After a few days of disruption I admit to being on a late start this morning.
What I did manage to do was follow much of the shenanigans in and around parliament yesterday as the Sue Gray report was published. The detail is too well known to require comment. The failure of Johnson to respond in any meaningful way - with his contrition for failings visible from space lasting 30 seconds or so - was predictable.
The idea that he will have to be dragged kicking and screaming from No.10 now seems appropriate. I even wonder if the seemingly inevitable (barring Tory corruption) finding of the Privileges Committee that he lied to parliament will see him resign. I think he would rather risk a vote of no confidence and hope to brazen it out. With some Tory MPs now saying they are happy for an obviously out of control, law breaking and contemptuous prime minister to be in charge of the country, he might just win that.
I am going to presume he will. The game of ‘surely this time he must go' has lost its appeal. My suspicion is that Johnson will now lead the Tories into the next election. That will be, because of the collapsing economy, be in autumn 2024, I suspect (October being likely, to reduce the student vote as they will all have just moved). And, the aim between now and then will be severalfold.
First, there will be relentless attacks on the right to vote to persuade as many as possible on lower incomes not to do so.
Second, the freedom to speak will be under enormous attack. It already is with the Public Order Bill.
Third, I suspect there will be moves to prevent opposition parties cooperating with each other. I anticipate a Bill to cut permitted funding for parties that agree platforms for change in elections.
Fourth, I anticipate a tougher election law relating to social media to restrict those who might use it to seek to influence election outcomes from a non-party position.
And fifth, I suspect there will be rafts of very right-wing policies to appeal to the core Tory vote. Even the death penalty will be back on the agenda.
And there will be tax cuts.
Nothing of benefit to the country intended to meet real need will happen. Instead everything will be focussed solely on the perpetuation of Tory power, reducing politics to a game of corrupt vanity power, and not public service.
The risk that our democracy, public sector, public life, human rights and freedoms will be sacrificed to Boris Johnson increased significantly yesterday.
Starmer was good yesterday. So were others. Tories were noticeably quiet. But Johnson is still there. And there is as yet no obvious alliance to be rid of him. And that greatly worries me.
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John Crace’s article today in the Guardian about Johnson showed how angry or upset it seemed he was. It even contained some swearing. He never swears in print. It was an evisceration of Johnson’s personal traits, which are abominable, and, coincidentally, what a linguist might call his performatives (“a dismissive, regal wave of his arm”). Both of you contend that his remorse lasted all of 30 seconds. To be honest, I am surprised it lasted that long. And your suggestions of what his attitude might portend are deeply concerning. I don’t want you to be right, but I suspect that you are.
Surely the opposition parties must see the priority is to remove this government and party from power. One has only to look across the Atlantic to see where we are going.
IMO the parties have to agree not to oppose each other in marginals.
It does not imply a coalition. A supply and maintenance agreement would be enough. It might have the effect that new legislation couldn’t be forced through by sheer majority. There would have to be debate and amore agreement. I would hope.
There are a number of policies which Labour, Liberal Democrats and Greens could agree on and not be opposed by the SNP.
Climate change , hopefully the Green New Deal.
stop privatising the NHS, fund it and care of the aged, better.
Build more social housing.
Devolve more economic management to the regions.
Replace the Lords with an assembly ( I personally favour some -independently-appointed people for a term of years as well elected members) elected by STV on a regional basis.
Introduce PR for the Commons.
Resolve to tackle the tax avoided. Use QE as it has been in the pandemic.
The last two and the especially anything like MMT would be difficult but it has to be faced.
Labour has currently 199 seats. To win a majority of less than ten it needs to gain 120+ seats. Not very likely however badly the Tories do. And the Lib Dems usually pick up seats when the Tories are in decline.
Time to face reality.
The last is so true
The whole idea of legitimate government is in the dumper. The main thing that Governments do is make decisions. The functionality of government is carried out by others. Here we have a Government whose decisions have been shown to be entirely wrong in many, many instances and yet their supporters seem to think this is irrelevant. They spout that what the electorate wants is for Government “to get on with the job” and “sort out the cost of living crisis” but this Government has shown it is incapable of making the correct decisions when it comes to governing and there should be absolutely no reason to believe they are suddenly going to get that decision making right now. The list of bad decisions is so large that even the most ardent Tory supporter should be able to see that the current crop are not fit to govern but we keep getting the talking head MP’s pontificating about “Boris being the right man for the job”. He and his appalling Government of failures are being kept in place by the complicity of MP’s who should have the interest of the nation as their priority and not their blatant self-interest.
Who has the right to drag a Prime Minster kicking and screaming from office? What would his personal protection team have to say about that, where would their loyalties lie? If it’s to Queen and country as one might expect, well, he’s her Majesty’s PM, is he not? They’d have to side with Boris, I’d think. Whose side would the military be on? That could be up for grabs… perhaps in the absence of any percieved suitable candidates after ousting Boris they’d want to install a few generals to tide things over. 3rd world problems, here we come.
Parliament has the right
It seems to me that the big issue is who is there in The Conservative Party to replace Johnson?
Sunak’s Toast, most of the rest dont look like much
I raised the issue of the death penalty a little while ago, a typical Tory move that will be deeply divisive. It may well split the nation down the middle producing exactly the kind of conditions this government loves. Apart from the fact, in my opinion, that the death penalty totally unacceptable it will open up new wounds to go along with the Brexit wounds that have not yet healed.
Beyond the attempts to rig democracy any new public order laws are likely to rely heavily on the feeling of the police. If they believe a march or protect to be non peaceful they will shut it down. Individual speakers will be shut down if the police, under instruction no doubt, believe the message to be inflammatory. Some of us who were politically active during the Thatcher years might remember how vocal, but peaceful, marches we disrupted by individual troublemakers whose actions caused the police to move in. Imagine that a new group is set up to protest against the re-introduction of the death penalty. They manage a couple of marches but both are marred by isolated troublemakers, as a result the whole organisation is banned from protesting.
I wouldn’t be surprised, and this is a little out there, that one control mechanism will be to require the organisations involved in protests to directly meet the policing costs associated with them, in a similar way to football policing. Why bother banning something when simply pricing them out works better.
Perhaps the solution to this is for opponents to support the death penalty, but only for lying politicians.
If there was a UK constitution and we had a Head of State who actually did something useful, then should that person not be the guardian of the constitution? For example, shouldn’t Mrs Windsor have said no when Mogg turned up in his top hat asking for Parliament to be prorogued for months? If the Prime Minister that she appointed turns out to have been a disgrace and violated the code of conduct, which he clearly has, should she not summons him to the Palace and dismiss him? What exactly would she do when the Tories pass the Enabling Bill (2022) granting powers to rule by decree to the Prime Minister? Just sign it meekly I guess. The Graaf von Hindenburg (President) did sign in March 1933, and we all know what happened after that.
Now strangely she did do that, but in Australia with PM Gough Whitlam on the 11th November 1975. However, I think that was because he was a bit of lefty the establishment wanted rid of, so that is different.
Johnson’s psychopathic nature becomes ever more obvious. What is perhaps even more depressing is that those around him, Tory ministers and MPs seem happy for the situation to continue. You can count the number of those speaking out on the fingers of one hand. Mostly they are cowards who have lost all principles, integrity or self respect.
I fear that as you say Richard, they will continue on their destructive path through to what will be a horrendous general election.
The UK has had good, bad and indifferent PMs. Surely it has never had anyone as bad as this. One runs out of words to describe his nastiness.
After degrading the country since 2010, making society turn in on itself, having us all at each other’s throats, living in fear of them and each other the Tories then went on to degrade the office of Government and our international reputation. As we can see, this is their latest iteration of this project – the leader who has been broken the law and couldn’t give a damn.
Having said that, look over the pond at the U.S. and what is going on there.
Another mass killing of innocents, Republican pro- NRA politicians calling Democratic opponents who dare call this madness out ‘son of bitches’ on live TV and a mini-Trump seemingly taken on in Philadelphia.
Various lobbies (NRA/anti-abortion) who have managed to make a Faustian pact with Republicans by subverting the American constitution and stymieing Congress. It’s even nastier over there.
But one thing they both have in common – and I think this to be the truth – is that in both cases the Tories and Republicans have had to become bedfellows with some of the worst aspects/actors in their political systems in order to survive.
In the medium term, this will get worse I think, but longer term be assured that the Tories and the Republicans will be as dead as a Dodo.
To stoop so low as they have done means that they technically desperate. Unfortunately however, this means that they will become increasingly reactionary and resort to Fascism. I have no idea how long this will last – it might be that many of us will see out our days with things much as they are now.
But the seeds of their ultimate destruction have already been sown – they are already on the way out.
I suppose what I am saying is that both the Tories and the Republicans both use the ‘minority’ rule rule book to get where and stay where they are.
We must remember that they do not speak for all of us in both cases.
I see the idea that Johnson’s humility over the failure of integrity, trust and leadership at the heart of Government in Downing Street (risibly mis-named ‘Partygate’ by the Johnson-apologist press), was strikingly confirmed today (Sky News), by Johnson himself.
Asked on a visit to Stockton-on-Tees whether he now had the support of Conservative MPs (since yesterday four Conservative MPs have already cut themselves loose from support of the PM), Johnson replied that he thought he “gave some some pretty vintage and exhaustive answers on all that subject the other day.”
Having surrounded himself deliberately and exclusively with advisers whose sole virtue is oleaginous loyalty, this monstrous parody of dignity and leadership clearly still believes his disastrous, personally revealing, and toe curling performance at the despatch box yestrday was an effective display of wit, and debating skill by a master of the craft. In fact, within ten minutes of PMQ beginning the benches behind Johnson were almost empty as his troops very quietly deserted the field as he dismantled the authority of his office, and the credibility of his Party; supported at the end solely by those on the Government payroll. But they would, wouldn’t they (Mandy Rice-Davies).
🙂
It is hard to keep up. Johnson is now intent on changing the ministerial code; to ensure breaches of the code (presumably like breaking your own laws, or misleading Parliament) will not require Ministers to resign. Now why would they wish to do that? Has anyone an answer?
The flimsy excuse for this obvious recourse to blatant prerogative power to insulate Johnson from the consequences of his own self-serving, egregious behaviour is to “avoid incentives for trivial or vexatious complaints, which may be made for partisan reasons”. So much for Johnsonian “humility”. In a hilarious, slapstick demonstration of his ever-ready narcissism, Johnson has written a new foreward to a Code he now appears to have designed solely for himself (Guardian website, 27th May, 2022). The Guardian journalist Rowena Mason has noted that the PM’s foreward has removed “all references to honesty, integrity, transparency and accountability”. No surprise there. Johnson’s major concern seems to be to ensure there is “no leaking; no breach of collective responsibility. No misuse of taxpayer money and no actual or perceived conflicts of interest.” That should effectively skewer the whistleblowers, or any politicians who may be left in the Conservative Party who have any standards at all. The last remnants of decency in this appalling cohort of Conservative parliamentary politicians are now leaving piecemeal, day by day. Driven to the sidelines, like Dominic Grieve and out of the sphere of influence over this low-grade UKIP clone Party.
Some critics may believe “no misuse of taxpayer money” may have some value; but think about it. The people who brought you the Test and Trace fiasco (£37Bn), the multi-layered PPE scandal (just one example: 24 PPE contracts worth £1.6Bn given to companies with Conservative Party connections), the out-of-control overspends on HS2 (£16Bn, little achieved, plan reduced and most of the overspend solely to lay the track out of Lonson); and Crossrail-I (£4Bn) and Crossrail-2 (the latter shelved after blowing £115m), Covid support fraud (£15Bn. This list was derived with no effort at all, and with little thought (the list is endless). Then there is the almost un-noticed: the 12-year Austerity farce, claimed to eliminate the deficit and reduce the national debt, with victory- risibly – claimed: in fact the National Debt has more than doubled to over 2.1Tn, from under £1Tn in 2010; the deficit has never been eliminated, and austerity has simply served almost solely to reduce any hope of sustained economic growth.
At every turn, every crisis the Conservatives have claimed there is no money; only to use the public purse to save the country from the calamity of a Free Market system with very little resilience and which is demonstrably incapable of coping with national crisis, without lavish subvention, and support of one kind or another. The Conservatives are so constitutionally inept, they have stripped the competences and resources of Government so throughly over more than a decade with long-term Austerity, they can now only use public resources in Government by wasting eye-watering levels of financial resources and indulging their distinctive cavalier, gross, wanton, unnecessary incompetence. The cost of living crisis is set to cost £15Bn, in part because the Government has acted late, and is trying to do no more than stick a finger in the collapsing dyke. The Government will rely on borrowing for two thirds of £15Bn at a minimum, and probably much more of the total cost. They will do this because only Government can fix the multiple crises; although at every step of the way they have first denied we have the resources, then resorted to them (often with bad decision making, and poor supervision) and in consequence have compunded every single problem because they have refused to support with adequate foresight, or professional management, or much worse.
Does anyone, anymore actually believe these hopeless people possess either the interest or competence not to misuse taxpayer money (or more accurately – waste public funds and impoverish )? The idea that the Conservative are fiscally competent or prudent is a nothing more than a cheap, PR canard – peddled by Conservatives.
Thank you
Spot on
Seconded – excellent thank you John S.
Like the Republicans, the Conservatives seem to have morphed into something completely alien to their better traditions. There are just a handful of MPs offering any criticism and that not much more than hand wringing.
Although I persist in writing to J Hunt as my MP, trying to prompt some sense of shame, Im not convinced he has the spine, principles or vision to make much difference.
Its a grim prospect
Foreword!