also engaged in extra-marital exercises. We just felt we should relieve him of some of the burden, or he'll have a coronary before he reaches forty-five."