BJ's Advent Calendar of chaos

So now we know that there is indeed a line in the proverbial sand which Boris Johnson must not cross as it will provoke Conservative back benchers into open revolt. At least, now when we say that Conservative MPs are revolting, the Tories will be forced to agree with us even though certain Conservative politicians have been revolting ever since they first slimed their way into public life, Steve Baker springs to mind, for no particular reason.

The revolting Conservatives tried to dress up their revolt as a matter of great principle. But what has finally got their goat about the serial liar and entitled man-child that is Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, isn’t all his lies and deceit. Johnson’s willingness to treat the truth as a minor trifle which can easily be ignored when it proves inconvenient for him and the Conservative party was one of the reasons that they elected him as leader. they are all equally culpable in his lies so it’s not like they’re going to find some scruples about them any time soon.

They are not even suddenly upset about the close to 150,000 deaths from Covid that the UK has endured, many of which could have been avoided had Johnson done his job and taken prompt and decisive action in the early phases of the pandemic. Neither have the revolting Tories been driven to action through disgust at the constant sleaze and corruption which envelops the Johnson regime, they too are complicit in all that.

The Commons chamber this week was filled with the self righteous pontificating by revolting Tories about civil liberties and freedoms. But it's not that they are appalled by the open assault on human rights which this government is embarking on. Most of them support stripping human rights from refugees and migrants, and they are equally keen to see the back of protections for our employment rights. All the better to assist in the enrichment of that small minority which can offer lucrative side gigs to present or former Conservative MPs.

Neither do they care about the way in which Johnson is neutering the few checks and balances which a British constitution - that isn’t worth the paper it’s not written on - places on the absolute power of the occupant of Downing Street as Johnson’s moves to place himself and his cronies above the law and beyond meaningful scrutiny or accountability while adopting voter suppression measures that target demographic groups which tend not to vote Tory. Trumpism anyone? All the better to entrench Conservative rule, no matter that these anti democratic measures represent a dangerous step towards authoritarianism. In this, as in everything else, the revolting Tories are defined by their over-riding concern for their own self interest. The only human rights and civil liberties that Tory MPs care about is the right of rich and privileged people like themselves and their absolute right not to be mildly inconvenienced by having to wear a face covering in Waitrose which makes it somewhat less risky for any members of the lower orders that they might cough on.

For all their talk of the authoritarianism of being asked to show papers in order to gain admission to a sporting or entertainment event, few of the revolting Tories, who are now so exercised about civil liberties all of a sudden, seemed to be aware of the important distinction between a covid pass and a vaccine passport. According to the British Medical Journal, a vaccine passport is a document or app which shows evidence of the person’s vaccination status only, whereas a Covid pass is a document or app which shows evidence that a person has either a lower risk covid status based on their vaccination record, has recently had a negative lateral flow or PCR test, or has had a positive antibody test (showing that they had the infection previously and have some level of immunity).

In the end almost 100 Tory back benchers displayed the true depths of their party’s shameless hypocrisy and voted against some limited and partial measures to protect public health in the face of the rapid spread of a concerning new variant of the virus. We had the usual displays of gob smacking idiocy from the Brextremists whom Johnson has decided that it’s a political imperative to pander to. The ever absurd Andrew Bridgen opined that trying to suppress the spread of the omicron variant was dangerous because it might then mutate into something more lethal, thus displaying the same insight into epidemiology that he brought to the debate about Europe. Meanwhile his fellow Brexidiot Steve Baker wondered why, if the new variant was indeed so concerning, was the government only introducing such limited restrictions. Steve apparently hadn’t considered the possibility that it might be because of the difficulty in getting morons like him and his pal Andrew to support more rigorous restrictions.

The measures passed thanks to Labour support but last week's events in the Commons were an abject lesson in the intellectual and moral poverty of a Conservative party that seeks to entrench its power and what it regards as its god given right to rule. And nothing underlines this more than the aftermath of the North Shropshire by-election. It’s finally dawning on the Tories that Johnson is more of a liability than an asset and the knives are starting to appear. Not for the many things I’ve mentioned above that illustrate the moral bankruptcy of the man but because their own positions are threatened. Not because of what he is doing in the name of the country but because he will lose them votes and they might lose power. And that’s what the modern Tory party is all about - power before principle, self before country. 

Footnote: And now we've just learnt that Lord Frost, our Brexit man, has resigned. Another nail in Boris's coffin?

We are on a slippery slope

It is commonly held that Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson’s attitude to the laws, norms and standards that are expected of the rest of us is casual. In fact, one of his own party has recently described his leader as being a “stranger to honesty”. And there have been numerous instances of Johnson acting as though all laws and regulations have an additional caveat which says : “Does not apply to Boris Johnson if he finds it inconvenient”. We saw him wandering about a hospital in the north of England not wearing a face covering despite the rule that everyone who sets foot in a medical establishment must wear a face covering in order to protect any immuno-compromised patients or people with underlying medical conditions who may be at higher risk from Covid. Of course, none of this bothered a hair on Johnson’s artfully tousled head. It appears that, to him, any risk to other people paled into insignificance compared to the trauma he would suffer by having to put a piece of cloth over his mouth for a few minutes.

Just a few days later he again refused to wear a face covering while attending a London theatre for a performance of a Shakespearean play. I don’t think that the Bard of Stratford upon Avon ever wrote a play titled ‘Tis the Twelfth Night Thou Hast Forsaken the Masque upon Thy Visage, but if he did it would have been a tragedy about a Tyrant who wilfully put his subjects at risk of infection during an outbreak of the Plague while the news pamphleteers and town criers looked on indulgently.

The latest instance of blatant rule breaking is the furore over the Christmas party at Downing Street last year at a time when such gatherings were prohibited by law. Indeed, the Home Secretary Priti Patel, whom no one has ever confused with a ray of sunshine, said, when the regulations to curb the spread of the virus came into force, that she would call the police if her neighbours were hosting a party that broke coronavirus restrictions. Patel has been notable for her silence now that we know that, despite Johnson’s increasingly implausible denials, a staff Christmas party took place at Downing Street. An infamous video obtained by ITV News showed Number 10 staff joking about the party which they admitted was not socially distanced. The leak of the video comes after days of Johnson denying that a party had taken place. Johnson has been forced to apologise, saying that he was “furious” when he saw the video. You bet he was, he was furious that he’d been found out.

Of course, Priti Patel herself had no knowledge of the party at the time. After all, you don’t invite Priti Patel to a party unless your idea of a party game includes stoning migrants or finding novel ways to make a refugee’s life more difficult. Mind you if they had invited her, their denials that a party had taken place would have been more plausible. The mere presence of the Home Secretary is guaranteed to destroy anything approaching a party atmosphere.

Patel is not alone in going into hiding from the press. All government ministers have cancelled their scheduled press appearances and an army of spineless Conservative MPs have all gone to ground, which given the fact that they’re all supine means they didn’t have far to go. Of course it is entirely possible that Jacob Rees-Mogg has put in a media appearance, it’s just that no one recognises him with the supercilious smirk wiped off his face.

This latest unedifying episode in a string of unedifying episodes comes just after the news came out that Johnson is seeking to introduce a measure which would allow the government to retrospectively annul any court rulings which ministers disagreed with, for which read politically embarrassing or uncomfortable. Johnson wants to give himself a literal Get Out of Jail card and give himself the power to retroactively change laws that the government doesn’t like. As they used to say in the Soviet Union when recorded history was altered at the whim of the party and undesirable events were airbrushed out of existence, you never know what will happen yesterday. Johnson is determined to give himself the same power and to give himself an actual caveat in all laws and regulations which says that they don’t apply to Boris Johnson if he finds it inconvenient.

Plans have been drawn up by the Justice Secretary, Dominic Raab, and the Attorney General, Suella Braverman, at the behest of the Prime Minister. The plans will allow for a so-called “Interpretation Bill” to be passed by the Commons on an annual basis, allowing the Government to summarily dismiss any court rulings they did not like from that particular year. It is no exaggeration to say that this is the road to tyranny and autocracy. Neither is this an isolated measure. The Conservatives are already intent on introducing voter suppression methods with their Elections Bill. These measures will disproportionately affect groups which tend not to support the Conservatives. Additionally the Johnson regime has made it clear that it intends to do away with the Human Rights Act.

Other anti-democratic measures from this government include severe restrictions on the right of protest. The Police, Crime, Sentencing, and Courts Bill has been described as the most oppressive legislation tabled by a British government since the end of the Second World War. The Bill potentially bans any effective protests, pickets or any other kind of action in places “such as” roads, railways, ports, airports, oil refineries and printing presses. 

It's not an exaggeration to say that the UK is now at that critical point where it is about to slide into full blown authoritarianism, presided over by an entitled clown. There is nothing in what passes for a British constitution which is able to prevent an unprincipled and amoral Prime Minister who commands a large majority in the Commons from doing exactly as he pleases. 

It’s knackering to keep up with this stuff, I know. It’s so dispiriting and it’s tempting to look away and do nothing. But that’s what they’re counting on. You have to hold the b*****ds to account. Make a noise, Write to your MP.

Political snouts in the troughs

I was finishing this post off when the 'Partygate Affair' broke. Although it is deplorable, I think it's more an example of arrogance and exceptionalism than sleaze and corruption, the topics of this post.

A recent opinion poll from IPSOS-Mori for Scottish TV shows that a massive 80% of people in Scotland say that they are dissatisfied with the performance of a Prime Minister who leads a party which is constantly mired in allegations of sleaze and corruption and who repeatedly demonstrates a casual contempt for the standards of behaviour expected of the rest of us. Across the rest of the UK, three-quarters of the public are concerned about corruption in government, including seven in 10 of 2019 Conservative voters, according to recent polling. A mere 10% of the public think that the ruling party of British Government does not give the impression of being sleazy and disreputable.

There is one thing we know for certain about Conservative corruption scandals. While the British Government, aided by large segments of the media which prefers to look the other way, will do its utmost to move public attention away from this story, nothing meaningful will change and some new Conservative sleaze scandal will come along later. It should be clear by now that sleaze and corruption in the Conservative party is not the limited aberration of a few bad apples, it is a property of the entire Westminster orchard. Those aren’t apple trees, they’re sleaze trees growing entitlement and privilege.

From a royal family which erases the line between public and private for the personal enrichment of its members and which is treated with a sycophantic deference which places it beyond any accountability to an unelected and undemocratic House of Lords which is a machine for patronage and a House of Commons which awards absolute power to a party which can win even less than 40% of the popular vote and a Prime Minister who suffers few effective checks on his or her authority, the Westminster system is designed to perpetuate the privilege and entitlement of the few over the many. Corruption and sleaze are not unfortunate occasional lapses in this system, they are what it is designed to facilitate.

Expecting Westminster to take effective action to crack down on the sleaze and corruption of senior members of the Conservative party and to introduce meaningful checks and balances on the power of the Prime Minister, never mind democratic reform of the House of Lords or cutting down to size the bloated entitlement and greed of members of the House of Windsor, is like expecting the most narcissistic vampire to take up veganism. It’s simply alien to the nature of the beast.

If we want to live in a country which is truly democratic and where everyone is held to account equally, how an earth are we going to get it? Under Westminster we are condemned to a perpetual Groundhog day of Westminster sleaze and corruption stories which are met with promises of reform which are carefully calibrated to placate us and to take the heat off the government of the day and solve its short term political embarrassment but which have no meaningful effect at all.

The Tories are easily the worst offenders but the intrinsic corruption of Westminster infects all parties who attain control of Parliament. Let’s face it, the Labour Government of Tony Blair was no stranger to allegations of corruption and the selling of peerages to party donors.

Fundamentally the issue is about democracy and accountability and ensuring that those who have the powers to change our laws, make public policy and determine the path that this country takes are answerable to and led by the people. The Westminster Parliament with its carefully constructed veneer of democracy is designed to ensure the perpetuation of entitlement, privilege and inequality. It has had several hundred years of practice at co-opting and neutralising any radical or democratic threat to the ability of a small minority who are well-connected to continue to enrich themselves and to arrogate to themselves the ability to direct public policy and the course of the state. It is a system which has well-developed mechanisms designed to protect it from the threat of reform. The current public outrage about Conservative corruption will go the same way as all the other bouts of public anger about corruption and sleaze in the British establishment – nowhere.

We can live in a better country. We can replace the weary cynicism generated among the public by Westminster as a self-defence mechanism with a realistic vision of a country where public office is not a route to private enrichment and where the priority of those in power is the common good not personal gain. It’s a better country which is within our grasp, all we need is the courage and confidence to grasp it and to root out for good the poison apple trees that constitute the Westminster orchard of greed and privilege. But it depends on us all making a noise for what we want and voting only for those who share the same objectives.