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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Comment
Barbara Ellen

Floreat Etona still for Dave and Boris

A table for two: Boris Johnson has been spotted dining with David Cameron in New York.
A table for two: Boris Johnson has been spotted dining with David Cameron in New York. Photograph: Oli Scarff/AFP/Getty Images

During these difficult times, the main thing that has been upsetting me is the thought of David Cameron and Boris Johnson no longer being firm chums.

Even before Brexit, things were a little shaky between them. (By “shaky”, I mean that Cameron would often lapse into daydreams about shaking Boris warmly by the throat.) But post-Brexit, the former prime minister and the foreign secretary had fallen out completely. It was even reported recently that Cameron had taken to naming the pheasants he shot after Johnson and Michael Gove, though, hearing this, most people were just relieved that they’d heard right and Cameron hadn’t been shooting “peasants”.

Now there seems to have been a reknitting of the great bond between Cameron and Johnson. They were spotted attending a dinner together at a restaurant called the Red Rooster, in Harlem, New York. As some people may recall, during the 2010 election debate, Cameron recounted meeting “a 40-year-old black man”, who later, among other unfortunate inaccuracies, turned out to be 51. Who knows if Cameron met other indeterminately aged black people in Harlem that evening? At the time of going to press, it also sadly couldn’t be confirmed whether Dave and Boris spent their magical evening exchanging friendship bracelets and offering to braid each other’s hair. Whether perchance a couple of tentative man-hugs occurred, even an unabashed man-cry?

However, this meeting proved beyond a doubt that, while outside events sometimes put a strain on a friendship, the locker rooms and tuckboxes of Eton will always win out in the end. How uplifting that, after all that Brexit unpleasantness, Cameron and Johnson are pals again. Now, both men just have to work out how to make friends with the 48% of Remain voters.

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