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.
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