Boris didn’t just change his tune on bendy buses in that Marr interview. His line on the bottles of wine apparently stashed away in City Hall subtly altered itself too.
Have a look at yesterday’s article in the Torygraph where the story broke. Here’s the original quote:
“They were very fine bottles left behind by Mayor Livingstone. Whether they are GLA bottles of wine or his own we have yet to discover.“
So - Ken left them behind, but Boris isn’t sure whether they were Ken’s or not. Surely, though, Ken couldn’t have left them behind if they weren’t his? The implication in Boris’ statement is clear: Livingstone was an awful champagne socialist who sat slurping hideously expensive wine on the back of dodgy oil deals.
But he didn’t want to say that outright, as he that would verge on libellous. Instead, he just made a clear statement implicating the previous Mayor, before making a semi-withdrawal to guard against the fact he could be lying through his teeth.
Now, compare that with today’s line: simply that he found some wine bottles, and he didn’t know whose they were. Notice anything different? Ken wasn’t mentioned.
Could that have anything to do with this clear statement from Ken’s office yesterday (via Dave Hill):
“Boris Johnson has told the Daily Telegraph that he found ‘over a hundred bottles of wine’ in my office. This statement is a deliberate lie which the newspaper has been contacted to demand be withdrawn. To be fair to the Daily Mail, which initially repeated this story, it has removed it from its website and agreed to do so immediately. The Daily Telegraph site is continuing to carry a story which is a lie by Boris Johnson.”
Libel becomes a lot less attractive when the other side fights back.
The Times, meanwhile, cut the number of bottles of wine from “over a hundred” to just 39. This leaves us with 3 possibilities: that the Times itself is lying, or that Boris lied in the first place.
Or that, since the discovery, he polished off 61 bottles of Chataeu Neuf du Pape.
Would that explain his apparent confusion in the BBC London interview on Friday night? I’ll leave that up to you…
Update
The Glasgow Sunday Mail reports that ‘livid Livingstone’ *ahem* has indeed called Johnson’s statements “libel” and claimed that he has “never bought a bottle of fine wine in [his] life.”
Ben
Tags: lies · possible libel2 Comments
2 responses so far ↓
He’s never bought a bottle of “fine” wine, but maybe he doesn’t consider Chateau Neuf to be fine?
I was wondering what Boris was doing with for salary/salaries - looking for booze sounds about right.