Boris Johnson's Blog, page 3

EU referendum: People backing Brexit are ‘quitters’ says ‘patriotic’ In campaign chief Stuart Rose

David Cameron's small business ambassador also bemoaned the lack of accountability in Brussels, claiming: "Things may or may not get done but we never know by whom", adding that the power rests instead with "the upper ranks of its bureaucrats", not Britain.

Mr Rose, who has also made critical remarks about the European Union, will tackle accusations that he was once a member of anti-EU group Business for Britain in his speech.

Should Britain stay in or get out of the EU? Polling since 1977

Polling
Stay In
Get Out
October 1977
53
47
May 1978
47
53
March 1979
35
65
March 1980
29
71
March 1981
36
64
March 1983
40
60
June 1984
51
49
September 1987
55
45
1989
67
33
November 1990
68
32
June 1991
70
30
December 1991
67
33
5-6 June 1992
60
40
10-13 June 1992
62
38
21-25 October 1993
54
46
11-30 April 1994
59
41
23-26 May 1996
53
47
27-29 November 1996
52
48
15 April 1997
50
50
25-28 April 1997
52
48
2-3 October 1997
54
46
13-14 November 1997
58
42
25-30 June 1998
54
46
21-24 May 1999
53
47
10-11 June 1999
53
47
13-14 October 1999
55
45
27-29 October 1999
48
52
22-27 June 2000
62
38
29-30 September 2000
48
52
24-25 November 2000
53
47
15-21 March 2001
48
52
30 April -1 May 2001
53
47
22-May-01
51
49
20-22 June 2003
54
46
20-22 September 2007
56
44
22-24 October 2011
46 
54 
10-13 November 2012 
48
52
10-12 May 2014
59
41
 11-14 October 2014
61
39
June 2015
61
27

Ipsos MORI

He will say: "Those of you who know me will know that I am not an uncritical fan of the European Union. Far from it. That’s why I signed a letter arranged by Business for Britain calling for reform of the EU.

“Wanting reform, however, is not the same as wanting to leave."

Fellow In campaigner John Major has also been critical of the union in the past. He has said: "It will not be acceptable for the Eurozone to integrate further, and then use its bloc vote to impose its voluntary integration on unwilling non-Eurozone members.

"We are not prepared to accept “ever-closer” union: that has only one destination – and for us there is a limit."

Mr Rose will claim it is "utter nonsense" that voters must choose between Britain and Europe and make a passionate patriotic case to remain in, adding that Europe brings £450 worth of benefits to UK households every year.

Mr Rose will say: "To claim that the patriotic course for Britain is to retreat, withdraw and become inward looking is to misunderstand who we are as a nation.

"In this ever changing and very uncertain world we need to engage with strength.

• EU exit: what would it mean for my holiday home and trips abroad?
• Prime Minister 'squandered' chance to tackle Brexit

“I will not allow anyone to tell me I’m any less British because I believe in the strongest possible Britain for business, for our security and our society.

“Those who want us to leave Europe would risk our prosperity, threaten our safety and diminish our influence in the world. We know our economy would take a hit, we just don’t know how bad it would be.

“The Quitters cannot say how our diminished status would impact on our relationship with the US or China or the Commonwealth countries. Leaving Europe is taking leap into the dark. It’s just not worth the risk.”

The speech comes as Nigel Farage, Ukip's leader and backer of the Leave.EU campaign, claimed his group "might just get" Boris Johnson on board.

The London Mayor has previously claimed he could "of course" envisage a circumstance in which he would vote to leave the EU, though he has yet to formally join either side.

The In campaign, backed by Tony Blair, will also announce a group of cross-party political champions including Chuka Umunna, Labour's former shadow business secretary, new Conservative MPs Flick Drummond and Ben Howlett and Liberal Democrat peer Jim Wallace.

They join Caroline Lucas of the Green party and Damien Green, a Conservative MP - who are both on the board of Britain Stronger in Europe.

The In campaign has won over a number of big names, including Danny Alexander, former chief secretary to the Treasury, Peter Mandleson, Tony Blair's spin doctor, businessman Roland Rudd, June Sarpong a former TV presenter and Brendan Barber an ex-union boss.

Ms Brady, who is on the board of the pro-EU group, last night confirmed she has joined the In campaign but declined to comment on a column she wrote in 2009 for the Birmingham Mail in which she is highly critical of the EU.

At the time she wrote: "I would be lying if I said I am inspired by the thought of sending a fresh batch of MEPs to fatten themselves up on the fare offered in Brussels.

"Except when they surface at election time, they are about as answerable to us as a convocation of cardinals, distant, self-important, and all but ignored.

"We all know where the power of Europe resides - in the upper ranks of its bureaucrats."

Adding that Brits aren't interested in European elections, Ms Brady wrote: "It's true that Europe only features on the Brit radar when we go on holiday or the Germans beat us at football.

"This is a failure in communication and ought to be corrected if the pro-Europeans ever hope to convince us that we should be good members of their community.

"Of course, we never could be."

Yesterday Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former General Secretary of Nato, called on the UK to stay in the EU.

He said: "It would significantly weaken the European Union on the world stage if the UK were to leave the European Union so I really do hope that negotiations will lead to an outcome that can be accepted by the British people as well as the European Union."

abour directs its impotent fury at all but those responsible – itself

It is an odd thing to feel hated, especially if you are not quite sure why. I expect there are many readers who know the feeling – someone who inexplicably spreads awful rumours about you; someone who looks at you with unconcealed malevolence.

I once got a letter through my door saying, “I just want you to know how sickened I am to live in the same neighbourhood as you”, and I thought, “Duh: what have I done?” So I offer this article by way of reassurance to all you who have ever had the nasty feeling that someone somewhere has got it in for you. If you think someone hates you (and you genuinely think it’s unfair), then remember the golden rule of hatred. It’s not about you. It’s about them.

Let me explain. One of the most extraordinary features of human psychology is our use of transference, or projection – in other words, managing our emotions with the help of symbols or fetishes or proxies.

Most MPs will be familiar with constituents who come to see them with some problem that seems to have become an obsession: a tree that was unfairly chopped down, a neighbour’s fence that takes too much land, or some other injustice. Often they will have folders or plastic bags stuffed full of letters. You, of course, try your best to help them, but as things drag on, you notice that they are really more interested in the process, the campaign, than the solution.

"When a community is going through some period of stress – a war, or economic hardship – they are historically far more likely to identify and turn on scapegoats in their midst"

In fact, you soon realise that the issue that they have placed before you is really of much less importance than some other big problem in their lives – a bereavement, a divorce, or some other deep disappointment – and that feeling of anger and injustice is channelled and focused on this tree, or stretch of pavement, or whatever. Sometimes, in fact, you find that they don’t really want the problem to be “solved”. The hate-object has become a necessary psychological crutch, a part of their lives – the thing that helps divert them from the real and insoluble problem. And what is true of individuals is true of societies, too.

When a community is going through some period of stress – a war, or economic hardship – they are historically far more likely to identify and turn on scapegoats in their midst. Anxiety is transferred to some readily identifiable group: Jews, foreigners, homosexuals, gypsies – the victims of this kind of prejudice have in some cases been suffering for centuries. Sometimes, barely credible powers are attributed to these groups, and they become a catch-all explanation for everything that has gone wrong in a society. Your kids can’t get a house? It’s the immigrants. Can’t get a job? It’s the immigrants. Can’t see a doctor in A&E? It’s the immigrants. Traffic on the M4? It’s the immigrants.

Of course, these problems have multiple causes – but people are only too willing to project their anger on to a particular group, and some politicians, alas, are only too willing to assist. Take Leon Brittan, a fine public servant whose memory has been disgracefully smeared by Tom Watson. How did the Labour MP get away with it? Because he knew paedophiles are the lowest in the hierarchy of contempt.

The paedophile’s great gift to the human race is to confer a sense of moral superiority on absolutely everyone else – including the murderers and rapists who beat up the “nonces” in prison. That’s how hatred works. The murderers and rapists don’t really hate the paedophiles, or care for their victims; they just want to feel better about themselves. It’s all about projection.

Who are those crusty demonstrators really cross with? Well, look at the real cause of their woes and their impotence. They are partly furious with the British public for returning a majority Conservative government – but they can’t possibly say that. And they are partly furious with the Labour Party, first under Ed Miliband and now under Jeremy Corbyn, for being so spectacularly useless in helping to advance their cause – and they can’t possibly admit that, either. Their real anger and grief is internal, about the collapse of Labour as a coherent opposition. But that is too big and too difficult an issue to address honestly. So they throw eggs and shout about scum.

Well, my fellow scumsters, just remember, in the unlikely event that you mind these insults: it’s not about you, it’s about them.

Labour directs its impotent fury at all but those responsible – itself

It is an odd thing to feel hated, especially if you are not quite sure why. I expect there are many readers who know the feeling – someone who inexplicably spreads awful rumours about you; someone who looks at you with unconcealed malevolence.

I once got a letter through my door saying, “I just want you to know how sickened I am to live in the same neighbourhood as you”, and I thought, “Duh: what have I done?” So I offer this article by way of reassurance to all you who have ever had the nasty feeling that someone somewhere has got it in for you. If you think someone hates you (and you genuinely think it’s unfair), then remember the golden rule of hatred. It’s not about you. It’s about them.

Let me explain. One of the most extraordinary features of human psychology is our use of transference, or projection – in other words, managing our emotions with the help of symbols or fetishes or proxies.

Most MPs will be familiar with constituents who come to see them with some problem that seems to have become an obsession: a tree that was unfairly chopped down, a neighbour’s fence that takes too much land, or some other injustice. Often they will have folders or plastic bags stuffed full of letters. You, of course, try your best to help them, but as things drag on, you notice that they are really more interested in the process, the campaign, than the solution.

"When a community is going through some period of stress – a war, or economic hardship – they are historically far more likely to identify and turn on scapegoats in their midst"

In fact, you soon realise that the issue that they have placed before you is really of much less importance than some other big problem in their lives – a bereavement, a divorce, or some other deep disappointment – and that feeling of anger and injustice is channelled and focused on this tree, or stretch of pavement, or whatever. Sometimes, in fact, you find that they don’t really want the problem to be “solved”. The hate-object has become a necessary psychological crutch, a part of their lives – the thing that helps divert them from the real and insoluble problem. And what is true of individuals is true of societies, too.

When a community is going through some period of stress – a war, or economic hardship – they are historically far more likely to identify and turn on scapegoats in their midst. Anxiety is transferred to some readily identifiable group: Jews, foreigners, homosexuals, gypsies – the victims of this kind of prejudice have in some cases been suffering for centuries. Sometimes, barely credible powers are attributed to these groups, and they become a catch-all explanation for everything that has gone wrong in a society. Your kids can’t get a house? It’s the immigrants. Can’t get a job? It’s the immigrants. Can’t see a doctor in A&E? It’s the immigrants. Traffic on the M4? It’s the immigrants.

Of course, these problems have multiple causes – but people are only too willing to project their anger on to a particular group, and some politicians, alas, are only too willing to assist. Take Leon Brittan, a fine public servant whose memory has been disgracefully smeared by Tom Watson. How did the Labour MP get away with it? Because he knew paedophiles are the lowest in the hierarchy of contempt.

The paedophile’s great gift to the human race is to confer a sense of moral superiority on absolutely everyone else – including the murderers and rapists who beat up the “nonces” in prison. That’s how hatred works. The murderers and rapists don’t really hate the paedophiles, or care for their victims; they just want to feel better about themselves. It’s all about projection.

Who are those crusty demonstrators really cross with? Well, look at the real cause of their woes and their impotence. They are partly furious with the British public for returning a majority Conservative government – but they can’t possibly say that. And they are partly furious with the Labour Party, first under Ed Miliband and now under Jeremy Corbyn, for being so spectacularly useless in helping to advance their cause – and they can’t possibly admit that, either. Their real anger and grief is internal, about the collapse of Labour as a coherent opposition. But that is too big and too difficult an issue to address honestly. So they throw eggs and shout about scum.

Well, my fellow scumsters, just remember, in the unlikely event that you mind these insults: it’s not about you, it’s about them.

If Jeremy Corbyn honestly cares about the workers, he’ll back trade union reform

I seem to remember a mordant song, to the tune of Going Underground by The Jam, that complained of the smell, the crowding, the tramps, the chewing gum on the seats, the damp – and above all, the delays. Well, I thought it was unfair then – and you don’t hear people singing that song today. Since 2008 there have been massive reductions in delays. We achieved a 40 per cent cut in Tube delays in the period to 2012, and are well on target to achieving a further 30 per cent cut.

We have more trains, better signalling – and the trains run faster than ever before. We are blasting on with a fantastic programme of improvement – air-conditioned carriages first on the subsurface lines, and then on the deep ones. We are extending the Tube for the first time in 15 years, with the link out to Battersea, to say nothing of Crossrail, and we are moving towards ever greater automation.

"A small minority of union activists and leaders have tried to hold the city to ransom by resisting every change"

London Underground will never again buy an old-fashioned train with a cab that requires a driver to sit there the whole time: the new Piccadilly Line trains will allow staff to move down the carriages, as they do on the Docklands Light Railway. Transport for London is leading the world in automated ticketing – and we are now the biggest contactless payment retailer in the world, as more and more people switch to paying by bank card. It goes without saying that we are carrying more people than ever before – about a quarter more passengers every day than eight years ago.

All these changes have been delivered by the staff of the Tube. They have done a superb job. Most of the workforce has understood that the technological changes are great for the travelling public and that they are right for the Tube: there is no point having staff sitting behind plate glass in booths when ticketing is done electronically.

Almost everyone understands that changes in technology must mean changes in working practices. Many new jobs are created, but some are done differently, and some not at all. The trouble is that there has been a small minority of union activists and leaders, who have abused their position and tried to hold the city to ransom, by resisting every change and by using modernisation as an excuse for industrial action.

We have had strikes that have achieved absolutely nothing – except to inconvenience Londoners, to damage the economy, and to cost many hard-working Tube staff their pay during the period of the strikes. To make matters worse, these strikes have very often been triggered by the stubbornness of a tiny number of workers, so that we have sometimes had the Tube services severely disrupted after fewer than 20 per cent of the relevant workforce had voted for action. That is absolutely ridiculous, and so it is high time that the Government has brought forward some sensible measures to deal with these militant excesses.

The Bill before Parliament today will do something to tackle picket-line intimidation; it will end the system whereby union contributions are simply sluiced out of the member’s bank account; it will attempt to tighten the rules that allow workers to be full‑time trade union representatives.

Above all, the Bill being proposed by Sajid Javid will bring in thresholds for the ballots for industrial action, so that you can no longer have a wildcat strike triggered by a tiny minority of workers. The key point is that when it comes to essential public services, the strike action must be supported by 40 per cent of the relevant workforce, and there must be at least a 50 per cent turnout.

That is not remotely draconian. Yes, of course we elect politicians on lower turnouts, and we have no thresholds in democratic elections; but we are talking here about services that are vital for the daily lives of millions of people. There are plenty of other cities that have some kind of restrictions on the right of mass transit workers to go on strike – and in New York, land of banned by law. If this Bill’s protection had been in place, it would have stopped 19 of the past 26 strikes on the Tube.

Of course, it will not stop trade unions from playing a constructive role in modernisation, or from withdrawing the labour of their members. But it will greatly help two sets of working people – the travelling public, and the majority of workers who have often rejected the strike, implicitly or explicitly, and who just want to get on with their jobs.

Now is the time for the great vested leader to take on the vested interests of the union barons – and do something for the workers.

The Britain-bashers’ moral outrage will not solve this migration crisis

The second point is that the UK was just about the only EU country willing even to contemplate direct military action to protect the Syrians – at that precarious moment when the leadership of the Syrian opposition had not been lost to the maniacs. It was thanks to Ed Miliband and the Labour party that the opportunity was squandered; but I don’t think you could fault the instincts of David Cameron.

And the third point in defence of the UK is that this has been a collective EU failure, and there is one key respect in which you could argue the confused response of some European capitals has made matters worse. This is a hard thing to say, but we must accept that by no means all those now trying to get to Europe are necessarily refugees, not in the strict sense of the term.

Look at those crowds tramping out of the railway station in Hungary. They seem to be composed overwhelmingly of young, able-bodied men – people who are in search of a more prosperous future – and it is neither callous nor lacking in compassion to say that many of them are arriving in Europe as economic migrants. We need, therefore, to be very careful about the signals that we are sending.

We live in an age of instant communication via social media, of swift and widespread changes in mass psychology, and it is all too easy to see how a generous message of openness and welcome to refugees could be misread – by millions of people in relatively impoverished countries surrounding the EU – as an invitation to up sticks and arrive in Europe.

There is a real danger of triggering further large migratory flows. We should think hard about the potential impact of such movements of people, especially if they were to accelerate – and not just on the countries of destination, but on the countries of origin as well.

It is certainly true that over the last few years, Germany, Italy and several other western European countries have seen a marked fall in their indigenous birth rate. They have ageing populations, and are failing to produce enough young people of their own. In accepting large numbers of energetic young migrants, they are actuated not just by compassion – though that cannot be denied – but also by a certain economic logic. It cannot be said Britain is in exactly the same position. We are going through a population boom. Our schools are bursting – certainly in London – and the demand is rising the whole time. The population of the capital went up by about 122,000 last year alone.

I am just about the only politician in the last few years who has argued consistently that immigration can be a wonderful thing; and I believe that the capital is the most dynamic and productive part of the whole EU economy partly because 40 per cent of its population were born abroad. But in managing the pressures we face – a shortage of homes, growing numbers of homeless from other EU countries – it should surely be up to us, in the UK, to decide how many more are allowed in – and not up to some quota-monger in Brussels.

Finally, we need to ask ourselves about the long-term impact on some of these troubled countries, if their most talented and energetic people are allowed to disperse themselves rapidly across the EU. Yes, of course we should help those Syrians who have no realistic hope of return, but it might also be sensible to improve the camps and the lives of those who must one day go back to rebuild their society, and offer a future to Syria.

To give those Syrians that hope of return it is increasingly obvious that we must do more. It is time once again to canvass the military options, to get Washington to take notice of a problem that is not going away and is, if anything, getting worse. If the generals think air strikes – or any other intervention – could work against Daesh/Isil, they should be listened to. I might be more inclined to listen to moralising from our EU friends if, this time, they were more willing to help.

Boris Johnson: Cut House of Lords to 400 peers with ‘Dignitas style euthanasia’ plan

"There are a great many of these geezers who don't do much at all. We probably only need about 400 legislators."

How the House of Lords looks now, by party

Party
Total
Bishops
26
Cons
226
Crossbench
179
Labour
212
Liberal Democrat
101
Non-affiliated
22
Other parties
17

HoL

Mr Johnson, however, refused to say whether he would accept a peerage himself if the opportunity arose in the future.

A Cabinet minister warned last week that peers could be forced to leave the House of Lords when they get too old in a bid to ensure the second chamber does not "keep growing indefinitely".

Writing in The Telegraph, Baroness Stowell, the Conservative leader in the Lords, conceded that the second chamber needs reform in the wake of Mr Cameron’s decision to appoint more peers.

Baroness Stowell suggested that “age or term limits” could be brought in to ensure that the House of Lords “commands legitimacy”.

The House of Lords is now the world's second largest legislative body after China's National People's Congress.

Some of the new peers

Conservative appointments include:

Labour appointments include:

Liberal Democrat appointments include:

If we do nothing about Syria, then the refugees will keep on coming

It is Isil and Isil alone that has introduced this nauseating nihilism; and when I fantasise about my ideal solution for these people, I think of the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, when the Nazi plunderers are physically vaporised before our eyes. I am sorry to sound vindictive, but that I think is what they deserve – and especially for their murder of the 82-year-old curator, Khalid al-Asaad.

Yeah, you may say, and who is going to avenge him? Who is going to play Yahweh? No one wants to take them on. Everyone is frit of Isil, you may say – and it seems that no one in any Western capital thinks Syria is worth the bones of a Pomeranian grenadier, as Bismarck put it, let alone of a British grenadier.

Well, I am not sure that this will do any more – not when we look at the tragedy unfurling in the Mediterranean, the hideous fate of the 71 Syrian refugees in that lorry in Austria, the awful scorching sufferings of the migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean.

A few years ago I went to Palmyra, and other places in Syria, and realised that it was a place of unbelievable cultural richness. We went to Aleppo and saw the ancient souk. We went to Apamea and saw the lustrous mosaics of hunting and wine-making and agriculture – reminding you that for centuries this place was the very heart of the Christian Roman empire.

I thought then that this country had a lush future. The food was delicious; the people were gentle and civilised and friendly. I imagined brochures for villas called Simply Syria; and trekking holidays and cycling holidays; perhaps even Club 18-30, in the racier parts of Damascus – shades of Beirut in the good old days. At the centre of it all was the magnetic pull of culture, and history, and the touristic notion that you could better yourself by exposure to one of the oldest civilisations in the world.

My optimism was founded entirely on my astonishment at the relics of the past – and if you think heritage is unimportant to tourism, look at the reasons people cite for coming to London, now the number one tourist destination on Earth. Yes, it’s the bars and the theatres and the nightlife – but when people are asked to explain the reasons, they always tick the box marked “history” or “heritage”. Syria has at least 6,000 years of it, and some of the world’s most famous and important sites. Until now.

The fate of all these relics is now either grim or uncertain, lost in the fog of war – as they are destroyed, like the souk of Aleppo; or sold by Isil to fund their operations. One day I hope and pray that this nightmare will end, that Isil will be defeated – and peace will return.

If the Syrians are deprived of their past, they will have no future

And then what? What future will there be for the country – with their economy in ruins, with the potential for tourism destroyed along with their cultural heritage? I perfectly accept that intervention has not often worked. It has been a disaster in Iraq; it has been a disaster in Libya. But can you honestly say that non-intervention in Syria has been a success? If we keep doing nothing about the nightmare in Syria, then frankly we must brace ourselves for an eternity of refugees, more people suffocating in airless cattle trucks at European motorway service stations, more people trying to climb the barbed wire that we are building around the European Union.

The number one political problem in Europe this summer is the movement of migrants, and there are many potential solutions. The Home Secretary has bravely proposed a fundamental reform to the EU – that we should disallow free movement of labour, unless the migrant worker has a clearly defined job to go to. I believe many people in this country would support such a reform, though the devil, as ever, would be in the detail. But we must also tackle the reasons why people flee their homes – and we cannot let Isil destroy sites that are not only emblems of our civilisation, but which offer hope for the Syrian economy. If the Syrians are deprived of their past, they will have no future.

We Tories are in a state of disbelief about Jeremy Corbyn

It is not just that he has next to zero support among mainstream Labour MPs in the Commons; it doesn’t matter that he has rebelled against the party leadership ever since he has been in the House. Indeed, it doesn’t matter that he sometimes identifies the right problems – low pay, underinvestment in infrastructure, or whatever. It is his solutions that are so out of whack with reality.

This is a man whose policies are way, way to the Left even of the last Labour leader – Miliband – a man who in the end was resoundingly rejected by the electorate for being too Left-wing. Jeremy Corbyn is a bearded version of Ken Livingstone (I think they even go to the same tailor for their vests). He would take this country back to the 1970s, or perhaps even the 1790s. He believes in higher taxes and a bigger deficit, and kowtowing to the unions, and abandoning all attempts to introduce competition or academic rigour in schools – let alone reforming welfare.

Jeremy Corbyn takes 53% of support in new poll

Candidate
Polling
Jeremy Corbyn
53
Andy Burnham
21
Yvette Cooper
18
Liz Kendall
8

He is a Sinn Fein-loving, monarchy-baiting, Israel-bashing believer in unilateral nuclear disarmament. It is nonsense to compare him to Michael Foot, who had been at least a Cabinet minister and before that a distinguished campaigner against the pre-war appeasers. This is a man who, for more than 30 years, has made a political career out of being explicitly and avowedly on the Spartist Left. He is a frondist, an inhabitant of the semi-Trot margin, an unrepentant lover of oppositionalism. Never in all his wildest dreams did he imagine that he might be leader of what has been – until this year – one of the major parties of government; and now he is having greatness thrust upon him.

We watch with befuddlement and bewilderment that is turning all the time into a sense of exhilarating vindication

How have the People’s party engineered this extraordinary horlicks? There are four groups of culprits. There is the Miliband regime, as mentioned, which not only came up with the deranged rules of the contest – by which, at one stage, the power to help choose the next Labour leader was handed to my old friend, the Conservative penseur Toby Young. Mili and co also shifted Labour so much to the Left that they managed to give a kind of spurious legitimacy to the Corbyn agenda. Miliband adopted wholesale the Livingstone playbook of state-enforced price freezes and rent controls and other attempts to buck the market.

There is a sense in which Corbyn is explicitly the heir of Miliband – and it is notable that Ed has kept a low profile lately, as if he realises the enormity of what he has done. The next group of culprits are all the New Labour old guard: Alastair Campbell, Mandelson, and above all Mr Tony himself – they have been cloth-eared in their response, hectoring Labour supporters who still haven’t forgiven them for the Iraq war; and as for Blair’s suggestion that Corbyn-backers “get a heart transplant”, it conjured an unfortunate image of our zillionaire former PM, jetting off to California for expensive organ-swapping procedures that are simply beyond the means of most people in this country.

The third set of villains is, of course, the other candidates, who have been so robotically dull that they have made Jeremy’s woolly ruminations seem positively electrifying. They are so torpid that it almost feels as if they want to lose. Come on, guys: where is the fire? Where are your plans to build a new Jerusalem? I cannot think of a single thing any of them has said – except to bash Corbyn, with the result that Corbyn is the story, Corbyn is the guy that everyone wants to see – and the loony Corbynmania grows, like a stock market bubble that will burst too late.

Which brings me to the group that bears final responsibility for what may – may, as I say – be about to happen: the armies of Labour rank and file who honestly seem to think that this might be the way forward. Yes, there really are a few hundred thousand people who seriously think that we should turn back the clock, take huge swathes of industry back into public ownership and massively expand the state.

The problem for Labour is that they do not represent the majority of people in this country. That is the real lesson of this campaign so far: that the mass of the Labour Party is totally out of touch with reality and common sense. How should we Tories react? Well, that is for another column; but in the meantime we watch with befuddlement and bewilderment that is turning all the time into a sense of exhilarating vindication: I told you they were loony.

A third runway at Heathrow would be a huge mistake

The whole objective of expanding Heathrow was, in theory, to answer this basic question. So it is amazing to find that the Davies solution fails the very test he sets, failing to connect us abroad – and even at home.

Heathrow expansion has been explicitly sold to MPs as a way of helping links between London and the rest of the UK. But look at what Davies is forecasting. The number of UK connections goes not up but DOWN, from seven to four. I am not sure that they are aware of this in Scotland or Northern Ireland indeed in the Northern Powerhouse. Some British cities will be bitterly disappointed not to gain the promised links, and some will actually lose. And how many more long-haul destinations will we get? All of – wait for it – seven! By 2030.

The traffic would be so bad that we would need a new congestion charge in west London

There is absolutely no hope, on this plan, of catching up with our European rivals, let alone Dubai or any of the rapidly growing airports of Asia or America. You might wonder how this can be. How can we be so incompetent as to expand Heathrow, and produce such a pitiful increase in connectivity?

The answer is simple lack of capacity, combined with the constraints that Sir Howard has been obliged to place on his solution. In the hope of restricting the very serious increase in noise pollution, he has been forced to call for a partial ban on night flights. This would reduce Heathrow’s existing connections with Hong Kong, Singapore and China, and deter low-cost carriers whose business model needs early morning and late evening flights – and all this for a night flight “ban” that would actually increase the number of nocturnal noise victims by 33 per cent.

You might say the obvious solution to this capacity crunch is to build not just a third but a fourth runway. And yet this option, of course, is explicitly ruled out. A fourth runway would cause such an inferno of noise and pollution in west London that Sir Howard calls, preposterously, for a legal “ban” on the very idea.

What a new runway at Heathrow might look like (Graphic: PA)

Now people may take these “bans” – on night flights and a fourth runway – with a pinch of salt. Heathrow Airport itself doesn’t accept them. It may be that these are more fingers-crossed promises, and that the whole exercise is fundamentally dishonest. But we must take Sir Howard at his word. In which case we would get a third runway that won’t perceptibly increase British links with the rest of the world, and that contrives to REDUCE domestic links, and with no possibility of further expansion.

This would be achieved at colossal and so far unacknowledged expense to the taxpayer. The bill for the third runway is currently put at £22.6 billion, including £5 billion for surface access. As Willie Walsh has been making clear, there is no way the airlines (mainly BA) are going to pay. The transport costs, says Transport for London, are nearer £15-20 billion. The whole bill is probably above £40 billion to the public purse. And the environmental damage is massive – another 250,000 people afflicted by noise pollution, taking the total to one million. No other society is contemplating such a step backwards.

Even on Sir Howard’s wildly over-optimistic figures, there would be another 28,000 people suffering noise of over 70 decibels. That is horrendously loud. Then there is the damage to air quality in London. This legal obstacle is so serious that the Davies report bizarrely proposes that we should build the runway – and then only use it if we can clean up the air.

As Sir Howard says, the traffic would be so bad that we would need a new congestion charge in west London; and all this misery for a solution that will be obsolete as soon as it is built.

If the Government wants to be long-termist it should go for the truly long- term solution, a four-runway hub, and the logical place is in the Thames estuary. The GDP growth unleashed would dwarf Heathrow, with 50 per cent more routes overall, double the number of domestic routes, to say nothing of the huge scope for much-needed housing and regeneration. That is what the Government should do – to stick with its principled stance, to keep its explicit manifesto promise.

This is the time to ignore the pleas of the largely foreign owners of Heathrow, and to back a solution that is better for hundreds of thousands of local people, better for the economy, and better for British business as well.

Frightening and exhausting but an exhilarating way to reach the top

When we turned up at the hotel on the Friday night, it was clear that we had come ill-prepared for what our hosts had in mind. Gloves? I said. Hats? Goggles? We didn’t have any of that malarkey. As for waterproof jackets and trousers – well, I proposed to go in my tweed jacket, if that was all right with them. They laughed, in a slightly incredulous way.

Stefano, our guide, indicated where he proposed to take us, and that was when I began – as I have said – to feel a twinge of alarm. The mountain did seem very high, and very big – probably one of the largest and coldest objects in the whole European landscape.

I looked anxiously at Marina, but she seemed to be taking things in her stride. The truth is that I don’t think either of us fully grasped, even then, what we were letting ourselves in for. The next morning we set out at 10.30 with Stephano, and I was relieved to find that we were going by car. We drove up and up in a Mitsubishi 4 X 4, and, as we passed the pistes, I marvelled at the expense and energy that goes into bulldozing the rocks out the way. The result is that in the summer the ski slopes become lovely undulating meadows.

• The story of the first ascent of the Matterhorn

I thought perhaps we might stop, and meander among the wildflowers. Oh no. Stephano had other ideas. We finally came to a place that already seemed impossibly high – at the top of the highest ski-lift. Was that it, then? Was our excursion complete? It was not.

We got out and began to walk, and as the hours went by it became clear that this was no ramble. Higher and higher we went, until there was no grass and no trees. We had left the ibex far below us. There weren’t even any birds, let alone butterflies; and the landscape had changed from the Sound of Music to a desolate and blasted moonscape, full of haphazard piles of metamorphic rock, colossal slabs of schist and gneiss – broken and ruined as though eternally dynamited by some malign cosmic force.

By this stage I was starting to feel the effects of hauling my 17 stone up the mountain, and Stephano made a sympathetic puffing noise, like a walrus. “Are you all right, Boris?” he asked. “We can always stop or go back if it is not possible for you.” Well, there is only one way to respond to a challenge like that, isn’t there? We kept going, Marina much more nimbly than me.

By mid afternoon we came at last to a “rifugio” – a kind of pinewood cabin just below the snowline, where Stephano proposed that we spend the night. In the morning, said our guide, we would make for the summit. Why wait? I said, with all the bravura I could muster. Why not keep going? Stephano looked at me and smiled.

• How to climb the Matterhorn

We passed a fitful night, surrounded by exceedingly serious Italian mountaineers, all of them bedecked with ropes and pitons and ice-axes, and all of them roasted by the sun to the colour of Nutella. At 4 am we rose and put on miner’s headlamps and crampons – the first time I have ever worn crampons – and began the final assault.

By now the whole mission was turning in my imagination into some Everest disaster epic. We staggered on up a wide and steep plain of ice and snow, fissured by crevasses. As the wind started to bite us – penetrating even the waterproof I had borrowed from the Mayor of Ayas – my morale began to sink yet further.

I fell over as I negotiated a crevasse, and as I tottered to my feet I asked Stephano if we could declare victory. “Isn’t this pretty much the summit?” I asked. It wasn’t, said our guide. For two more hours we toiled up a snow ridge so terrifying that we were commanded not to look on either side – an instruction I disobeyed. I instantly felt queasy. We were walking up a knife edge, with certain death on either side.

• The Matterhorn for hikers

Finally we were on the top, just as the sun came up, and I wish I could record that I felt full of some spiritual insight or peace. As we tried to keep our balance on that small patch of stamped-down snow, I thought how lucky it was that Marina was so good at climbing, and I wondered how on earth we were going to get down from this 4226 metre spot and catch our plane from Turin; and as I looked at Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn, gleaming in the dawn, I am afraid I yearned to climb them, too.