What Do You Think Today?

[peter]

I want to talk briefly about the mechanics of how Boris Johnson's escape act has been pulled off.

It's been a masterclass in political chicanery, certainly unrivalled in recent history, and one that political students will be arguing over in academic semesters for decades to come.

What he in essence has done, is to create a 'fog' between the Gray Report and the police investigation, in which he is able to elide between the two in seamless fashion, in his arguments and explanations as to what he did, why and when, and why he doesn't have to answer questions about it.

Take for example, the notorious wine and cheese party which he attended in the garden of Number 10 amongst a group of people who were later considered to have broken Covid regulations. The invitations sent out to those who attended numbered around two hundred (at a time when gatherings of more than two people of different households were forbidden) and the PM was in attendance for around half an hour. He has stated that he knew nothing of any rule breaking, all of it occuring when he had 'left the (metaphorical) building', but the rule breaking here clearly began at the point where the invitations were sent out. When questioned about this gathering he simply replied that he has been cleared by the metropolitan police investigation and had nothing further to add. When asked about the infamous ABBA party that Gray had not even completed her investigation into (and the police had not investigated at all), he slipped seamlessly into being satisfied that Sue Gray had covered this ground and again, did not think he could improve upon her findings. It would however, have been difficult not to - she didn't have any findings.

By the construction of this sort of parallel reality between the two investigations, Johnson has been able to slip-slide past all questions in a manner that, if it doesn't leave his guilt in little doubt, at least enables him to elude being nailed in the lie by appearing and disappearing eel-like in the murky waters of his creation, the damning evidence of the one being simultaneously neutralised by the antithesis of the other.

It has, as I say, been a masterclass, and were the consequences to our country, to our democracy, our polity not so devastating, one would have to take one's hat off to him.

In a telling comment made by one Tory MP today (three of whom, incidentally have today, spoken of their dissatisfaction with him), he said that many Conservative MPs had reconciled themselves to having won the partygate affair but at the cost of the next election. If this indeed turns out to be the case, then by gosh, that would be a result indeed!

[peter]

So Chancellor Sunak has finally seen the light and turned to socialism in response to the crisis that twelve years of Tory mismanagement have brought us to.

In one swift swirl of his cape, one flash of powder and kaboom, the white rabbit of his economic legerdemain appears in his hand - money for all, taxes for all, high spending for all! He's done more socialism in pursuit of the Tories remaining in power in the face of the Gray Report (and in the hope of reviving his future political prospects one assumes), than Jeremy Corbyn could have achieved in his best manhole cover filled wet-dream.

That's not to say that I don't like it - people absolutely need help, and Sunak's give away has been described as the biggest take from the rich - give to the poor policy that has been carried out in this country for decades. But I can't help but wonder where it all leads. Is it the beginning of a basic universal income? I ask because surely it can't simply be a one-time thing. This crisis isn't going away next year, or the year after that. So where does this largesse end - this kicking the can of our brexit/pandemic aftermath down the road? Because once having started down this road, there is no ending to it. It's a plate-spinning act that has no quick snatching back of the plates into a neat pile for the conclusion of the show. With this one, you just keep spinning, more and more plates going up, more and more money being printed, more and more borrowing from the IMF, until it all crashes down or a war intervenes in order to get things moving again (speaking of which........).

Peter Hitchens once said that the Tories would behead the Queen in Trafalgar Square if it meant that they could remain in power, and this move (absolutely choreographed in it's timing as it undeniably is) can n only serve to prove the point. In order to save their skins, the Tories have morphed into the Labour Party in front of our eyes. A shape-shifting turnaround that would have Margret Thatcher rolling in her grave, as the non-interventionist party of her dreams, the small-state paradise of her neo-liberalist utopia morphs into the big-state, high-interventionist socialist collective of her worst nightmare.

Oh what a strange topsy-turvey world we find ourselves in; the Labour Party turns away from the proletariat that gave it life in the first place in order to kow-tow to business and corporate sponsorship (thereby making it electable in the eyes of the establishment). And the Tories turn into the Labour Party, forced by their own policies of brexit and pandemic disproportionateness, to embrace an interventionist socialism that would have most of them vomiting into a Downing Street wastebin under normal circumstances. And the Mail and the Express cheer them for it.

All I can say is, "Keep going Rishi - I think they're beginning to like yer!"

[peter]

The moment I heard it I knew what he was up to. That banal announcement on one of the radio news bulletins I catch infrequently over the course of the day, that the Government had introduced "changes to the ministerial code" - the code that sets as it were, the already minimum standards that we can expect from those who hold high office in our country.

In the wake of his survival (just about) of the Sue Gray report, the final hurdle that Boris Johnson faces in his fight to survive partygate, is the forthcoming investigation by the Parliamentary Privileges Committee into whether he knowingly misled parliament when he repeatedly told them that no infringement of the Covid regulations of the day had occurred in Downing Street during the pandemic.

Couched in terms of reducing the frequency of "time-wasting and vexatious complaints", the key change that affects Johnson is the scrapping of the 'rule' that says that any minister who breaches the code must resign. Accounted for by saying that there seems no point in such an inflexible rule in the case of "minor or trivial infringements", the Government has removed all reference to honesty, integrity, transparency and accountability from the newly published code.

Needless to say, the opposition parties are up in arms, shouting that Johnson is doing this for the only reason of getting himself "off the hook" when the Committee reports on his conduct following their inquiry.

Oddly enough, given their to date support of the PM even against the worst of his excesses, I'm beginning to detect just a whiff that the press are beginning to loose patience with all of these shenanigans. The Guardian, always anti-Johnson from the start, is clearly incandescent about it, but I note that the Telegraph is also pretty cool in its reportage on the PM (though not so much on this issue as to the - albeit slowly - growing unease in the Tory ranks, with their leader). On this latter point, there are a couple of by-elections coming up in the near future (in the Wakefield and Tiverton constituencies) and if the Tories perform badly in these it could be the final straw that breaks Johnson's back.

Around seven additional Tory MPs have submitted letters of no confidence to the chairman of the 1922 committee since the Gray report was published, and the chairman of the justice select committee Sir Bob Neill is quoted as saying, "I am sorry, but I do not find (the PM's) assertions, either that no rules were broken or that he was unaware of the breaches, to be credible." He goes on to say that it is in the national interest that he step down.

But there is no indication that Johnson has any intention of relinquishing his position, even if the Parliamentary Privileges Committee finds against him, and here we step into dangerous waters indeed. Matayas Rakosi, Hungarian dictator of the Stalinist era was first to note that a population would accept any degree of subjugation or infringement of their rights/abuse of their system as long as it was introduced in thin slices like salami. It is the chip, chip, chipping away at the borders of what is normal, what is usual, that does the damage. Fascism does not come banging in up the stairs wearing leather jackboots - as Marie Black pointed out in her superlative statement to the House that I referenced above, it comes in wrapped in banal excuses, minor and seemingly insignificant changes. As the saying goes, by the time you hear the jackboots on the stairs it's too late.

I have no doubt that all this is far from Johnson's mind as he twists and contorts his way out of his problems. I don't think he's the moustachioed tyrant in waiting of some Orwellian future nightmare - he is simply too shallow an individual for that. But I think that in this chipping away, in the precedents that are set and the acceptances that are swept aside, lie the fishbones that could later, under less self interested, more sinister and ideologically driven leadership, manifest into very dangerous tendancies indeed.

But it's really down to the Tories themselves. At some point they are going to have to gird up their loins and confront the buffoon that they put at their leadership for one, and one specific job alone. As was always predicted, once having achieved that job, anything else he turned his hand to immediately fell to pieces (or was achieved by other people, entirely disregarding anything he said). The "unfitness" that Micheal Gove referred to, the flaw in his character immediately came to the surface leading us, entirely predictably, to where we are now. So it falls to the Tories themselves to slay the monster of their own making. They'll do it. It's taking time (and the returning home to their constituencies for a week will, contrary to Johnson's thinking that at least he won't have to face Parliament for several days, likely goad them even further down this road as they face the disgust of their constituents) and it will happen. But I hope they get on with it soon before Johnson, in his self-centered indifference to whatever level of damage he wreaks to our system, goes on to commit further and even more egregious abuses of his power. It is Johnson's unmindfulness of what it is that he is doing, that is the real danger here.

[peter]

What a funny thing our media is.

Two days ago it was shouting from the rafters about the possibility that Johnson had tried to influence the Sue Gray report into his partygate shenanigans at Number 10 Downing Street, and now that it is pretty much confirmed, only one paper sees fit to even mention it - and that on the bottom of a list of other non-related stuff on the front page.

Just to put it into context, what has been happening is that growing concern into the independence of the Gray report has been focused on a few pertinent questions.

Did Johnson or any one else inside Number 10, see all or part of the report before it's publication last Wednesday. Was any pressure applied to Gray in respect of the form that her final report would take - in other words was she pressured as to what to include, not include, who to name or not name, and what to investigate or not investigate in the brief she had been given.

Ministers have been very cagey in answering these questions, and yesterday in one of the Sunday morning political shows, a commentator made the point that this was not, and was never intended to be (for all the PM presented it as such) an independent inquiry. Johnson commissioned the report; it was his report and no-one else's. To have been independent, the inquiry would have had to have been carried out by an individual not in any way associated with Downing Street or the civil service - think a judge or other person of repute.

Every time they are questioned along the lines of those I put above, Government Ministers "do not recognise" the suggestions made by them, they are assured of Sue Gray being "comfortable with the report that she has delivered" - but they still avoid answering the questions, no matter how clearly they are put.

The situation had become sufficiently questionable that yesterday's Sunday Times ran a four page spread on the issue and now, in that insignificant little line hidden away on the bottom of this morning's 'i' we have it. The Cabinet Office has confirmed that senior civil servants asked Gray to water down her report. No - it isn't the PM himself, but it would be naive to think that he would not have been behind such a request.

One problem we have is that by convention, civil servants do not give interviews. So we can never, will never, get it from the horse's mouth, whether Gray was pressurised or not. We only have the PM and his ministers word that it was not so. We have to take it on trust from the accused, that there is no truth in the accusations. (Nb. Understand that it is the Cabinet Office - ie civil servants - that have admitted to the pressure put on Gray - not any member of the Government, who are MPs rather than permanent civil servants. Ministers themselves will still insist that they had no hand in this.)

But it seems that increasing numbers of Johnson's own MPs are less than inclined to do so. There is a growing number voicing their concerns, and behind the scenes the rumours are that there is deep unhappiness with the whole stinking thing. These people have to return to their constituencies and the message that they are getting when they do is that people don't like it. And there is nothing that will undermine a Tory MP's confidence in the leader faster than the thought that the leader might cost them their seat. The number of letters sitting in the draw of Sir Graham Brady is rumoured to be around forty now, inching closer to the magic number of 54 that would trigger a leadership contest, but there is more to it than that.

If those MPs who want Johnson gone - and there will be lots of them - are to achieve his toppling, they not only have to get the leadership challenge instigated - they have to win it as well. At this point, without a clear successor to the clown, there is no surety that he would be beaten. This lack of organisation behind the scenes, is what will hold many of Johnson's backbenchers back from submission of their letters. Because, remember, if he is challenged and survives, then he cannot be challenged again for a minimum of a year, and that brings us to close to the next election for a change of leadership to be considered. So a leadership contest is a one cherry bite. It wins - or Johnson is in for another election which is exactly what they are afraid of.

But there are a few things that could alter this 'in the balance' situation. Bad results in the forthcoming by-elections in Wakefield and Tiverton could rally exactly the kind of organisation needed to bring about a serious challenge to the leadership, and a finding of the Parliamentary Privileges Committee critical of Johnson could, despite his attempts to water down the ministerial code of conduct, still prove his undoing, even if he is not found to have been proven to have misled the House. Failure to prove guilt is not the same as proving innocence, and while in the Court of Law it is sufficient to see the accused off the hook, in the Court of Public Opinion things are somewhat different.

But back to the Gray report, and while it would be easy to condemn her for having fudged what was pretty much an open and shut case against the Prime Minister, this might not be fair. She was after all commissioned by Johnson. Parliament accepted her appointment as did the media. She, as pointed out, was never actually independent, no matter how much the ministers we hear talking about it would have us believe, and furthermore, would never have seen it as part of her job to bring about the fall of the government of the day. The Cabinet Office, in which she works, is exactly that; the office that carries out the work pertinent to the Cabinet of the Government. Her report was an internal one designed for Johnson's illumination alone. We lost sight of this, and I hold my own hands up as much as the next man. Our expectations were simply too high. Johnson played on this and pulled it off. But chip, chip, chip, the damage is being done.

It's not over 'til the fat lady sings!

[peter]

Pretty predictably, the momentum against Boris Johnson gathers pace as MPs are forced to confront their constituency members over the holiday recess.

Four more MPs came out last night as having lost faith in the leadership, one a highly influential ex attorney general, bringing the known total to around twenty nine. Given that when Theresa May suffered her fall, at the point of the required number of letters being reached, only half had actually been declared publicly, it seems a pretty safe bet that significantly more than this have actually gone in. It has even been speculated that the golden figure of fifty four may already have been reached, but that the chairman of the 1922 Committee Sir Graham Brady is not going to make the announcement of a leadership contest until Parliament resumes following the platinum jubilee celebrations.

Suffice to say that there is some degree of panic amongst the ranks with reports that the whips have been phoning MPs thought to be wavering at home in their constituencies. Johnson for his part is trying to bring MPs back on side by a sudden desire to engage in a 'bonfire of EU regulations', including all sorts of things from workers rights to weights and measures. I have to ask myself whether laws that are passed (or scrapped) on the basis of such 'on the hoof' reasoning, so reactive as they are, will ever make for good governance - but this has been Johnson's modus operandi since day one. Ever lurching from one disaster to the next, half of what he does is for no other purpose than to rally his troops or to send messages to the public. His Government is stymied from doing anything actually positive by virtue of seventy five percent of its efforts being directed toward overcoming the latest Johnson screw-up.

Meanwhile elsewhere there is chaos at the airports - virtually all of them - as people in their millions attempt to get away for the holiday break, and find themselves sitting for hours on end on terminal floors waiting for flights that never take off. Huge shortfalls in staff numbers, caused by mass sackings during the pandemic not having been restored, are resulting in an airport service that is literally going into a nosedive before it has even got off the ground. The holiday numbers are only a fraction of what they will be as soon as the summer school break gets underway proper, so goodness knows what the situation will be later in the year. Some are going so far as to call for the Government to step in and initiate a Cobra Committee meeting in order to try to restore order. Suffice to say that none of this is very conducive to the idea of travelling abroad at the moment - which might, given the need to start reducing the number of people taking flights for environmental reasons, be not so far from what the Government actually wants. More ways to get from a to c than via b, I'm thinking. Conveniently, the idea that the airline companies themselves must shoulder the larger part of the blame is being touted, for not having seen the recovery in the offing and having increased staffing levels in preparation.

Finally a grim little piece in the Telegraph today tells us that upwards of three thousand people with diabetes may have died over the two years of the pandemic due to failure to maintain checks on their overall health - heart condition and the like - because of the almost total swivel towards Covid measures by the NHS. This was, of course, entirely predicted and predictable, and to my thinking, will represent only the smallest tip of a huge, huge mountain of excess death (eclipsing that caused by the virus itself) that we will record in the future, as the true consequences of such policies reveal themselves. You won't see the Government drawing attention to them. Clive Myrie won't be giving us sombre voiced accounts of these figures on the six o'clock news and no wave of sentimental empathy will sweep the country over their demise. They will remain as they are - dull statistics to be briefly noted (if at all) before being shouldered into the background by thoughts that planned trip to Benidorm might not be as smoothly executed as your imagination saw it.

[Avatar]

I did find the "weights and measures" thing particularly ludicrous, although not nearly so much as the re-writing of the ministerial code.

--A

[peter]

Glad to see you are still passing a critical eye over the shenanigans of our Government Av; things could be beginning to move at last!




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I've recently been reading a book by political journalist Stig Abel called 'How Britain really works'. It's interesting because, written in early 2018 as it was, it presents a snapshot of how the country was faring at that particular moment, between having voted to leave the EU but not yet having done so. Theresa May was still in power and Jeremy Corbyn was still flush with his electoral successes of 2017, even if it did not put him into Number 10 Downing Street.

Abel outlines the state of the economy at this point, and his conclusions are not good. He foresees a sharp rise in inflation and unemployment, a battering of our trade figures and a general worsening of our living standards as the effects of brexit (and the residual effects of the 2008 banking crisis) hit home.

Bear in mind that at this point he had no knowledge of either the forthcoming pandemic or war in Ukraine.

Given the impact of the last two shocks on an already reeling economy, and it would not be too much of a stretch to describe the UK economy as a basket case; in fact many pundits already considered it to be face down in the water before even Brexit was utilised to cudgel it yet further.

These are facts that we must consider when appraising the current largesse of the Tories in offering support to bottom end households, preparing to be struck by a double whammy of increasing fuel costs and rising prices in the supermarkets. It has long been realised that the Tories will do anything to remain in power (the Queen in Trafalgar Square and all that) and this is no less than that - a sop to try to stem the hemorrhaging of votes to the Labour Party in the next election.

The current giveaway (and forgive me if my figures are not exactly right - the broad thrust of them is correct) is going to cost the chancellor in the region of 15 billion pounds. Windfall taxes and others will probably take care of eight or ten million of this, and the rest will have to be found from either printing money or borrowing. There is every indication that the policy will have to be followed next year as well, if households are not to be floored by the same conditions in twelve months time. (And there would be little point in doing the giveaway at all if it doesn't achieve its main aim of keeping the Tories in power, and for that it will need to run up pretty close to the next election in order to keep it fresh in people's minds).

Now safe to say that this is going to be hugely inflationary - on top of an already overburdened economy sitting on the verge of the worst inflationary spiral for half a century. So why would they do this - add insult to injury and load yet further inflationary pressure onto the system?

Answer: because they know that the economy is already screwed. What they need now, is to keep in power so that they can protect their own interests, the interests of the top ten percent who will ride out this storm and yes, loose millions, but will still be at the top of the tree when things start to stabilise. They need to keep their hands on the reins of power so that the law can be tweaked and pulled, the emphasis kept on looking after them and their own. So the economy, and the bottom two thirds of the country can go to the wall - they are done for anyway - and the top-enders of the establishment can ride it out with their money invested overseas, or hidden in the Cayman Islands, and then be placed to work whatever benefits they can, from the rubble of the fallout. As to the current handouts; think in terms of the economy being a broken vase on the floor. How much does it matter if you break the already broken pieces a bit further?

And what of those at the bottom? Let's see how it works for them.

If you leave school, and take a job earning minimum wage and doing a forty hour week, you will already be neither a jot or tittle further forward at the end of your working life than at the beginning of it. You won't have been able to buy a house, you won't have been able to pay a pension or for sickness insurance, unless you are prepared to forego all of the even smallest benefits that working is supposed to bring you. No holidays. No meals out or weekends away. No driving out on Sundays. Your wages, such as they are will be swallowed up in rent, bills and food. Maybe enough for the kid's school uniform or to have a bit of a bash at Christmas, but that's about it.

Now throw a serious and significant bout of inflation into the mix. Suddenly you cannot even pay your necessary outgoings, you have not the means to pay for your rent, your bills, your food and keep, without recourse to your credit card. You have effectively entered the world of wage slavery. You will be in bondage to whatever job you are fortunate enough to do, and will run forward as fast as you can, while all the while slipping slowly backwards - but always aware that if you stop running, the slip will turn into a plummet.

This is where innumerable households will find themselves in the very near future. The Tory Government knows it. Johnson knows it. And they are already making preparations for dealing with it. And those preparations have little to do with what is good for you or for me. We are the lost causes, the basket cases of the new normal, and they have not the slightest intention of coming down to join us.

This is important stuff because people need to understand it. The Tories are never going to change this and neither are the Labour. What is needed is a grass roots revolution of the kind that Corbyn nearly achieved. It was nearly done once - it can be done again. Never loose heart. As Samuel Beckett said, "Try again. Fail again. Fail better!"

[peter]

It seems to be pretty certain that Johnson is going to face a vote on his leadership in the next few days or weeks. Sufficient Tory MPs have now publicly expressed their dissatisfaction - around 44 - with what he has been involved with such that it seems likely (given that many more will be being more discreet about their feelings) that the 54 magic number will be shortly passed, if it has not been so already.

Johnson's woes increased yet further yesterday after some serious Tory names joined the gathering storm of criticism being levelled against him. Lord Geit, Johnson's own ethics advisor was reportedly on the verge of resignation yesterday, and had to be contacted by Johnson with a public letter of explanation in order to prevent his going. He said that there were serious questions that the PM should rightly answer, and that his (the PM's) having been fined for attendance of an illegal Downing Street gathering possibly constituted a breach of the ministerial code (a resigning offence in itself until Johnson changed the rules a couple of days ago). Johnson - no surprise - disagrees. Geit himself wanted to investigate whether the PM had deliberately misled parliament in his claims that no rules had been broken (the idea that the PM would have made such a claim in Parliament without having done some preliminary questioning to check what the situation was is absurd), but felt that it was unlikely that Johnson would grant him license to do so. In such a situation he apparently felt that his situation was untenable. Geit has crossed swords with the PM before when, during his wallpaper-gate investigation (remember that) he discovered that the PM had deliberately withheld correspondence that would have resulted in perhaps his coming to a very different conclusion (he gave Johnson the benefit of the doubt that he had not touted for money to decorate his Downing Street flat in return for political favours).

Another serious voice to speak out against Johnson yesterday was that of Andrea Leadsom, Johnson's former business secretary and previous leadership candidate. While she did not actually call for his resignation, she said quite plainly that the time was upon the party when it must decide whether it was behind Johnson or not. This is clearly double-speak for saying that there should be a leadership contest and who knows, perhaps she fancies another pop at it.

On the latter front, the name of Penny Mordaunt, a Trade minister within the Johnson administration, is being touted as a compromise candidate. In truth, I don't know much about her - she has kept her head down (wisely) during the Johnson premiership, and has simply got on with her job. She is a bit uncharismatic after the flamboyant Johnson, but perhaps this is no bad thing. Should the leadership contest arise however, I think there would be a good few more individuals who would consider a tilt at the bullseye - think Jeremy Hunt, Liz Truss, Michael Gove and Rishi Sunak to name but a few. Most likely though, it would be a surprise back bencher who would come forth as a stalking horse candidate to push through. Or Johnson could just cruise it himself. Remember, 54 letters of no confidence is only the number needed in order to trigger a leadership contest. The actual number required to vote against him in that contest would be around 180, and given the absence of a clear second option, it is by no means clear that that number could be reached. Johnson has political heft in spades above all of his potential rivals, and such are his Houdini like skills at extricating himself from difficult situations that who can say that he couldn't possibly turn around his fortunes and win another general election.

These will be the questions that Tory MPs will be grappling with over the holiday period and who can tell which way they will blow. Johnson's whips (who have been noted as being much more passive than might be expected of late) will be themselves whipped into action in support of the PM by his office, and they might just be able to hold enough back from making that final step (remember - if they submit a letter and Johnson survives, their career's are toast) to prevent a leadership contest from occurring.

Ah politics! There's nothing like a good Tory leadership contest to see the devious self-interest of the animal exposed!

[Avatar]

Glad to see you are still passing a critical eye over the shenanigans of our Government Av; things could be beginning to move at last!

I find myself strangely invested for no good reason.

Much as I would love to see him take a big fall, IIRC if he wins such a vote, he's basically immune to another for...a year? Until the next elections? Something like that.

--A

[peter]

Absolutely. This is what makes the dilemma of Tory MPs in making up their minds, whether to submit their letters of no confidence or hold them back, so difficult.

Their big fear is that Johnson will cost them the next general election (some distance away, granted, but Johnson is toxic - very toxic - in the eye of the public if the surveys are to be believed). But a mistimed challenge on the leadership that left Johnson in power, would by virtue of the rule that he can't be challenged again for a year, mean that he was effectively in situ for the next election (they wouldn't want to change leadership on the very doorstep of the election - it simply wouldn't look good).

A couple more MPs have come out against Johnson in the past 24 hours though, and rumour has it that the whips office (meant to be Johnson's effective policeman of his own MPs) is not entirely on-side with the PM. Their policing of the Tory MPs is not as .... vigorous, shall we say,.....as might be expected in such a dangerous situation for their man.

The parliamentary committee on standards in public life has come out and said that Johnson's jiggering around with the ministerial code of conduct has done nothing to improve trust in the PM that he is not making changes simply in order to save his own bacon (of course he is), and this will add further to his woes over the jubilee weekend. A challenge, which could already be a done deal, might well be the first thing that greets him on the resumption of business following the celebrations.

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On the platinum jubilee celebrations, I have to say I'm pretty indifferent. I'm not a republican in the sense that I'd see the monarchy dismantled - I think it would be a waste of time - but I simply can't get swept up in it. Too many people are facing too much hardship - already and stacking up for the future - for me to be bothered with a woman who got lucky in birth, and has remained lucky for the century (give or take) that she has lived. She has done a serviceable job as a figurehead. I see no indication that she has any particular degree of feeling toward her 'subjects' (remember her comment, "don't let them on my ship", when the idea that the royal yacht Brittania, then being decommissioned, might be opened to the public) and why would she. Her entire life has been a shielding from the public, except when as a girl she and her sister forayed out for fun, as it were, amongst the savages. What knows she of the lives of ones such as us? On this basis I simply cannot bring myself to indulge in an outpouring of celebration for the life of one who is neither here nor there in importance in respect of the country I live in. By virtue of birth, she's done well. Good luck to her on that score. I'd have had some of it if I'd been born in her place, but hey, don't expect me to be taken in by a distraction when such other critical matters that do effect me are at stake.

(Nb. I have somewhat modified my earlier opinions that the monarchy was 'good for tourism, better than a presidency and a soap-opera on steroids for the masses', to the point where now, post the divisions sown by brexit, I can see the worth of a symbolic figurehead above the level of politics - but that's about as far as my 'royalist' tendancies go.)

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As for Johnny Depp and Amber Heard........ fuck 'em!

[Forestal]

The true biggest dilemma of the Tory party is that they still believe that having a leader that the majority of the country thinks is toxic and do not support, is better than anyone else that they have the option of making their leader in his stead. It is truly a depressing state of affairs that their only true candidates (after you remove other figures who are marred with party-gate accusations, or too-close association with Johnson) are basically no-name officer workers that the vast majority have never heard of.

Surely after this affair the Tories have lost the next election, no matter who leads them - the public is still so angry about this that it won't be swept under the rug. The only question is will it be a Labour win, or a coalition government because the stink of Nick Clegg and Jeremy Corbyn still haven't managed to be diluted enough for public tastes.

I shall be emailing my MP again shortly, and hoping for better than a cut&paste reply, but I am considering starting an anti-tory campaign in my area for the next election (as it is staunchy Tory and always has been).

As for the julbilee - it's a historic moment that I only care about from a historical point of view. It is likely that there will never be another platinum jubilee in the history of our country and that it worth paying attention to - although perhaps not so much the grand celebrations that we're going to see over the next few days.

[peter]

Hi Forestal!

Fantastic idea re the campaign. There is so much residual anger following partygate that even if Johnson survives it, his voting base will never be more receptive to the arguments against another conservative term than they are now (particularly in view of the dogs-ear that brexit is turning into and the economic pinch that will effect even the staunchest Tory voters. The Tories have saved their own skin by adoption of Labour policies; people might as well try the real deal in preference to the to little/to late version they will be offered by their party at the next election.

Possible problems for Stamer and Rayner though, with news that they have been issued with questionnaires; only those subsequently fined were done so by the met.

[peter]

Can I just skip back to something I said, a single sentence from a couple of posts ago, asking whether it was credible to believe that Boris Johnson had gone to the House and told them that, "No rules were broken" - which we now know to be untrue - without first having made some attempt to establish whether there was any truth in the stories recently published in the press, of illegal gatherings having occured in 10 Downing Street during lockdown.

Andrew Marr speaking to James O'Brien a few days ago observed that the question of whether Johnson had knowingly misled parliament seemed to him to be the central issue on which Johnson would survive or fall, and this mirrors what I have long felt to be true in this case.

Johnson himself has referred to the large size of the Downing Street building and the numerous rooms and offices within it - are we really expected to believe that he would go to Parliament to make a statement on the subject following the newspaper revelations, making no attempt to verify the truth of the stories or otherwise before he did so?

I think it is reasonable to believe that he would have made such enquiries of his staff, even if in only a very cursory fashion, and thus must have had some (of what he felt to be correct) information about that which he was speaking (whether this was reflected in his words to Parliament or otherwise).

So running on this assumption, we can say that one of either the following situations must be true;

Either he had been told that illegal gatherings had occurred and rules had been broken, but had subsequently lied to parliament on the subject.

Or he was misled by his officials and told that nothing of the kind had occurred.

(Nb. The third possibility, that he simply went to Parliament to make his statement that no rules had been broken without having first made some preliminary examination on the subject is possible - but (unlikely as it is) would in itself raise serious questions in terms of the PM's fitness for office and quite possibly constitute a breach of the ministerial code in itself.)

But returning to the first two possibilities - and this is in some ways like a game of chess.....it shouldn't be this way - it should be possible to do this with straight questioning and reliance on the truth of the answers, but alas, Johnson's nature and way of dealing with things makes this impossible - returning to the first two possibilities we have the following situations.

If Johnson went to Parliament and knowingly gave them false information, then it's an open and shut case.

If he, on the other hand, had been misled himself, and was therefore giving (as he has subsequently claimed) what he believed to be truthful information to Parliament, then the individual or individuals who gave him this information must be questioned in order to corroborate that this was indeed case. They will either confirm that they misled the PM, in which case he is vindicated, or they will deny that he was misled, in which case (assuming them to be telling the truth) it would have to be Johnson himself that was lying - first when he told the House that no rules had been broken, and secondly when he subsequently said that this was what he believed to be true at the time.

This will form the basis of the forthcoming parliamentary enquiry into whether Johnson deliberately misled parliament; my gut feeling - along, it appears, with most of the rest of the country - is that he did, but this of course is not enough. It must be proven beyond reasonable doubt, and it's not as easy as it at first appears. Johnson's form, alas, precedes him in this, and it was an almost fait accompli that this was where we would finish up, on the day that Johnson was first elected as leader of the Tories.

All of this may of course be unnecessary if the parliamentary party decide to ditch him as an electoral liability in any case, before the Privileges Committee get to work, but it's interesting to forensically examine how the inquiry will proceed in any case.

----------------------0----------------------

Not much to report news-wise today: the world seems to have stopped for the Queen's platinum jubilee celebrations. It's been reported that Prince Andrew will not be attending the celebrations having tested positive for Covid. Sure it's not monkey pox?

Some brave animal protestors ran out into the path of the jubilee march-past yesterday (shades of the suffragette who chucked herself under the king's horse, but without quite the same impact - ouch! that wasn't deliberate -). They were rapidly pulled to the side of the road and are now undoubtedly being beaten with rubber truncheons under a mattress in the corner of some cell deep within the Tower of London (it stops the bruising in case you are wondering). Well, the Queen is said to be an animal lover (though God knows, she's killed enough of them) so presumably she will approve.

Oh yes, and in another secretive and not much reported story, while Johnson slithers out of the partygate scandal, elsewhere the half-dozen or so protesters arrested by the metropolitan police at the vigil for murdered Sarah Everard, are to be charged for breaking Covid regulations during the lockdown. London's finest delivering justice with an even hand across the board - it makes you proud to be English!

[Forestal]

(shades of the suffragette who chucked herself under the king's horse, but without quite the same impact - ouch! that wasn't deliberate -).

I would like to point out that there have been recent discoveries which lead to the re-examination of this incident. It turns out that Emily Davidson wasn't attempting to jump under the King's horse, rather she was attempting to throw a "Votes for Women" banner across the front of the horse so that it would be visible to cameras as it finished the race. The current most popular belief is that she mis-judged the speed of the animals and accidentally ended up under it, a tragic end for a noble cause.

One of many clips from various documentaries which go into it in more detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W_URTWjgR0

[peter]

Tip-top Forestal; will watch it later on!

Just wanted to make a quick post about the arrival of the royals and invited guests at St. Paul's cathedral earlier today. You may have caught on the news how all the royals were greeted with cheers as they stepped from their cars onto the sidewalk leading up to the steps of the cathedral - but when Boris Johnson and his wife Carrie arrived, instead of cheers, there was booing and jeering instead.

What I wanted to add was the observation of a commentator who was there and was later interviewed on the radio, on how at the arrival of the couple, the atmosphere transformed instantaneously from one of celebration to one of hostility. It lasted only moments, he said, but it was palpable for that short time. This, I think, shows as little else could, just how deep the feeling is amongst the public about what Johnson is seen to have done. Any Tory MP who is wrestling with the question as to what damage Johnson has done to the Tory brand and who heard this interview, will have had the question answered for them.

[peter]

Bank holidays. Not exactly sure who gets them anymore? Certainly not NHS or health care staff. Not retail. Not hospitality. Not media workers - newspaper staff and television or radio workers. Teachers get 'em - but they get any holiday going and more besides. Bank staff I suppose - and the building profession. Civil service (from top to bottom) - now they get 'em...... At what point wouldn't they? But I'd put it about fifty-fifty in terms of those who get to enjoy the feeling of stealing a day from work, and those who feel the slight two fingered salute of being denied that happy sensation. Time to do away with them I'd say and just put the days onto our statutory holiday allowance. But I forgot; Johnson is about to tear up all of those pesky working regulations as imposed by the EU - things like holiday allowance and maximum working hours and stuff. Not that we're in a race to the bottom. We were promised it wouldn't happen by the Leave campaign during the referendum, so that can't be so..........can it?

-----------------------------------0---------------------------------

The service at St.Paul's and the one day festival at Knebworth were both held yesterday in glorious sunshine and in an odd way, were mirror images of each other in the lessons to be drawn from them. At the top end of society, a family sat, riven by tensions and clearly in discomfort at each others presence. At the other end, one of a pair of brothers - a half pair, like one glove if you like - appeared on stage and will certainly have made a good fist of it, playing to the adoring fans, but ever conscious of the vacuum on the stage - the hole left by the one who is not there, and should be.

What is it that Harry and William, that Liam and Noel do not get. That when the chips are down, when all said and done, all we have is our family, our loved ones. Sure, don't live in each others pockets - go out and do your own thing, live your own life...... but understand that your blood-bond goes beyond any argument, any familial squabble. Bad words are said. They cannot be unsaid, sure. But they can be risen above.

Watching Harry and William yesterday, separated by only a few feet but a million miles, frowning into their service cards - and their father, clearly unhappy sat there in the public fishtank with his family's dirty washing on display I was saddened. And I thought of my kids, the young members of my family who would be up there watching the half pair perform on the Knebworth stage - and I realized that families are the same, high and low alike...... and that's what makes them important. Because all of that shit that shouldn't matter, but does, is the stuff upon which so much hurt and pain is built. And there's nothing - nothing - that we can do about it, and that high and low alike it will strike us, and only those watching from the outside can see it, and express the sadness that the participants cannot.

[peter]

Pretty much of a desert in news terms this morning as the country continues to wallow in nauseous sentimentality over the platinum jubilee celebrations.

No mention of the fact that when the Tories came to power twelve years ago there were fifty (give or take) food-banks in the country. Now there are over two and a half thousand. (Now there's an area where they really have achieved a rocketing level of employment.)

No mention of the biggest bite at restrictions of hard won liberties and freedoms yet in the reforms of the human rights act and the police, crime and sentencing courts bill.

No mention of Julian Assange, languishing in Belmarsh Prison, awaiting shipping out to the USA to meet what fate one can only guess, for the crime of exposing our Governments to the rotten truth of their actions.

Still less mention of our duplicitous championship of the cause of the invaded Ukrainian homelands, while simultaneously fueling the greatest ongoing atrocity on the face of the earth by provision of arms to those who slaughter the Yemeni people in their thousands, women and children included.

No mention of our race to the bottom in terms of employment laws, environmental protection and commitments, food and agricultural safety protocols, all of which were guaranteed to be protected by those who led us out of the EU.

No mention of the reduction in our commitments to overseas aid, our failure to provide succour those seeking shelter from war and persecution in our land, the outsourcing of our asylum seeker problem to Rwanda.

And certainly no mention of the tens of thousands who will die as a result of our misguided Covid policies, the bleak economic future we look forward to, both in the near and longer term, or the wreckage of the country we love for undoubtedly generations to come.

No nothing to see here. Brian May is posing atop of a statue in the Mall. Let's look at that instead.

[peter]

This week could see the leadership challenge to Johnson - long awaited and much wished for in many quarters - actually materialize.

Many are in denial still; Grant Schapps said on the Sunday Morning show yesterday that he didn't think it would happen. He must be praying it won't, because he's one of the political nobodies raised up from obscurity by virtue of nothing more than his preparedness to back Johnson whatever - whatever - he might say or do. Like Home Secretary Priti Patel, or Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries, like the Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Rash, Transport Secretary Schapps would see his political future evaporate into nothing within moments of the downfall of their man; none have even the barest of capabilities for their jobs, being simply elevated beyond their capacities for the one and only purpose of supporting the unsupportable.

But just how toxic Johnson has become to the party interest has become undeniable, in all but the most self-delusory quarters. The cat-calls and jeering that he was met with outside St Paul's cathedral has lifted the lid on the situation - even though some almost laughable attempts have been made to play it down. The BBC coverage, as a case in point, began with two commentators saying, "Gosh - the PM's being booed ..... that's a lot of booing! We didn't expect that!". In the later news broadcast (without the two women commentators voiceover) it had become, "The PM was booed as he arrived at At Paul's, though there was some cheering as well." By Sunday morning it was, "the PM was greeted with a mixture of cheers and boo's as he arrived at St Paul's." One person commenting on YouTube went as far as to claim that the booing was "edited in".

So the leadership challenge will happen.....but what then? Johnson might well survive it. Previous Tory PM's have done so, but none have lasted more than a few months. Reports in today's papers say that Johnson is determined not to fall, or limp on as a lame-duck Prime Minister, even if he is challenged, but the choice will really not be up to him.

The big question for Tory backbench MPs is, who in the hell to replace him with. Sunak was a good shout while ever he was dishing out free money, but as soon as this dried up, so did his popularity. The non-dom scandal and revelations about his wealth and dual citizenship have really scuppered it for him. I suppose that Liz Truss might have a punt at the job - but her intellectual shortcomings are pretty well documented and she doesn't really have popular appeal with the voting public. Penny Mordaunt has been mentioned a few times as a right wing pleaser - but all in all there are no shining lights. Tobias Ellwood is making a bit of a name for himself as a key Johnson opponent: he came out strongly against the PM in the House following the Sue Gray revelations, and there is little doubt that whoever replaces Johnson will need not to be tainted by association with the most reprehensible leader that the Tories have ever had.

If the Labour Party weren't so weak, I'd say that the Tories were headed for a period in the wilderness. But I see nothing in Kier Stamer that is cutting through with the public, and those alongside him aren't up to much either. But the main thing is to get Johnson out and get in a half competent caretaker leader to try to restore public confidence in our polity. Time enough for the bright lights to emerge when that aim has been achieved.


----------------------------0------------------------


Just watched Forestal's linked video on the subject of Emily Davison's tragic end under the hooves of the King's horse at the Epsom Derby on 4th June 1913. It was so, so tragic, and made even more so by the possibility that she had not intended the collision, but as Forestal pointed out, had actually been trying to drape a banner demanding suffrage for women around the horse. The poor, poor lady. The poor, poor horse (who actually tried to jump her in a futile attempt to avoid hitting her). It just makes me so sad. What a fuck up our past has been in this area. Do you know that up until the formation of the NHS following the second world war, woman and children had no right to any kind of free treatment whatsoever in this country. Men, who were likely to have been broken up in the course of fighting the Germans, it was realised, probably had some right to expect to be patched up. Those not in the services, it was thought, should be kept fit for work for the war effort - but women and children.....nah. This, incidentally was where the beginnings of the NHS as we understand it today are found. It has transformed our lives beyond measure. The single biggest achievement of any British Government of any time. We allow it to be undermined at our peril.

[I'm Murrin]

Call me a pessimist but my immediate instinct is that he'll survive the vote. Here's hoping he doesn't, although whoever replaces him isn't likely to be any better policy-wise, simply more competent or less nakedly corrupt.

[Forestal]

And here I come after the announcement that the leadership no confidence vote will happen today and we shall have a result by this evening. Not an unpresidented speed of vote, but very fast never the less.

As Peter says, there are not really any ministers who are able to take over from Johnson should this vote deem him unable, which is the main reason why it is unlikely to pass. Our PM has indeed surrounded himself with expendable buffers who will protect him against the undeniable ire of the country at large. And protect him they shall, should he survive this vote, which most pundits believe he will - due in no small part to noone else in the Tory party being willing to take his place - then each of them is likely to be dismissed before long due to one scandal or other in which Johnson will blame them, and they will gladly take that blame as thanks for their time in office, pension scheme and access to the most exclusive drinking club in London.

I have heard some talk about if Johnson is voted out, that he will call for an early election - which almost all pundits believe would mean a Labour government by Christmas. This could be done in his "grace period" between leadership handover and noone can stop it, which gives Johnson a pretty big shotgun with which to pressure his Tory leadership wedding.

The system is flawed in many ways. Our government requires an overhaul, but no sitting government is going to do that, because it means potentially giving up their golden ticket to priviledge. Sad, truly sad.