This week's issue of the Spectator shows every sign of having been edited by an attentive, if not overwhelmingly penitent, Boris Johnson. His Liverpool ordeal thankfully over, the hyperactive MP gives himself some blessed space to remind his readers why they adore his every gaffe and wobble.
"What makes Operation Scouse-grovel even more depressing is that I am attacked by my own troops for embarking upon it," grumbles Boris. It turns out the Spectator's media columnist Stephen Glover believes his editor should have stood up to Michael Howard and refused to run the gamut of Liverpudlians' wounded pride.
"The first thing to say is that Glover's piece shows, of course, the fearless independence of all Spectator columnists," Boris writes admiringly. "Not only does he beat up Michael Howard and the Tory party, he also administers a resounding kicking to his own editor - with whom he had lunch less than a week ago, at which companionable and bibulous ceremony he requested and was granted a sizeable rise! That's the spirit, Glover!"
You have to envy Glover's chutzpah. But one senses the frothing indignation is, as so often with Boris, worked up to the point where the reader conveniently smiles and turns away. The rest of the article, with its repeated and qualified apologies, will be familiar to anyone who has read the statement Boris issued to the Liverpool Daily Post.
What of the letters page? It is, by a large margin, pro-Boris. "Whatever next?" asks Laurence Kelvin of Liverpool W9. "Will Private Eye be apologising to the cultured residents of Neasden for years of disparaging remarks? When I heard the emotional reactions from some of the Liverpool folk, I could not help but feel that they do protest too much."
Beryl Bainbridge, who left Liverpool 40 years ago, also wonders whether the "wailing and gnashing of teeth" befits the city in "Scouse honour", a piece which comes closer to a Spectator mea culpa than anything else in the magazine.
