The headlines section of The Guardian is covered by the suggestion that Boris Johnson profited, quite deliberately, from his period in office as Prime Minister.
What surprises me about this is that anyone is surprised by it.
Wasn't this always very obviously the case?
And wasn't this man always, and only, motivated by greed, selfishness, and a desperate desire to be noticed, which can only have been an indication of a feeling of being unloved, presumably during his childhood?
My suggestion is that we wait until, or if, Farage becomes prime minister before we fully understand just what the exploitation of public office for private gain means. Remember, he is trying to copy Trump in everything, and Trump has turned commercial abuse of office into an art form.
There is, however, something much more interesting in this, and that is how inappropriate those people who have served as our prime minister, at least over the last 15 years, have truly been. I am not suggesting that anyone who wants to be prime minister is normal, because that, by definition, cannot be the case: you have to be particularly weird to want to hold this office. Three things have, however, become much more apparent over those years.
Firstly, from the time of David Cameron onwards, those who have been prime minister have given little indication of any enthusiasm for holding the post. In every case, it looks more likely that they became prime minister not because of any conviction or desire to do good, but because they wished to satisfy a personal need. Doing so very publicly did, and has, done none of them any good. Being prime minister has simply exposed all their weaknesses, and none of their strengths — if they ever had any.
Secondly, none of the heirs apparent at present have any particular strength to offer either, at least in the mainstream parties.
Thirdly, and perhaps more significantly — and maybe something to return to at some point — is the creeping idea that this post may just be impossible to hold.
That could be because of the 24-hour demands of the job.
It might be because of the genuine internationalisation of politics that makes extraordinary demands on a prime minister, who has to be able to travel almost anywhere on demand, and still perform domestically as if fatigue were never an issue.
But, moving beyond these purely pragmatic observations, there is something more to this suggestion, and that is that we might have turned this post — and government itself, alongside much else in our society — into something so complex and amorphous that the demands it creates are beyond the ability of any one person.
There was some discussion in the comments on this blog yesterday on the nature of a good society and what a socially beneficial fiscal rule might look like. These are issues that I might also well return to, but let's just for a moment suppose that the purpose of government is not to promote growth, but instead to protect the well-being of the most vulnerable. And let's also assume that the purpose of government is not to provide support to the largest companies at the cost of the rest of society, communities, our planet, and smaller enterprises. Instead of assuming that these esoteric goals of uncertain advantage are the purpose of government, let's presume that politicians were actually required to undertake basic tasks well on behalf of those who were known to be in need.
In other words, instead of worrying about how they were going to make the richest ever richer, and the largest companies ever larger, suppose that our politicians decided that those parts of society in which the richest live, and the largest companies operate, were not their primary concern, but that the consequences of a failing society were their priority. What then might happen to politics? And how much better might we be able to appraise the role of a politician in that situation, because their success or failure would be so much more obvious. More than that, their policy priorities would become much clearer, giving focus to their work, which all of the incumbents for the last 15 or more years have clearly lacked.
Isn't this reasonable? After all, once we appreciate that government is not dependent upon taxes to pay for its activities — which are, in essence, paid for by the action of people doing them on behalf of others — why shouldn't we ask what might then be best done, and then expect our politicians to focus on that goal? And why on earth would we then think that the job of government in that case was to make politicians, the wealthy, and the companies that serve them ever richer? Yet that is the idea we have actually been pursuing — and Boris Johnson was the result, with Nigel Farage to come.
Don't we need to change the job of the government and the prime minister to make it simpler, in other words? Isn't their job one of helping those in need to live, because the wealthy can look after themselves, as they have always done?
Thoughts are welcome.
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If Johnson had been Labour, the Tory tabloids would soon be in full cry.
If they don’t it will demonstrate where the power lies.
Wasn’t it Tony Blair who couldn’t bear to leave Foreign Affairs to his Foreign Secretary? This was probably because he felt domestic politics was small fry stuff that provided an insufficiently large platform from which to project his truly gargantuan ego. This may be his true legacy to his successors.
When you think that Cook was at one time his Foreign Secretary (97-01), you can track Blair’s corruption to three years or so into his premiership when whatever ideals he had were subsumed by ego and greed.
Johnson et al are charlatans.
Agree with your premise. Extract from the Scottish Government’s National Strategy for Economic Transformation:
“Our vision is to create a wellbeing economy: a society that is thriving across economic, social and environmental dimensions, and that delivers prosperity for all Scotland’s people and places. We aim to achieve this while respecting environmental limits, embodied by our climate and nature targets….
….reorient our economy towards wellbeing and fair work, to deliver higher rates of employment and wage growth, to significantly reduce structural poverty, particularly child poverty, and improve health, cultural and social outcomes for disadvantaged families and communities.”
It does include a focus on being entrepreneurial, economic growth, etc., however, importantly, it does emphasise addressing poverty, a wellbeing economy, etc. In summary, why wouldn’t you as a UK (or Scottish) government prime minister focus as you have suggested, Richard?
I would suggest self-aggrandisement and personal benefit tend to get in the way of focusing on the simpler approach that would benefit the many.
Thanks A Wright: On the one hand this shows that most Scots do have different views and aims from the English right-leaning parties and, on the other hand, demonstrates that achieving these goals while a minority voice in the UK is economically, politically and socially unachievable.
You note that it ‘exposed their weaknesses’, Richard. But people like Cameron and Johnson and their ilk seldom give a damn about that.
For example, back in the mid 1990s, and due to the way in which university admission were rapidly increasing, the politics degree I taught on at my university in Nottingham went through a short period where we recruited students who’d applied to the University of Nottingham but hadn’t been accepted. I think the idea was that if anyone asked them, ‘Where did you go to uni?’ They’d reply, ‘Nottingham’, and given their background (private school educated and from wealthy families), the questioner would naturally assume Nottingham University, not Nottingham Trent.
So, for two years or three years we recruited about five or six students who fell into this category. Interestingly enough, all lads. Several things struck me about them.
First, they’d all taken the student loan and were not at all shy about telling you why: they’d been ‘advised’ that it was a good deal, due to the low interest rate and long repayment terms. So they’d taken it in most cases to use to buy a car or other stuff.
Second, compared to most other students they were lazy. And they appeared to be not that sharp either – certainly not when it came to studying.
But, third, they could and did compensate for this by being confident and shameless enough to blag their way out of anything. So, for example, they’d turn up to tutorials and confidently give a presentation on whatever the topic was that was in fact almost complete bullshit. There might have been a couple of relevant points thrown in. But if they were challenged (‘Well, clearly you haven’t done much work on that’, or something similar), they’d simply smile and admit, ‘I know, but I never go in until 2am this morning, so everything’s been a rush.’, or similar – despite having had a week to prepare. This was in sharp contrast to almost all other students, who would either start their presentation by shyly and apologetically admitting they hadn’t done much work, so what they were going to say was a bit thin, or simply, not turn up at all.
Anyway, that’s my experience of the likes of Johnson.
I saw students like that when I was at City. Much to agree with
The more devolved power in a society is, the less central government and the Prime Minister will have on their plate.
Possibly the only good thing Cameron ever did was saying that he would only serve one and a half parliaments as PM because he realised the stresses of the job.
Looking to the US for inspiration, General Marshall who was the head of the US Army in WW2 and creator of the Marshall Plan always went home at 6, or 1 on a Saturday saying quite rightly that no proper decision could be made after those hours. In the same way I understand that President Regan ‘managed’ his workload with the famous saying that “I’ve heard that hard work never killed anyone, but I say why take the chance?”
What I think we do need to look at is the workload on not only the PM but Ministers & MP’s so that the job is ‘do-able’ AND when there is a real need for the PM & Ministers to be in command at a time of real crisis then they are in a fit state to be making decisions
Agreed.
That is also why I tried to take almost every evening, and most of the weekends off. I work hard, but there have to be limits.
At the moment Badenoch is saying she will work with Starmer to bring down welfare costs. She says they will not agree on everything but they need to work together.
This should definitely be the end of Starmer’s labour if he agrees.
What is welfare?
Why is it called a cost?
Why is it not a benefit?
Back in my youth it was called Social Security, so that none went hungry. The deliberate use of ‘welfare benefit’ is to demean the recipient.
My first job, John, working in the social security office. That was when you could leave school on the Friday and start work on the Monday.
I remember those times.
https://democracyforsale.substack.com/p/i-gave-evidence-to-parliament-yesterday
The start of a change we need? At least parliament are looking at who funds our democracy.
One of the statements is that Musk could put £100million into British politics by buying a British company. I think he has just done that in the north east.
Great speech by Eddie Demsey (RMT) at the TUC conference. The main thrust echoed this post and he called out the Neoliberal economics of the last 40y, demanding a different economic structure and mentioning privatisation as a norm, financialisation of our economy and globalisation which leaves our economy completely skewed towards the financial sector and away from the productive sector:
“Yes, we need to tax wealth but we need to recognise that it’s not just about taxing wealth, which is grossly skewed towards the top 1% but also about addressing the underlying structure of our economy. There’s no good just spending more public money in a set up where the money is rooted straight back to the top 1%. We’ve got to restructure our economy at the same time.”
The TUC also opposed Starmer’s military spending spree. Brilliant. He probably won’t take any notice anyway, particularly as he’s been talking to Herzog today.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.
All I want is a referee on the pitch. On the pitch at work, on the pitch in government. Someone who keeps us all within the rules by upholding them themselves. So that everyone has a fair crack of the whip.
But also a role that accepts that the losers need not lose big or bad and are clapped off the pitch and back on for another crack at it another time. So the PM role is certainly one to develop the country and its people – amelioration of the citizenry, its economy and sustainably too.
Improvements:
A proper job description.
Accountability to all.
To generate the greatest amount of real economic benefits to the greatest amount of people.
To bring people and business together and create win/wins.
Country before party – indeed, why not sever the role from the party system?
To be sufficiently rewarded by the State for his/her commitment to the job to the point where it is not necessary to serve public or private beyond their term?
To think long term.
To intervene when markets exploit.
The list could go on and on.
Nowadays, PMs insist on trying to control everything themselves. We’ve moved from kitchen cabinets to sofa government, & now to a massive Downing St./Cabinet Office machine, duplicating all the various Departments of State.
That isn’t necessary except for paranoid control freaks.
Also, why does all the international stuff have to be done by Presidents and Prime Ministers? That’s just more ego/paranoia.
Surely Foreign Secretaries, Trade Secretaries and Defence Secretaries and their Under Secretaries could deal with most things when NATO and G(insert number here) get together?
As for that lying fraud Johnson, we all had plenty of opportunity to see what he was like decades ago. I remember him back when he was MP for Henley, busy farthering numerous children and telling lies and getting sacked (twice). The “Boris Files” don’t shock me at all, they just disgust me, like Johnson himself disgusts me, appalling hypocritical bloodstained, corrupt, incompetent crook that he is.
I look forward to your thoughts on my “fiscal rules” or what government could/should be focusing on.
Give me time.
I might be doing quantum but I am not in a duality, yet.
I saw that Johnson said in reply that the Guardian should be called “Pravda”. Does he not realise that pravda means “truth”?