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Kindle Notes & Highlights
The Queen made no effort to disguise her feelings at being misled over the legality of the prorogation – something to which she had been obliged to give her assent – and her delivery of the speech felt more like an exorcism,
had voted against the government by backing the motion their party had always said it didn’t want.
He had done away with the temporary backstop by turning it into a permanent full stop. Genius.
They would also quite like Johnson’s Brexit deal to pass, while secretly wishing they had voted for Theresa May’s rather better deal when they had had the chance.
Voters had never really expected Johnson to tell the truth, so the revelations were greeted with general indifference.
No one really expected Johnson to deliver on all his promises, but they were less worried about that than the promises on which Labour might deliver.
His usual lethal combination of boredom and terminal laziness.
Shambolic and a bit clueless.
Brexit was an ill-fitting carapace he had worn to get into power.
Now he was expected to take responsibility for what he had done, he just wanted to hide.
All you had to do was believe. This might have been more convincing if his own expression hadn’t been riddled with self-doubt.
had hoped to get the tricky bits of the reshuffle done by text. Hell, it was the way he had ended all his affairs. And what was good for a lover was more than good enough for a mere cabinet minister.
It wasn’t often you could find a home secretary who was both vicious and stupid. The ideal combo.
Boris had never encountered anyone with self-worth before. Least of all himself.
make me the most powerful person in the country.’ ‘Don’t you mean me?’ Boris had asked. ‘Er … no. Now, where was I?
Ignorance was his greatest asset.
this is the woman who responded to a terrorist incident by declaring war on counter-terrorism.
effortless self-confidence of someone who doesn’t have a clue just how dim she is.
Her coup de grâce was her insistence that the British people had voted for massive staff shortages in the NHS and social care.
‘Look,’ said Eustice, trying to convince himself as much as everyone else.
He forgot to mention the fifth strand of ‘doing almost nothing’, which had been the plan up until the previous weekend.
Boris said, ‘is to wash your hands with soap and hot water while singing “Happy Birthday” twice.’ Mostly as an aspiration that you survive until your next one. Still,
if there’s one thing Boris knows something about, it’s washing his hands.
He hates even more the idea that people might hold him responsible for the decisions that could cost lives.
Whitty and Vallance perked up. They had at last tracked down ‘Patient Zero’. The prime minister was the UK’s own super-spreader.
he was the first person on record to have started his paternity leave four months before his child was born.
We had now moved on from the ‘pretending nothing was happening and hoping it would go away’ phase,
Even when he strives for authenticity, he can’t help being shifty.
‘I hate bullies,’ he said. Which is why he has Classic Dom as his chief of staff.
If he treats his own family with such indifference, just imagine how he really feels about us.
Rather, they tried to look as if they had not noticed, while slowly edging themselves away.
It’s always the politicians with the least charm and charisma who feel obliged to go on the longest.
The right-wingers in his party would be salivating at the prospect of cracking down on a few foreigners.
Having an unexpected fit of conscience suddenly didn’t look like such a good idea after all.
He’s never come across a difficult decision he hasn’t wanted to fudge.
All compartmentalised away into a happy place where there are no consequences.
She then said how much she hoped people would maintain the self-sacrifice, self-discipline, compassion and sense of humour needed to defeat the illness.
won’t be long before there’s also a black market in tasers to take out sweaty joggers.
. A man so clinically unstable he has yet to realise he is by far the most dangerous person in any room he enters.
That way he would have to resign and wouldn’t have to put himself through any more of these excruciating press conferences.
Imagine the humiliation of being considered to have less credibility than Michael Gove.
The gap between vaulting ambition and practical reality has never seemed so wide.
He can’t even trust himself these days.
Either the foreign secretary had been kept out of the loop about Boris’s state of health or he had lied to the country.
Boris might not be everyone’s idea of a national daddy, but he’s the only daddy we’ve got, and no one wants to lose their dad. It’s as primal and terrifying as that.
Thats so depressing
We’re not in a war. We’re in a pandemic. The two things are totally different.
‘Government has always worked on collective responsibility,’ he said casually.
Despite being home secretary, Priti Patel has never been allowed anywhere near a No. 10 press briefing.
Raab’s idea of collective responsibility was every man and woman for themselves.
