Was Boris ‘whiff-whaff’ Johnson right?  Do Scousers and their associates have a victim mentality?  And if they do, is it justified?

The release of documents from 1981 where Geoffrey Howe said that Liverpool should be left to a ‘managed decline’ has brought a great deal of embarrassment to the now ennobled politician.  But it was a comment that the city crystallised an opposition to the Thatcher government that made it like a left-leaning republic separate from the rest of England.  And small nations, real or otherwise, can be a bit chippy.

Furthermore, we have Liverpool Football Club, in the week that the new trial for the murder of Stephen Lawrence concluded, issuing a very sulky apology for Luis Suarez’s comments.  The apology was to the media, not to Patrice Evra or Manchester United.  That Kenny ‘in denial’ Dalglish encouraged the squad to wear T-Shirts supporting Suarez should have been a source of profound embarrassment for anyone.  But anyone who took Liverpool to task for this had a torrent of abuse on message boards and Twitter from narrow-minded Scousers, who can’t understand that a person of colour might be exceptionally offended by being referred to only by his colour.  Liverpool even question the credibility of Evra, even though Suarez has admitted making the abuse – it’s beyond the blackest of satire.  Part of this is a result of the national consciousness to blame someone else for their ills rather than look in the mirror first.  And then when Oldham player Paul Adeyemi was racially abused by a Liverpool fan on Friday, it just cultivates an image of racism rife at Anfield as of a piece with the Suarez affair, undoing all their good work in the 1980s.  And now Stewart Downing has been arrested on a charge of assault.  Will the Liverpool hierarchy adopt another bunker mentality in defending this?  Boris Johnson was vilified after his comment back in the last decade – why on earth Liverpool FC want to vindicate him I do not know.