May 24: Johnson's 'love' for Macron-"Unprecedented"
Guto Harri, former prime minister Johnson's Communication's Chief reveals what Johnson really thought of Macron.
Unprecedented podcast with Guto Harri
By Global- click here to listen to the podcast
Annabelle Dickson, for Politico, was in Dallas, Texas, reporting on former prime minister Boris Johnson’s US tour. He’s currently there to drum up support for Ukraine. Dickson reports that while at a private lunch in Dallas, the former prime minister said:
“I just urge you all to stick with it. You are backing the right horse. Ukraine is going to win. They are going to defeat Putin.”
Dickson confirmed something that was revealed in “Unprecedented”, Guto Harri’s new podcast: There’s no love lost between the UK’s former PM and the French president Emmanuel Macron. And Guto would know—he was Johnson’s Communications Chief. Between one course and another, Johnson said:
“I think it was my French friend and colleague Emmanuel Macron who said ‘Putin must not be humiliated,’” Johnson told the lunch party, adopting a faux French accent. “I think it takes an awful lot to humiliate Vladimir Putin, frankly,” Johnson went on. “I don’t think it’s our job to worry about Vladimir Putin’s ego, or his political prospects, or developments in his career.”
In episode two, “Conflict, chaos and another c**t”, February 24th, 2022, the unthinkable happens.
Guto Harri is woken by a call from the Military Attaché explaining that Russia has just invaded Ukraine. Within a matter of minutes Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Zelenskyy are on the call.
"Are you ok? Do you have good people around you?" Boris asks.
"I'm fine. But you never know, when Russian Special Forces are moving in on your city. I just hope this isn't the last time we speak to each other" Volodymyr replies.
And then the line went dead.
What happens next touches every nerve. Innocent civilians and children killed, schools and hospitals bombed, the biggest refugee crisis in Europe since WWII.
For this episode, it was a leadership moment like no other. But not all leaders are alike. Boris Johnson stepped up, and became a friend to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Ukrainians revere him, and are thankful for the UK’s assistance at a critical moment in their history, especially the NLAWs that got them through the Battle for Kyiv in the first few days of Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Criticism came German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s way when Scholz’s government would not allow armament shipments to fly over Germany at the run up to Ukraine’s defence preparations. He was slow to come around, and swung from ‘it’s not possible’ to providing Ukraine with 18 LEOPARD 2 A 6 main battle tanks with ammunition, 40 infantry fighting vehicles MARDER, a slew of other armaments, and one of the largest aid packages of a European Union member: “5.4 billion Euros for 2023 and additional authorisations to enter commitments in the following years amounting to 10.5 billion Euros”.
French president Emmanuel Macron’s record over the first year of the full-scale invasion has been unquestionably frustrating, and at times it seemed as if he wanted to maintain a close relationship with Russia’s war criminal, Vladimir Putin. He ran to Moscow (Scholz did too) to try to talk Putin out of invading Ukraine, and there were numerous calls in the first six months of Russia’s aggression. In “Unprecedented”, Harri reveals that Johnson was just as critical.
The former British prime minister described Emmanuel Macron as “nauseating” for travelling to Moscow to meet with Vladimir Putin, a former UK government aide has said. Johnson also described Macron as “Putin’s lickspittle”. In the episode Harri said:
There were tensions early on when people like Emmanuel Macron of France went to Moscow to talk to Putin. I think Boris described it privately as ‘nauseating’. And meanwhile, I think Macron was feeling the tension from Boris seemingly doing the running with helping Ukraine militarily.
So, when the British press was giving the British government a hard time over our response to the refugee crisis, Macron turbocharged it by criticising Boris pretty directly and his words were all over the front page of the Guardian on a Friday, I think.
And much as Boris is not prone to getting really cross, nor using particularly strong language, this was one where he really flipped and at our morning meeting, I think with a small gang of us he just launched into a violent attack on Emmanuel Macron.
Basically, saying ‘He’s a four-letter word that begins with C, he’s a weirdo, he’s Putin’s lickspittle. We need to go studs up on this one’ – a rugby term that basically means, gloves off – ‘We need an orgy of frog bashing. I’m going to have to punch his lights out.’ Pretty strong stuff.
And I’m pleased to say weeks later, of course, they had patched it up. They got on really well. They actually went for a whisky together at the G7 summit.
I guess life’s too short to keep a grudge. I’ll be tuning in regularly to the podcast to report on any other “Unprecedented” reveals emerge.
Search for Boris Johnson and the Lebedevs. You will find he is no friend of Ukraine, or the West.
https://bylinetimes.com/2022/02/24/boris-johnson-allowed-russian-interference-into-the-uk-as-putin-prepared-for-war/