The last pretence that we live in a democracy in the UK collapsed yesterday. Johnson and Sunak received fines for attending a party that they always denied had taken place. They then immediately admitted their guilt, thereby confirming that a criminal act had been committed by them in contravention of the laws they were daily telling the country to comply with, and then they did not resign.
They lied to parliament.
They lied to the media.
They treated us with contempt.
They believe that they can do so again.
They ignored all the hurt of those who could not visit dying relatives of those who were dying, including in my own family, during this period as as result of those grieving people's compliance with the law.
They ignored parliamentary convention.
They ignored our unwritten constitution.
They ignore the ministerial code.
They pretend that they can carry on.
Carry on that is with the their elected dictatorship, put in place with Russian support and Russian money that always had the objective of supporting the destruction of democratic systems and accountability, which is exactly what it is succeeding in doing.
What are the excuses for this descent into this fascist power grab in contempt of all accepted process? There are just two.
According to the Mail, echoing a Tory Party line, it is that we are at war and a party leader cannot be changed. Ignore that we habitually change party leaders in the UK during wars (WW1, WW2, the first Gulf War, and many more) there is another slight problem with this claim, which is we are not at war. There has been no such announcement. There is no engagement. We are, at best a bystander in the Ukraine war. In that case only war being pursued by Downing Street right now is on British democracy and the British people. And that, no doubt, is the war that the Mail is referring to in its headline today, which it says must continue uninterrupted.
And then there is the other problem for the Tories. With Sunak conveniently discredited by some strange coincidence in the days before this announcement by the Met and Truss revealing herself to be more mad by the day, there is literally no one the Tories can think of who can replace Johnson.
And that is why this crisis is so dangerous. Not only are we obviously facing a coup as all the accepted procedures of our democracy are trashed, we are facing it to sustain three things.
One is Boris Johnson's premiership, to which there is no apparent alternative.
Second, it is to defend the right of the Tory party to govern when it is clear it is absent of all the talents required to do so, and there are no heirs apparent, making quite clear that it has ceased to be a credible political party.
And third, it is to defend the rights of those who put the Tories in power, by which I meant their sponsors and not those who were gullible enough to vote for them. In other words, this is about maintaining Russian influence.
So three questions.
First, if Johnson will not go now does he ever accept that he might have to do so? After all, Trump did not?
Second, what will his policy be now to secure his entrenchment in office, knowing utterly incompetent and compromised Tory MPs now have almost no choice but vote for anything he suggests?
Third, is there any remote chance that Labour might step up to the mark and drop its tribalism with the intention of defending democracy now, because that is required?
I could have some hope if I know the answer to the last question, but to be candid I have very little expectation that Labour will do what is required now.
In that case I guess there is a fourth question, which is what next?
I will give Labour a chance to act responsibly in the national interest. After that, the issue is on the table.
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there is an election in 2024 if not earlier..
Suppose there isn’t?
why should I suppose there will not be an election in 2024?
Because Johnson may claim there is a reason we cannot change leader at the time – Tory MPs are already asking why the French are holding an election
What is the probability of that? i.e. no UK General Election by December 2024.
Obviously I’m not looking for an exact answer but a number to within 25% would be nice.
Have you noticed what Trump tried to do?
I suggest you stop trolling
so you are saying Johnson is playing to disallow general elections? what possible evidence do you have? sounds like you are just making anything up now
I am musing on the possibility
If you are not aware of it, politics involves hypotheticals
“I am musing on the possibility”
yes all hypothesis must have an area of probability..and your hypothesis here has a near zero possibility of it happening..so your are indeed making it up
Isn’t it odd who every one of your comments has every characteristic of trolling written all over it
How do you live with a life so wasted?
If Richard recalls, I did predict an end to elections back in these pages in around 2012 IIRC. I said I anticipated this happening roughly in 2017/18. Look how wrong I was, eh? Now that very real possibility is in the air at least.
Perhaps he is waiting for the Queen to die, so he can preside over what will inevitably be a massive media circus – just like Blair managed with Princess Di, but so much bigger.
Perhaps he has in mind something long the lines of “Arise, King Boris”. I doubt the constitution would allow for it but these days, so what?
When I was at school, many years ago now, I’m sure one of the justifications for having a constitutional monarchy was that it protected the UK constitution from misuse of power by the elected government. Isn’t about time the Head of State did her job and sacked Johnson?
She must have this power as it was used by her representative in Australia to sack Gough Whitlam in 1975.
I recently discovered that Scotland has a written constitution, going back at least as far as 1309, and probably long before then. It was first (as far as I know) spelled out in written form at that time, repeated in 1320, and expressed again in 1689 in Scotland’s Claim of Right. Essentially it says that the people of Scotland may only be governed with their consent; that they can withdraw that consent, and remove the power to govern, and they can depose whichever government and/or monarch is offending them. In fact that was the purpose of the 1689 CoR, which deposed King James VII for behaviour unacceptable to the people of Scotland.
Importantly, it was not passed by the Scottish parliament of the time, but by a ‘Convention of the Estates’, a body representing all of the people of Scotland, not just the lairds and the well-off, but the commoners, too, and it was called into existence for that purpose. And because the Scottish parliament channelled the power of the Crown, it too was effectively deposed.
The relevance here is that the 1689 CoR, which spelled out the constitutional basis for its decision and subsequent action, was explicitly guaranteed by Article 25 of the Treaty of Union of 1707. That Treaty created both the brand new UK and its brand new parliament at Westminster, and Westminster is subsidiary to it, and the guarantee of Article 25 is binding on it, as in ‘approves, ratifies and for ever confirms’ the constitution of the people of Scotland as expressed in that CoR. Naturally, Westminster has completely ignored it, except for burying any reference to Scotland’s constitution, and ensuring that virtually no-one in Scotland even knows that such a thing exists. It even went to the length of publishing a version of the Treaty that deleted most of that Article 25!
We already know, thanks to MP Joanna Cherry, that the UK Government is subject just as much to Scots law as it is to English law, and now we know that it is also subject to the Scottish constitution, and only the people of Scotland can wield that constitution. Once enough of us become aware of its existence and power, another Convention can be called to start demanding some really serious answers, or else!
Links please?
This is the source my comment is based on;
https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2022/03/29/sara-salyers-paper-in-full/
It was originally presented in a series of articles, and then reproduced in full as above. I had been aware of some aspects, and even contributed a little datum to it at one point in a comment, but the credit must go fully to Sara, who did all the essential digging. I have high hopes that something good will eventually come out of it.
Thanks
One question I would ask Johnson’s apologists – what DOES he have to do to be unfit to be PM?
Also, I am becoming alarmed that the “Covid narrative” is becoming entrenched (that Boris has got the big decisions right) without challenge from journalists or Labour. (I would love to see the question asked “So, is 150,000 excess deaths is getting the big call right?”
Labour’s inability to ask the right questions is scary
Yes, Starmer’s seeming inability to do this is seriously disconcerting. What is wrong with him? I am beginning to think that he may not have the ‘right’ personality for the job, that he has an outlook that is preventing him from doing a proper job in opposition.
Johnson is personally responsible for the delays in locking down in March 2020, and in autumn 2020 before we had a vaccine, which cost tens of thousands of lives. The decisions to remove sick people from hospitals undoubtedly killed many vulnerable elderly people in care homes.
Hospitals have not recovered from the extraordinary pressure they were required to bear, and are still suffering, and the failure to take adequate steps to prevent the spread of infection now leaves them on their knees.
The failures on PPE in early days showed a terrible lack of planning and preparation, and undoubtedly led to greater infections and deaths. The subsequent spaffing of money at friends and family was perhaps the most corrupt and wasteful use of public money this country has ever seen. Resources that could have been deployed properly by buying PPE that actually met the specifications required.
Schools and courts have been largely abandoned to their fate, leaving children defenceless and and victims of crime without access to justice.
Undoubtedly the spending on vaccine research was good, but as it turned out we would have got there anyway. Our vaccination and booster programmes were quick off the mark, but many other countries have now vaccinated a greater proportion of their population.
The financial support from the Exchequer was essential, but hundreds of thousands of people did not qualify for support, and (as with PPE) there were basic failures in fraud prevention. Removing the UC uplift was just cruel. And the plans for reopening have just been inept.
I could go on, but at the heart of this country’s failings we have a lying chancer with no moral compass, who seems to have persuaded his own party that there is no alternative to his own malevolent rule.
Agreed
“Truss revealing herself to be more mad by the day”: do kindly elaborate.
Have you seen yesterday’s picture?
No, unfortunately.
A standard trope of British Journalism whenever a Tory government does something mind-bogglingly dishonest or incompetent is that lengthy articles will be written describing the Tories appalling behaviour but somewhere near the end will be a few words saying that we cannot do anything about it and that it is somehow all the fault of the Labour party.
Two things Richard.
Firstly, what power does the Labour party have to get Johnson and Sunak to resign? Like most people in this country I wish they and the rest of the opposition parties did have that power but in our elective dictatorship the only opposition power lies with the Media and that is owned by right-wing billionaires with little love of democracy.
Secondly, what is this tribalism within the Labour party of which you speak?
They can bring a vote of no confidence
The6 can get the standards committee to investigate
And the tribalism is the refusal to cooperate with any other party or consider alternatives to fptp
We are really on the same side here Richard so the last thing I want to do is to add to your work that I think is a force for good.
However, as I am sure you are aware, unless the-not-impossible happens in the next few days and something significant changes, a vote of confidence usually acts as a rallying call for the Tories.
And at the risk of being a bit of a bore here is my personal experience of cooperation between the parties.
I live in a constituency that always elects a Tory MP and Council on less than 50% of the vote. In 1994 I was one of a group that took part in an exercise to see if the local Lib Dems and Labour party would combine to get rid of the Tories.
Despite a degree of enthusiasm for the project the majority of Lib Dems and a majority of Local Labour supporters were against it. The Lib Dems believed it was just a short-term tactic by Labour who would dump them if they got a decent majority, which is exactly what happened in 1997 and Labour believed that the Lib Dems would sell out to the Tories at the earliest opportunity, which is exactly what happened in 2008.
So yes, I think we desperately need proportional representation, but please recognise that it isn’t just the Labour party that needs persuading
Accepted
BBC interviewer this morning quite happy not to challenge ‘he got the big questions right’ a day after NHS leaders said the Govt has no plan for covid and the system is collapsing under this a ‘living without restrictions’ ideology.
Yes it is a coup – but in many ways it.s already happened.
I was in Dover yesterday (not travelling to Europe) in a group of what could be considered intelligent, well educated people. The problems of logistics around the Dover area were central to some of the discussions.
It was sad that many continued to find excuses away from HMG for the UTTER shambles that is happening. EU intransigence, stupid lorry drivers, incompetent form filling, etc, etc.
Classic example of buyers remorse…Sad, but fundamental I think to what is going on.
The thing is that decent people feel shame when they know they’ve been had.
They tend to blame themselves and then go into denial mode in public.
WWI Asquith removed for Lloyd George. WWII Chamberlain removed for Churchill. French Revolutionary/Napoleonic wars – at least six British PMs. “Now is not the time” is a con. The Conservative Party serves only its own interests: not the National Interest.
How do you stop a coup?
How do you stop Government lawlessness (given that the legal system is choked up and underfunded since 2010)?
To me – not wanting to sound superior at all by the way – there has been some sort of Tory ‘project’ (I don’t want to use the word conspiracy) since 2010. It cannot be by coincidence that the FTPA came into being as have so many other Tory policies to lock in power for themselves and disenfranchise the voter.
It is even more worrying thinking about how reactionary the Tories are when one considers that New Labour was not that radical to be honest and although some good things were done, other opportunities like PR were not taken. New Labour were quite pallid. So the only conclusion is that this Government is being driven by a small constituency of super rich and corporate interests who are prepared to financially support this Government at all costs for their benefit.
If we can acknowledge that, what options do we have – because that is quite a serious situation.
What I find glaringly obvious is that there is an answer. And as unpalatable as it seems, the brave Ukrainians are setting it.
People don’t have to put up with brutality and illegality from any sovereign Government – whether it be the brutality of tanks, missiles and the indiscriminate killing of non-combatants or the brutality of social security systems aimed at starving and freezing people to death just for being poor whilst ALSO reducing the wages of others to make them poorer in the name of ‘competition’ (as David Cameron advocated in 2011).
The Tory fundamental here is that only the strongest survive by being more powerful and using money. It is the logic of brute power.
And history is full of examples of how the less powerful have fought back against overwhelming power.
The question is what are those of us disgusted by this prepared to sacrifice to fight back?
Labour has a moral duty right now to intervene and offer an alternative to the country otherwise it too will may end up with blood on its hands. My worry is that too many in Labour are too comfortable, too distanced from reality to get this.
I doubt there is any appetite amongst the general population to do anything other than simply get on quietly with their lives, which is very worrying. They have been cowed into submission by past and current experiences of how some demonstrations have been dealt with by the police. Unless the Labour Party requests parliament to be convened tomorrow, the initiative will have been lost. Why can’t all the opposition MPs simply turn up in the HoC as a statement of how strongly they and the citizens really feel about what the Tories are doing. They have to make a strong public statement about this, otherwise they might be considered complicit in doing nothing demonstrative!
Why don’t they all turn up to the next PMQ’s, have Starmer state in his first ‘question: Boris Johnson you are a liar and you must resign, then every opposition MP gets up and walks out, accompanied by any Tory MP who has both the ethics and the courage.
“And history is full of examples of how the less powerful have fought back against overwhelming power.”
Sadly, history is also full of examples of how that fight back resulted in, effectively, more of the same.
‘It depends what you mean by more of the same’.
Please do tell me how peace in Northern Ireland came about and what is actually upsetting the apple cart now?
South Africa seemed to get somewhere too with Mandela – until that is the Nero-liberals got their hands on the economy.
As a Labour party member, I can confirm that a fair proportion of activists believe that the real priority is to get rid of Starmer
That is unlikely to be very much more helpful right now
All it proves is that most in the Labour party do not give a damn about the country at large
That rather proves my point about its irrelevance and the futility of the politics of most in it
Sadly, agreed. Though most individual members are fine
They say that you are more likely to have a criminal record than be a member of a political party. You’re already a bit weird.
Activists are then a small subset of members – the weirdest of the weird! Often with strong views that are not reflective of the wider public, or even its membership.
My sense is that MPs are can be closer to the public than members as they have to appeal to more than their base. Except of course those with huge majorities.
Conclusions? Adds to the case for PR. Member driven parties may not be such a good idea.
Agreed
There are local elections happening next month and we’re due a general election before Dec 2024. It may not be a perfect democracy but there will be an opportunity to vote out anyone we don’t like in the next couple of years. Short of the UK being involved in a major war, these elections will happen. The UK military are far too savvy to get seriously involved in any coup against the real government of the country.
If lying and treating the electorate with contempt are electoral disqualifications, I’m not sure if the most likely alternative is any better! The current leader of the Labour party issued ten pledges to win his position but then reneged on just about every one of them!
There’s nothing for the Establishment to fear in a right wing Labour led government, possibly in coalition with the Lib Dems. They are a safe alternative from their POV. Any suggestion of a coup is fanciful.
At the start of the war in Ukraine, it was said that occupation of the country would require 600 to 800 thousand troops. The current size of the British Army suggests that a military takeover of Britain would be well beyond their capabilities.
I also remember the comment of my late father that our officer class would be incapable of governing, based on his experience as one who underwent National Service in the early 1950s.
You continually refer to the UK as a democracy. But the UK is not a democracy, it is a monarchy.
We have an unelected head of state who signs acts of parliament into law.
We have an unelected second chamber which is one of the largest in the world. Stuffed full of failed politicians and political party donors.
And we have a voting system for the only elected part of government which provides for massive majorities to parties with less than 50% of the popular vote.
Also, there is no written constitution with which the government can be restrained. The only check on stopping the UK from becoming a dictatorship was provided by the EU. We know what happened to that.
These are the reasons that the UK is in it’s current state, changing the elected part of the government isn’t going to change the rest of it, even if the political party which has promised to abolish the House of Lords for over a century is elected into office.
Which leaves us with very few options if we wish for radical change.
That is why I am calling for a democracy
In the first instance and most obviously, the most immediate ways ordinary citizens have to remove Johnson are (a) write to their MP if a Conservative (b) vote in the local elections against the Conservatives (c) persuade others to do the same. The more seats the Tories lose in May, the more likely Tory MPs are to decide that Johnson must go. The more people vote Tory, the greater the endorsement of Johnson.
Agreed
I have done (a)
I will do (b)
I am doing (c)
If the Tories do decide Boris must go, how will they get him out of Downing Street? What if he squats? In other news, I notice there’s been talk of Russia using chemicals against Ukraine today, For my money this has false flag written all over it as it makes it inevitable that NATO (which means us) will have to step in against Putin. I notice the country is already being softened up to the idea we’re at war (see The Mail which is rapidly becoming about as accurate and informative as some saloon bar drunk) and am in agreement with any unspoken (as yet) assumptions that Boris will use the suggestion of our being at war as reason why he shouldn’t be ousted from Downing Street, election or not. This leads me to wonder, what were Boris and Zelenskyy plotting at their recent meeting? Planning a false flag event against Ukraine with Boris to then lead calls for NATO to join battle against the Russians perhaps? Zelenskyy gets military backing and Boris gets a great excuse for reducing the UK state almost to non-existence, to aid the war effort, will be the cry. I note that the interest rate on student loans is to rise by an amount many would consider exhorbitant, for example. A lot of people, stupid people admittedly but still people, would accept that this was to aid the war effort despite it’s already being proposed now. Get the UK involved in a war and we could be looking at Boris on steroids and very soon.
As you reflect on progressive developments since say the 1900s (if not before) it seems that all the Tories want to do is take us back to that time when there was very little social mobility and wealth ruled absolutely across the land – almost like the Georgian era (the Victorians were a little more complicated).
I get the feeling that anything we’ve ever got our of this damned country has been resented and given reluctantly.
Indeed it feels that our demands for fairness have just been tolerated that’s all and that now, that tolerance has dissolved because greed has become normalised.
All that has happened is that there is no embarrassment or self-consciousness about this anymore on the part of money-power that has always existed in this country.
And the ‘intellectual’ underpinning of all of this has been Neo-liberalism – nothing but a charter for rigged political and economic systems.
To add to yesterday’s blog ‘2022 is not looking good’, up to 60% believe that Johnson and Sunak should resign. What about the remaining 40%? In a G.E. this is enough to give the Tories another big majority!! Our ‘democracy’ has failed us and needs a dramatic revision.
It’s staggering that so many like authoritarian government that is contrary to their own best interests
Who are these masochists?
And what is in it for them?
Here is an example of the polling. https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2022/04/12/lockdown-fine-public-think-johnson-sunak-resign
About a 2:1 for resignation, ignoring the “don’t know”s. That looks pretty fatal to me, but perhaps the greased piglet will wriggle free again somehow. How does he do it?
Almost unanimity for resignation among Labour voters, and a sizable number of Conservative voters too, but a majority of Conservative voters think neither Johnson nor Sunak should resign. Even though a majority of Conservative voters think Johnson lied deliberately.
It really is not tenable to continue as prime minister when 75% of the people think you are a knowing liar. It is very hard to regain trust once someone is known to lie,
Lying is the characteristic I probably dislike most in people
Here’s Bernie Sanders explaining how Conservatives get people to vote against their own interests:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLh5pfUfo6s
A coup is most certainly underway. Once the prime minister puts himself above the law, he is the law. That is a dictatorship. I also agree that the next election is unlikely to happen, or happen in a way that another party could win. Orban’s gerrymandered Hungary is the most useful model. As others have argued, reasons may be invented not to have an election at all. The invasion of Ukraine is the most obvious.
You ask why people would support an authoritarian government? It is because around 30% of populations are authoritarian. They actively dislike democracy. Karen Stenner has carried out important work on this. Authoritarians prefer order and certainty. They are strongly motivated by tribal questions of belonging and they deeply resent outsiders to their group. The government pitches entirely to this volatile minority. FPTP does the rest.
To compound these dangerous factors, you and others, point to the weakness of the opposition, not limited to Labour. Again I would wholeheartedly agree. The tendency is for parties of the left to disengage from the fight and use copycat tactics, resulting in a shift to the right. As was argued in the Guardian yesterday, this legitimises the positions of the far right and actually increases its support. It is a tactic that always fails.
I’m afraid I have no easy answers other than to force the knowledge of what is happening on those with influence to change the outcome.
It would seem that abiding by UK laws is optional. The following is pertinent (from a BTL in the Guardian):
Wasn’t going to comment because this cartoon says it all. But apropos of excuses for lawbreaking I can’t resist sharing this tweet
Just been pulled over by the police for doing 120 mph on the M3. I explained I had only been speeding for 9 mins and didn’t really twig that it was a motorway or that I was actually in my car. Fortunately he let me off as he knew I was doing a good job overall.
https://twitter.com/andyjh1965/status/1514253503799177216?s=20&t=RvCPx3eRjKi_NIdlrhI1hA