Boris continues to ride his popularity carousel

It seems like Boris Johnson has been around for ever. If you take in his time as Mayor of London as well as his sojourn at Number 10 Downing Street, then I suppose that accounts for it. Actually, he has only been prime minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland since July 24 2019. The time has flown by and a helluva lot has happened, including Brexit, the worst pandemic since Spanish flu in 1918, the near-collapse of the National Health Service, a shambolic end to the war in Afghanistan, petrol queues, an appalling rape and murder of a wonderful-looking 33-year-old woman by a serving Metropolitan police officer, an army call-out to drive fuel tankers, food shortages in the supermarkets, warnings of no turkeys for Christmas, the inevitability of tax rises, etc etc. And yet Boris remains as popular as ever. If not more so. Helped along a bit by the fact that the Labour party, supposedly Her Majesty's main Opposition party, is being led by a nice but very boring bloke who never seems to say anything original and has a dreadful smarmy hairstyle. Sir Keir Starmer as future prime minister? Never. So good old Boris bumbles along with lots of heartwarming platitudes and his own style of optimism and patriotism and it all goes down a treat with the electorate. This weekend is the start of the annual Conservative party conference and I have no doubt his speech will be greeted with fervent adoration. Boris the hero. Whatever one might feel about having a prime minister who cannot get his blond locks going in one direction and who never quite seems to have detail at his fingertips, he is a jovial soul and in these times of dire predictions about the way the world is going, I'm all for that. Starmer in No 10 would have driven me to a loony bin by now.