What is a little local skirmish compared to the eternal, brutal battle of Hastings?

Conservative leadership candidate Boris Johnson attends the first hustings on June 22 in Birmingham. Picture: Getty Images

Derryn Hinch on Twitter on Sunday:

Tomorrow’s news. Herald Sun headline: “Derryn Hinch to return to TV with new Sky News show”. HINCH returns 8pm. Thursday nights from July 4. As we used to say: Expect the Unexpected. Exciting.

Michael Steers replying on Twitter yesterday:

Derryn has sold his soul to the devil, now has ZERO credibility as he is being paid handsomely to parrot the Murdoch view of the world.

Hinch replying:

I don’t parrot anybody. That’s why I’ve been sacked so many times.

Compare and contrast as Max Hastings gets a few things off his chest in The Guardian yesterday:

I have known (Boris) Johnson since the 1980s, when I edited (Britain’s) The Daily Telegraph and he was our flamboyant Brussels correspondent. I have argued for a decade that, while he is a brilliant entertainer who made a popular maitre d’ for London as its mayor, he is unfit for national office, because it seems he cares for no interest save his own fame and gratification … A few admirers assert that, in office, Johnson will reveal an accession of wisdom and responsibility that have hitherto eluded him, not least as foreign secretary … Dignity still matters in public office, and Johnson will never have it.

Anything to add? Why, it would seem Hastings does:

Like many showy personalities, he is of weak character. I recently suggested to a radio audience that he supposes himself to be Winston Churchill, while in reality being closer to Alan Partridge. Churchill, for all his wit, was a profoundly serious human being. Far from perceiving anything glorious about standing alone in 1940, he knew that all difficult issues must be addressed with allies and partners.

Churchill’s self-obsession was tempered by a huge compassion for ­humanity, or at least white humanity, which Johnson confines to himself.

Hastings isn’t quite done yet:

Johnson would not recognise truth, whether about his private or political life, if confronted by it in an identity parade.

Hastings truly has stamina:

If the Johnson family had stuck to show business like the Osmonds, Marx Brothers or von Trapp family, the world would be a better place. Yet the Tories, in their terror, have elevated a cavorting charlatan to the steps of Downing Street …

He’s been at it for a bit. Hastings in The Times on July 10, 2018:

A few months ago on the London Underground, a middle-aged stranger who found himself my neighbour demanded: “Excuse me asking, but you will know if anybody does — is Boris Johnson going to resign?” I pleaded ignorance, saying that I had not spoken to the foreign secretary for years. Crestfallen, he said: “But surely you were the editor of The Daily Telegraph who invented him!” No, no, I insisted — he was getting me mixed up with Count Dracula. It was true that I employed Boris through years during which he showed himself a dazzlingly entertaining journalist. But the joke went tragically wrong when Theresa May put him in the cabinet.

We’re starting to think he means it. The Daily Mail on October 11, 2012:

If the day ever comes that Boris Johnson becomes tenant of Downing Street, I shall be among those packing my bags for a new life in Buenos Aires or suchlike, because it means that Britain has abandoned its last pretensions to be a serious country