Now I get it. I’d been wondering why Boris Johnson elevated the relatively low-profile Tory MP Alister Jack to Scottish secretary. Yesterday came the answer: both men are capable of shameless misdirection.
In his pursuit of Brexit the prime minister has consistently portrayed the EU as an insidious army of tyrannical foreigners intent on corroding noble Britain’s more virtuous way of life. He has been spinning that same trope and convincing the gullible since he was the Brussels reporter for a Eurosceptic newspaper 30 years ago.
The EU’s conduct for the past three years has not been that of the aggressor. On the contrary, it has tolerated increasingly inflammatory British rhetoric while seeking to facilitate our government’s changing preferences without compromising the EU’s founding principles.