It's Official, Yes Minister is a Documentary

This is almost as prescient as The Onion declaring that "Our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is over," in January 2001

This is the only explanation for the appointment of Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson as the new British Foreign Minister by Prime Minister Theresa May:

For the second time in a month, Britain has given the Washington foreign policy establishment a surprise, and not a wholly pleasant one. First there was the startling news of Brexit. Now there is Boris Johnson as foreign secretary.

“In the same way Brexit undermined the British relationship with the EU, Boris Johnson will undermine the British relationship with the rest of the world,” said Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, a political consulting firm headquartered in New York. “So you’ve got the map covered at this point.”

Johnson arrives in his new post under new British prime minister Theresa May with unusually heavy baggage. On Thursday the Washington Post, ever influential among US policymakers, published a digest of his past gaffes under a headline that drew attention to a 2007 Daily Telegraph column in which he backed Hillary Clinton for president and wrote of her: “She’s got dyed blonde hair and pouty lips, and a steely blue stare, like a sadistic nurse in a mental hospital.”

 He was similarly colo(u)rful about Vladimir Putin:

Johnson compared the Russian president to a character straight out of the Harry Potter books, in a 2015 column for The Telegraph newspaper about working with Russia to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

"Despite looking a bit like Dobby the House Elf, he is a ruthless and manipulative tyrant"

And he also rote a rather rude contest winning limerick about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and he described George W. Bush as, "A cross-eyed Texan warmonger, unelected, inarticulate, who epitomizes the arrogance of American foreign policy," as well as the bon mot that, "For 10 years we in the Tory Party have become used to Papua New Guinea-style orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing," which left that island nation's attache in London unamused.

(FWIW, I think that all of this is a hoot, but making him FM is a complete mind f%$#.)


Still, it is not surprising that the rest of the world is wondering if London is just f%$#ing with them.

Like I said, the BritCom Yes Minister is a documentary.