The emergence of new allegations that Boris Johnson broke lockdown rules with regard to Covid on many newly discovered occasions does matter.
There has been a furious reaction from right-wing commentators about news that lawyers appointed to work for Boris Johnson on both the Covid inquiry and allegations that he misled Parliament have reported evidence that they have uncovered with regard to previously unknown parties at both Downing Street and Chequers to the police. This absurd headline in the Telegraph is just an example of how crazed this reaction is:
It would be easy to dismiss any comment by Allister Heath. It is not unreasonable to suggest that he is on the far right fringe of conservative thinking. That, though, is not the point. The issue is that in the face of civil servants and lawyers undertaking their responsibilities as laid down in the law and in the procedures of a functioning democratic government, a newspaper that was once thought to be the representative voice of boring middle England is suggesting that the whole process of democratic government be overthrown because that compliance with the law and due process is seen as a left-wing threat to its chosen far-right agenda.
Johnson has sacked his government paid for lawyers as a consequence of discovering that they, rather unsurprisingly, are willing to comply with the law. The irony is that if this incredibly wealthy man had been willing to pay for his own legal team, those lawyers would not have been subject to the requirement to report their discovery of further potentially illegal parties taking place during periods of Covid lockdown to the police. No doubt he will now demand that a new set of lawyers be briefed, at considerable further cost to the state. But again, that is not the point.
The point is instead, a very simple one. It is all about whether the law is to be upheld, and whether the procedures of democracy are to be followed.
Just as Trump is trying to undermine the law, democracy and society as we know it in the USA, so too it would seem are Johnson and his supporters seeking to do the same thing here in the UK.
Trump has already fomented a physical assault on the institutions of democracy. People died as a consequence. So far nothing like that has happened in the UK, but it seems that US Republican inspired groups in the UK always follow a year or two behind in the wake of Trump. The language of people like Allister Heath is intended to provoke division, anger and resentment and has implicit within it a threat, precisely because it says that the behaviour of those civil servants - who he calls a left-wing elite blob - is it self threatening to the agenda that he supports and therefore the goals of those who support his opinion.
There is something deeply and profoundly worrying in all this. It is apparent that Johnson has never thought himself subject to the rules that others must obey. It is just as apparent that those on the far right now think that there are different rules for those who they think should be in authority and everyone else. Their opinion is, therefore, entirely contrary to the principles of democracy, which they now very obviously oppose.
In an era, when social media is so powerful and ideas can, as a consequence, be so polarised the required response to this is to promote ideas that necessarily demonstrate the benefits of democracy. Those ideas, would, as a consequence, promote the positive role of government. They would relate to equality. They would promote the interests of the majority. They would highlight the need to prevent market abuses that are so commonly associated with right-wing political thinking. They would seek to calm excess. They would promote long-term thinking. The focus would be on community. And I regret to say it, that this is not what I am hearing anything like strongly enough from Labour. My accusation against our Opposition is that they are simply not acting as a sufficient bastion for democracy at present.
All of this leaves me deeply worried. I do not think that this country cares for Johnson anymore. His stupidity, vanity and indifference have been seen through. However, the division hehas created remains. That division is between democrats and those who would wish to overthrow it.
There is an existential fight for the future good governance of this country going on now. It is one that democracy has to win.
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” I do not think that this country cares for Johnson anymore”. I’m not so sure. If you are referring to England in that regard, it would not surprise me in the least if their is a movement to replace Sunak with the L.B.J. Part of me would welcome that event, purely because here in Scotland he is almost universally despised.
……wrote a client journalist on behalf of the right-wing elite blob.
Having seen what Fox News has done to America as ever we have decided to follow in their footsteps with GB news. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/may/24/conspiracy-theories-moggologues-and-zombie-stats-all-in-a-weeks-work-for-gb-news
And as with all our totally useless regulators OFCOM is totally pathetic at stopping the non stop lies and conspiracy theories being aired.
Expect far worse to come.
As for “human rights lawyer” Starmer upholding democracy – look at his role in the Julian Assange case and weep – and his support for all of the horrific Conservative new laws to prevent protest or to stop police having a free hand in undercover operations.
Johnson, and people like Heath are going to be an ever present problem unless Laboured – in a change of government – really puts it hands in its pocket to address the issues it will be left with.
This sort of anti-woke bollocks can only ever get traction outside of the minority Torygraph readership, Daily Mail ad nauseum if society is not made more equal.
It is as simple as that. Fascism enabling policies like austerity need to be got rid of. Wage policies need to change. Get rid of these pressures and Laboured might be able to keep these anti-social elements out of government.
Even better, if it brings in PR. And then they’re done – until they work out how to dominate a political PR system – which could take some time.
3 words for Stymied: Investment. Investment. Investment.
That anti-woke bollocks can only be dissuading the majority of its old genuinely Conservative readership from reading the Telegraph at all, hastening its extinction. There’s a silver lining then – who knew?
As ever with right-wing politicians there is an ascending ladder of whining dishonesty.
It starts with not unreasonable sounding complaints about too much red tape.
It moves on to complaining about the regulations that generate the red tape.
Before you know it, they want the laws changed.
Soon even that is not enough and it is essential that they employ every legal ruse in the book to evade the law.
Finally, it is truth, integrity and the whole Democratic process that is the enemy.
Lying, corruption and criminality become the new norm.
You are as usual Richard depressingly correct, both about the descent of the UK political right into increasingly deranged extremism, and the feebleness of labour in standing up for democracy and the overall good of society.
The Telegraph long ago lost touch with reality, starting with having Johnson as its Brussels correspondent in the 90’s, and it is now peddling outright ‘stab in the back’ myths and anti-semitic tropes like cultural Marxism.
You could substitute ‘dirty yids’ for ‘woke blob’ and be in 1920’s Germany when the NSDAP was beginning.
14 – 16 hours in a police cell for wanting to express an opinion in a peaceful way. Repeatedly breaking the law and lying? Zero minutes in a police cell.
I think, in the same way that the term “peasant” has been denigrated because it doesn’t serve powerful exploitative interests for people to be self-sufficient (you can’t sell things to them), the meaning of democracy has been similarly denigrated, to the point of being meaningless. Democracy has been equated with leadership selection and enforced disempowerment, and the result is where we are, and where we will always end up unless power is massively redistributed. The idea that society is so complex that we have to hand power to 650 MPs to comprehend it and make decisions, reminds me of Will Ferrell in Elf, when he is told that some people believe that Santa Claus isn’t real and that it’s parents who put the presents under the Xmas tree. Elf, incredulous, says “How can parents be expected to do all of that in one night?” Democracy is too precious to leave it in the hands of a group of 650 demonstrably corrupt, self-serving, for-sale people. PR would mark a very small step at the start of a very long road to anything that looks remotely democratic to me.