There has been much that has been confusing in British politics of late. This tweet from the Conservatives last night can be used to summarise much of it:
BREAKING: Labour just voted to side with the EU in Parliament once again.
We're the party that's standing up for the integrity of the entire UK.
Our Internal Market Bill protects our Union, preserves peace in Northern Ireland & ensures unfettered trade across the whole country. pic.twitter.com/WzbVuoq3je
— Conservatives (@Conservatives) September 14, 2020
The claim made is, of course, entirely false. The opposite is true for every claim made.
What Labour actually voted to do was to deliver the Brexit agreement that this government reached last year and which it passed into law in January 2020.
What Labour did, rightly or wrongly, was say that a deal had been done and that it needed to be honoured.
Labour said that deal cannot be revised on a whim.
It said that the Union cannot also be shattered and devolution rolled back on the pretext of a threat from the EU, which very clearly does not exist.
And nor, come to that, should the U.K. be picking a fight on state aid with the EU when the trade deal with Japan that's already resolved leaves no negotiating room in any event.
So what was this tweet really about?
It was about the power to lie and think it can be got away with.
That's it.
And let's be clear that the government knows it is lying.
But, and this is key, it lies because it thinks it can get away with it and to some of its key supporters that indicates that it has power that only contempt for the truth, knowing there is nothing anyone can really do to correct it, confers to this with this mindset.
In other words, this is deliberate, sociopathic lying.
And those doing it are our government.
How low have we sunk?
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All governments have always lied to us. This one under Johnson is both too contemptuous of the electorate and too politically inept to cover it up. In fact they revel in it. Is this what they think sovereignty means? Presumably they believe Cummings can help them lead us by the nose. In other news Father Christmas is being prosecuted for keeping his elves working while under furlough.
They are your and my government whether you like it or not. .
If Labour has mounted a credible campaign at the last election, they wouldn’t be.
If your coterie of constitutional ‘experts’ and anti-Tory activists views had been as well supported as you seem to think they are, your chosen representatives would be in power now carrying out your diktats, but they weren’t, and they can’t.
Your constant ‘analyzing’ and moaning would have more impact if any of you could actually back up your words with actions and simply leave. But you won’t because you are the typical bunch of middle class faux intellectuals, professing to represent the interests of the ‘working’ class. In other words, the very people who cost the Labour Party the last election, unable to understand why you’re now having to lie down and suffer the consequences of your actions.
Review your last dozen hysterical blogs and honestly tell me what you or your commentators have or are likely to achieve, other than further alienating people who are sick of the ‘political’ class you all so desperately want to be seen as ?
The standard fascist response is to say opponents should leave
The next stage is to force them to do so
After that they are put on trains
You do realise what you are doing here, don’t you?
You’re willingness to resort to idiotic accusations of fascism towards anybody who has an opinion which differs with your own is very telling. Fascists don’t tell people to leave Richard, their first inclination is to prevent them from leaving.
An individual with a probable historic obsession for telling people how to think and behave, backed by a group of fawning acolytes, falling over themselves with desperation to agree with their leaders every pronouncement.
Ringing any bells at all Richard ?
You clearly have not studied fascism
Please don’t call again
Free thinkers don’t much like fascists
Below is famous quote from Herman Goering . It’s since been used to demonstrate how evil the Nazis were, but actually it’s how all countries that wish to wage war operate.
I was reading through it tonight and considering how it applies to our current situation. And I thought to myself, you know what? The people have been brought to war. Not armed combat as such (yet) but those that voted for this government have been told (and believe) that they are under attack. But not by another country. Yes the EU countries are held responsible but the war that is being talked up is not on a country or a physical entity, it’s against an ideology, and that ideology is liberalism.
Liberalism means many things but in this instance it‘s a bogie man who is supposedly a pathetic intellectual snob who supports trans and minorities. Who is rich and remote, and doesn’t care about the average bloke or the pub – in fact he hates them and their unrefined ways and secretly he plans on starving the average man and his family to death. These liberals may or may not exist but do in the mind of the Boris voter, and it’s used as a trope to tar anyone who is Remotely intellectual, anyone who is an expert, anyone who dares to say that we should try and reach out to each other.
So if this war that is being talked up is against the liberal who (apparently) lurks like the enemy within we can only surmise that those that are banging the drums of war seek to destroy the liberal order, and a sizeable amount of the population are being dragged along to fight that war.
Anyway here’s the quote. Mull it over. It makes me very scared, because I am many of these things that the Boris voter is becoming tired of.
“Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.”
– Herman Goering
Er……do you mind Sir!!?
‘We’?
Not me! And not you either by all accounts.
‘They’
‘Them’
‘The Tories’
‘The Conservative Party’
‘Their voters’
‘The Government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’.
That’s who!
Noted!
Apologies
Not sure it’s sociopathic – more deliberately designed to get their absolute power understood and accepted.
‘We not only lie – we want to be seen to lie , and to break the law, and to have signed an agreement to win an election, an agreement we can now reveal we had no intention of implementing’. ‘That is our strength – you need to understand that’.
But wouldnt an effective way of resisting include ridicule and humour – rather than than only the fulminating outrage of Ed Miliband? Justified maybe, but they love to be opposed like that – builds them up even more.
He was quite funny too, actually
And the BBC is trying to ban anti-government humour
Did you hear Nick ‘Tory Boy’ Robinson this morning on what passes for Today these days?
He slyly underplayed Millband’s performance to ruminate on the Boris’ problems with his back-benchers.
It is still unbelievable that 77 MPs voted for this bill.
Robinson has no place in the BBC at all in my view.
I can’t face Today any more
I’m truly at a loss.
It feels more every day that violence may be the only way out.
I’m not advocating for it.
I hope that some other resolution is found (and soon).
But hope is waning 🙁
All true……but we can’t just blame this government. We have to blame those who voted for it too.
Is blaming the deceived the best way to bring them round? Not much will, I suspect, so very tempting to blame. Not sure we can get anywhere ridiculing the perpetrators either. Lying politicians were merely their backers’ tools, and it was their backers’ media that did the real deceiving. When was the last time the likes of a Murdoch was influenced by an electorate? That would be cart before horse.
Possibly, but the reality will always be that no everyone will follow things very closely, and a strong narrative may often win out. I think a dishonorable mention should certainly go to those on the supposedly liberal side of politics who, often dishonestly, did everything they could to harm the only viable alternative. They were enablers.
Do you seriously think that blaming people who voted for this government will change anything? How about persuading them that they made a poor choice and asking them to change the members of this government or the party of the next one. Blaming will do no one any good whatsoever. That way lies totalitarianism. We will have a democracy as long as we persuade not blame.
Well said
The “Britishness” that’s being flagged up by the arrogant and stupid Tories is actually English and Welsh factionalism. Scotland and Northern Ireland voted Remain:-
https://www.bbc.com/news/politics/eu_referendum/results
Nobody with any sense is going to invest in the UK with this level of factionalism going on!
I think the Welsh are changing their minds
And wait until welsh lamb can no longer be exported…
Given British history it ought to be obvious the UK is built on “factionalism” and reaching consensus should always be to the fore. If there’s one error to explain Corbyn’s failure it has to be he forgot this not least because he allowed himself to be drawn into “political factionalism” within his own party.
Turning to another lie, the government trumpets the COVID testing “capacity” but what really matters is how many tests are actually done and processed and the results passed to the individuals concerned.
So-called “capacity” famously reached 100,000 on 1 May, but the number of tests actually done and processed did not reach 100,000 until three weeks later. “Capacity” has been above 300,000 since July but there have been no day when over 230,000 tests have been taken or performed. What is all this spare “capacity” and why is it being wasted? Where are the bottlenecks and why are they still there months later? Why are all the testing centres oversubscribed when there is still a huge amount of unused “capacity”? It is pointless to boast about aiming for “capacity” of 500,000 tests if you are only every using about two thirds of it.
Who is in charge of this mess? Will they do any better in organizing immunisation clinics when (if) an effective vaccine becomes available? How long does it take to administer 60 million or so vaccination shots? (Not to mention, how many people are going to suffer adverse health events as a result of universal immunisation, and how many people will not be able be to receive the vaccine?)
How about it is deliberate, to suppress data?
Dodo Harding may be part of the government’s great herd immunity experiment after all
Presumably you mean immunity to taking responsibility.
That is certainly spreading among the Tory population of parliament (although a few resistant individuals have been spotted, I don’t want to belittle their integrity).
This Tory government has lied over Brexit and after six months of failing to put an effective Test and Trace system into operation it has to be assumed they have lied over Covid-19 and they are covertly pursuing a Herd Immunity strategy.
As seems to be the case all too often nowaways, the statistics have been retrospectively adjusted so the Coronavirus Dashboard now shows
As I was trying to say: as happens all too often nowadays, the statistics have been retrospectively adjusted so the Coronavirus Dashboard shows just over 240,000 tests on 11 September, and just over 250,000 on 12th (they didn’t yesterday) but I expect so-called “capacity” will be over 350,000. Why is there reported “capacity” which is never used?
Which is staggering…
I have another case of this type in development….
So they have changed the presentation of the testing statistics yet again and the “capacity” point comes into focus a little.
PCR swab testing (pillars 1 & 2 – that is, NHS clinical and healthcare worker tests, and wider population tests) is running near capacity now – after the suspicions bump of “capacity” on 1 May, it increased to about 200,000 by early June, and tests are reaching about 230,000 out of 250,000).
They are doing hardly any antibody serology testing (pillar 3) – just a few thousand a day, even though capacity is said to 120,000 – and that appears to be why “capacity” across the board for all pillars has hitherto been reported by the politicians as consistently as about 100,000 or more greater than the actual tests that were done. Which is still not the number of people tested, as one person might be tested two or three times just to makes sure, due to a significant level of false negatives.
ONS surveillance testing (pillar 4) bumps around from month to month and somehow seems to have jumped up to 59,000 tests with a capacity of only 1,000.
I hope someone somewhere has some proper data, because what they publish is almost useless.
Agreed
The Dodo is an interesting metaphor, a large flightless bird unused to dangerous predators like European humans and their introduced wildlife such as pigs, dogs and cats. In our case the Dodo is democracy, under attack in the UK by forces which we have never experienced personally or collectively for some considerable time.
We have been accustomed to politicians and their advisors to be reasonably if not wholly honest, with a degree of integrity and when caught acting dishonourably to do the “right thing” and resign. All that mutual and shared commonality of understanding of limits on acceptable political behaviour (at least at home) has been gradually eroded, perhaps first by Thatcher’s war against the miners, then Blair’s illegal real war and other malpractice to do with Northern Ireland. But now it has increased by an order of magnitude where repeated lying is now normalised, as is xenophobia, racism, attacks on the poor, the disabled, the whole panoply of hard right Toryism which “others” anyone who disagrees with them.
Nobody in government apologises with any sincerity anymore. Nobody admits mistakes never mind accepting responsibility for the multitude of egregious mistakes they have made, and no one, but no one resigns – except for Douglas Ross, an insignificant Scottish Office apparatchik. And I have my suspicions that it was a put-up job to clear the way for his leadership of the Tories in Scotland.
Like the Dodo we were unprepared for the assault mounted by Johnson/Cummings and their willing accomplices in crime at Westminster who now decide what is truth and what are facts and anyone who disagrees is clearly an enemy of the UK.
I was reminded whilst reading your post of the Nolan Principles. It seems they no longer apply. Mr Cummings has probably ripped up the rule book.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-7-principles-of-public-life/the-7-principles-of-public-life–2
Compare each and every principle with the behaviour of members of the Cabinet and further afield. And then weep or rise to action.
Good point….
The seven principles are embedded in the Ministerial Code, but as the Attorney General recently pointed out (when asked if a breach of international law is against the code, as it undoubtedly is), it is not legally enforceable – as if legality was the only thing that matters, and morality was an optional extra. This at heart is I think what is so corrosive about our prime minister and his incompetent government. The lack of moral principles.
A bit like international law, really – binding, but without an effective enforcement mechanism, so can apparently be broken with impunity. There will be repercussions, though.
Thanks, for that, Royd. They have failed on every principle, in spades.
They have shown their integrity by breaking their own agreements, broken their promises made to the public and set on to break international law.
I wonder what will happen when the EU refuses passporting rights to the City of London.
Right now that would be entirely within their rights
It’s a reasonable response to no deal
So will the City continue to back the Tories?
I think the break will come
They are alienating almost everyone but one rather nasty element in society
Another rank example: “The new UK-Japan trade deal will deliver a £1.5 billion boost to the UK economy” says the government.
But that “boost” is compared to 2018, when there was no trade deal, not compared to the situation after the EU agreed its trade deal in 2019, which was at the time estimated to increase UK GDP by £2.6 billion. So the impact of the new UK-only trade deal is estimated to be *lower* for the UK economy than the existing EU one was. https://fullfact.org/economy/uk-japan-trade-benefits/
Great deal, chaps. Can I sell you some £5 notes? Only £10 each.
Of course there is a strong sense of conspiracy by those behind Cummings/Johnson – the Tufton Street gang et al. At the same time there is a continuing pattern of cock-up as they try to execute their half baked and destructive ideology.
They seem to be staggering from day to day, mostly driven by events which they have precipitated but cannot control. Each day coming up with a new distraction or lame/dishonest excuse. My most optimistic view is that they will run out of excuses and the public and business will run out of patience. Sadly I fear it will get a lot worse first and there will be a terrible mess to clear up afterwards.
Even if Johnson takes the whisky and revolver route, the alternatives of Gove/Sunak/Hunt are no better. All have shown that they share the same neo-liberal, anti-public sector, austerian ideology and will continue to pander to their Brexity members and MPs. Hunt is my MP and I have corresponded with him…
PS Interesting programme on BBC Sounds – the Spark by Helen Lewis, with Paul Collier and John Kay
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000mkv4