HENRY DEEDES: If you can survive the Merseyside walk of shame, Orkney’s a cinch 

No red carpet for Boris Johnson in Orkney. No welcoming waves nor friendly hurrahs. There was barely so much as a cheery ‘och aye!’

The greeting he received, in fact, as his Presidential-style motorcade zoomed through the southern west town of Stromness, was as chilly as the sea breeze and twice as salty.

PG Wodehouse once opined that it was never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine. Sure enough, Orkney’s finest had grievances a plenty.

The PM’s team reckon it doesn’t matter what he says out on the road, get a snap of him in a high-vis jacket and hard hat and that’s all anyone will be interested in. He bumped elbows with a few fishermen before holding aloft a couple of large brown crabs

Placard wavers waited on every corner: Stop Brexit. Save the NHS. Time for another Referendum.

There’s a village here called Twatt so you can just imagine the fun some of them had with that. Such wonderfully furtive imaginations the Islanders have.

Boris had ventured north partly to announce a £100m cash boost for Orkney. Lots of talk about making the place a key part of his green industrial revolution. ‘Build, build, build’ was the slogan for the day.

Primarily, though, he’d come to talk up the union, enthusiasm for which has been flagging during the covid crisis. Not least as wily Nicola Sturgeon is deemed to have had a good war.

Placard wavers waited on every corner: Stop Brexit. Save the NHS. Time for another Referendum

Placard wavers waited on every corner: Stop Brexit. Save the NHS. Time for another Referendum

She accused Boris yesterday of using the coronavirus pandemic as some sort of ‘campaigning tool’.

Not the most welcoming of hosts toward visiting dignitaries, Nicola. When they visit Bute House, she probably makes them remove their shoes at the door. As for Boris, he was tidy at least. Green gumboots. A rather smart quilted coat which fitted, surprisingly. Carrie had obviously been shopping.

He stopped briefly to chat with reporters. 

‘I’m thrilled to be here in Orkney!’ he snorted. Phew. If he’d said Shetland by accident, he probably wouldn’t have got off the island.

Mind you, ‘thrilled’ might have been pushing it. 

For all the PM’s bounciness, he clearly would have preferred to be back in the Downing Street garden with his red boxes and a bottle of vino collapso.

He got in one of his alliterative soundbites, claiming ‘We’re going to build back better together,’ before bigging up the island’s potential economic wallop. 

‘Here in Orkney, they’re streets ahead on hydrogen technology, on wind technology,’ he enthused. 

‘This place can supply around 25 per cent of the UK’s energy needs.’ It’s a bit unnerving when Boris starts going into detail like this. Unnatural even. 

He was clearly reeling details off from a memo he’d read on the flight up from London. Or perhaps he’d just memorised a passage from Orkney’s Lonely Planet guide.

The protesters didn’t seem to have knocked him off his stride, but then Boris has endured far worse.

During his first unsuccessful stint in Parliament, the then Tory leader Michael Howard sent him on an apologetic tour of Liverpool after he’d approved an article in The Spectator (which he edited) passing some unsavoury judgments about the city. 

If you can survive a walk of shame around Merseyside, Orkney is probably a cinch.

Talk turned to the Union. It was a ‘fantastically strong institution,’ he said. 

‘It’s helped our country through thick and thin. It has been very, very valuable in terms of the support we’ve been able to give to all corners of the UK.’ 

A polite way of reminding Scots of the large cheques that Westminster sent north during the crisis to help pay for their furlough money.

Later we caught a glimpse of the PM on a fishing boat in Copland’s dock. This is the obligatory Bojo photoshoot. 

The PM’s team reckon it doesn’t matter what he says out on the road, get a snap of him in a high-vis jacket and hard hat and that’s all anyone will be interested in.

He bumped elbows with a few fishermen before holding aloft a couple of large brown crabs. Vicious looking things they were, with terrifying claws and deep, hollow eyes. 

Reminded me a bit of Dominic Cummings. Suspect the crab’s a bit friendlier.

Later we caught a glimpse of the PM on a fishing boat in Copland’s dock. This is the obligatory Bojo photoshoot

Later we caught a glimpse of the PM on a fishing boat in Copland’s dock. This is the obligatory Bojo photoshoot