To the Guildhall where hundreds of Thatcherites last night met to pay tribute to the Iron Lady. On the centenary of her birth, a roll call of the great and the good was assembled by the eponymous centre named in her honour. Highlights of the evening included Jeffrey Archer’s auction, where he told the crowd that ‘having been up and down the country’ on behalf of the Conservative party, ‘how good it is to see a crowd.’ An appreciative Richard Tice duly bid £1,000 for a game of tennis with Boris Johnson that eventually sold for £21,000. Talk about a backhanded compliment…
The Old Etonian was there himself to receive a reward for ‘global leadership’ given his stalwart championing of Ukraine. And, undaunted by his recent run-in with Nigel Farage, Johnson used the occasion to take a rather obvious pop at the Reform leader’s stance on the Russia/Ukraine war. ‘I think she would be utterly revolted and enraged to hear that some people – naming no names – are now blaming Nato’, Johnson said. ‘She would have seen, with her icy clarity and command of the facts, that such people – naming no names – are simply parroting the Kremlin’s talking points.’
He then used the occasion to issue a call for ‘boots on the ground in Ukraine’ with immediate effect, telling the crowd that:
We need to drive that shadow fleet of sanction busting oil tankers, Putin’s shadow fleet, off the seas. And if one of them should find its way to Davy Jones’ Locker, that would be no bad thing. We should follow Trump’s example and penalise financially those who are still buying huge quantities of Russian hydrocarbons and thereby funding Putin’s war machine. As for the famous coalition of the willing, the force of European and other troops who are eventually going to put boots on the ground in Ukraine, what are they waiting for? Under no circumstances will they be there in a war fighting role. And given that there are plenty of places in Ukraine, I’m sure many friends here who have been to Ukraine have testified, many places that are completely safe, completely safe, they should go now and get on with their their work in, in planning and logistics and training and so on, just to make this point that Ukraine is and always will be a free country.
At least one Member of Parliament appeared somewhat gobsmacked by the suggestion. Johnson added that if Thatcher were alive today she would tell the US President that ‘Donald, this is no time to go wobbly.’ Over to you Keir…
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