In the interests of truth and fairness I need to set the record straight.
I thought, simpleton as I was, that Johnson might have had the good grace to let Paterson know that he was dumping him before it was generally known. But no, the serial paid lobbyist MP, found out by telephone call from a BBC journalist while in a supermarket. Of course, Johnson did not give him a head’s up, that would have shown concern for “a friend and colleague of mine for decades” and that is totally foreign to his narcissistic nature.
I also thought that there might have been a little bit of negotiation to make the resignation happen smoothly with the promise of some honorific goodie some vague time in the future, but that too was crediting Johnson with a degree of strategy of which he is incapable. Much better to just do it and the hell with the consequences – after all, that has served Johnson well in all the past fiascos.
As a postscript to that paragraph, I have now read in the paper that No 10 does not rule out a peerage for the serial paid lobbyist ex-MP. Who knows what that means?
In a piece in the Guardian (4/11/21) by Kevin Rawlinson, he itemises Johnson’s U-turns writing that “a conservative count gives more than 30 often panicked policy changes since the 2019 general election.” It makes sobering reading. so, while urging you to read the original article in The Guardian, I'll list them:
'Ignore Covid' to national lockdown
Mass community testing
Bereavement scheme
Visa surcharge
Proxy voting
Rashford's free school meals campaign
NHS app
Reopening primary schools
Face coverings in shops
Huawei ban
Local contact tracers
Exam results in England
Face masks in schools
Eviction ban
England's second lockdown
Furlough scheme extension
Rashford's free school meals campaign - again
Cancelling Christmas
Lockdown a day after opening schools
Health secretary's resignation
Johnson and Sunak self-isolating
Foreign aid spending
Taking the knee
Air passenger quarantine
The Northern Ireland protocol
Critical worker pingdemic
Afghan guards
Natikonal insurance rises
Vaccine passports
Foreign lorry drivers
Sewage
Parliamentary standards and corruption
How anyone can have faith in such a dithering incompetent like Johnson, defies belief.
However, his abortive attempt to scrap the parliamentary standards system might point to his concern about what revelations and condemnations might result from the various financial irregularities, most pressingly in the refurbishment of his flat, issued by the very body he tried to abolish. Junking democracy to safeguard his own selfish interests does seem a convincing explanation for the imposition of a three-line whip for something that was pretty self-evidently corrupt.
Quite aside from party politics, the stench of corruption in the Conservative Party, is corrosive. It taints the whole of political life, which is why it is essential that Johnson and the Conservative Party take responsibility for what the Conservative Party has done, apologise for the damage done and sack the persons responsible for the chaotic fiasco.
The Daily Mail, in an otherwise scathing review of the despicable actions of Conservative MPs over the Paterson vote, tried to broaden the condemnation to all MPs. That, in this instance is not fair, the only MPs who voted in favour of the abolition were Conservatives (with 1 DUP MP, quelle surprise!) they were not supported by any of the other parties. The Conservatives own this particular piece of squalor.
For me the viciously farcical air of the whole sordid episode is summed up in the story of Conservative MP Angela Richardson. She was the parliamentary private secretary to Goblin Gove. She abstained from voting in favour of the transparently corrupt motion and, on Wednesday evening she was duly sacked from her parliamentary private secretary post. But 12 hours (sic) is a long time in politics, especially Conservative “politics”, and so by Thursday morning she had been reinstated in her job.
‘Farce’ is too stable-sounding a term for what actually went on!
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