15 June 2020updated 23 Jul 2021 9:42am

Why is Boris Johnson defending the Winston Churchill statue against no serious threat?

The Prime Minister is diverting political attention from the serious issues raised by the Black Lives Matter protests.

LONDON, ENGLAND - JUNE 11: Workers erect a protective barrier around the statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square in anticipation of protests tomorrow on June 11, 2020 in London, England. Outside the Houses of Parliament, the statue of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill was spray-painted with the words "was a racist" amid anti-racism protests over the weekend. In Bristol, protesters toppled a statue of Edward Colston, a 17th-century slave-trader, and tossed it into the harbor. (Photo by Peter Summers/Getty Images)

An experienced spinner for one of the main UK parties once told me a useful rule of thumb for politics, as for life: “everything before the ‘but’ is bullsh*t.” It came back to me today as I read Boris Johnson’s column for the Daily Telegraph.

The Prime Minister’s piece begins with a few lines condemning the violence of “far-right thugs” who demonstrated over the weekend. “There is nothing that can excuse their behaviour,” Johnson writes. “And yet it was also, frankly, absurd and deplorable that the statue of Winston Churchill should have been in any plausible danger of attack.”