If only it was a comedy!

 

 

 

 

 

  

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!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 71 – Monday, 25th May

I am still shaken by just how poor a defence Johnson mounted to justify the high-handedness of his arrogant aide.  When even the Daily Mail asks, “What planet do they think they are on!” as a reference to the incredible (literally!) insulting justification for Cummings’ rule breaking, joined with the sickeningly unedifying spectacle of supine ministers docilely toeing the Save The Dom cabinet line, you realize that you are witnessing a government imploding.

     Perhaps I should have said ‘seemingly imploding’ because I do not underestimate the ability of the Conservative Party to survive ‘fatal’ mistakes and misjudgements.  It is undeniable that Johnson is a lessened leader, I don’t say ‘character’ because that is clearly impossible, and if it becomes clear to him that his status is diminished then he will do what any narcissist does when self-worth is threatened: lash out and to hell with the collateral damage.

     Let us never forget that Johnson’s espousal of Brexit was quintessentially narcissistic: he was convinced by his own rhetoric, comparing and contrasting two pieces of his own writing to see which one would afford him greater possibilities for self-advancement.  I don’t know what the opposite of a Damascene Conversion would be to cover his case, but there was no blinding light from an all-powerful deity, but rather a greedy acceptance of his own perceived omnipotence fuelling his ludicrously inflated ego and presented as reason and logic and, god help duty, dedication and us!

     The front pages of the newspapers cannot make easy reading for Johnson, but they don’t make easy reading for the rest of the Conservative Party either.  Most MPs are concerned about their seats; anything that looses them public support is not to be tolerated – and these MPs postbags must be filled with howls of outrage about the preferential treatment of a member of the establishment as opposed to the PBI, or rather Plebs as they think of us.

     You can take the over-entitled git out of the Bullingdon Club, but the sense of them-and-us never leaves.  Johnson is a perfect example of the born into privilege and milking it for all it’s worth with the minimum of effort sort of the undeserving rich.  He is also a bully, a liar, malicious and, as the ‘defence’ of Cummings has clearly shown, a coward.  And cowards in power are dangerous.  As we are finding out every day.

     Unless Johnson takes visible control of the government then even his comfortable majority will not be enough to protect him from the Men in Suits whose only raison d’etre is to preserve power, and to whom Johnson is only a momentary blip on the time line of their sequestration of political dominance.

The fall out from the pathetic defence of Cummings, where we are expected to believe in a sort of Schrodinger’s Lockdown that does and does not allow free movement at the same time, continues.  Johnson’s cringe-makingly inept performance has had the surprising result of uniting all sections of society and all political parties in fully justified revulsion.  Except of course for the ‘usual suspects’ of Brexit insanity, though even some members of the ERG have called for Cummings’ head!  We truly live in strange times!

     As a last resort, Cummings himself is to make a public statement and take questions.  I suppose if Cummings can supress his natural revulsion for the carping criticism of the ‘lesser breeds without the law’ by whom he thinks he is surrounded, then a person of his obvious intelligence and manipulative skills would be the sort of man to carry it off.  But he really will have to out-Houdini Houdini to get away with it and I hope The Daily Mirror and The Guardian hacks have got their linguistic scalpels out and ready to dissect everything that l’éminence désordonée has to say. 

     I keep checking in with The Guardian on my phone to find out the time because I do not want to miss a word.  I have just found out that his statement will take place at 4pm UK time, 5pm my time.  I will be there, don’t let me down Radio 4!

Saying something trying to be nice

 

I am going to try hard, and do my very best not to be abusive as I write about Trump.

I let that sentence stand as a paragraph to remind myself of my starting point as I continue to type!  But, truly Trump has exceeded the normal bounds of political discourse and has put in place something new and, I am going to say, ‘exhilarating’.

On the positive side, Trump has shown that you need have no experience in politics or local, city, state or national governance to become Head of State.  He has shown, truly, that everyone has a chance.  For someone as seemingly unprepared and unqualified (no, I did use the word “seemingly” so I am still being sort-of polite) he illustrates graphically that the top job is not the reserve of those who have worked a lifetime to get there.  People must look at Trump and say, “There, but for the fact that he got there before me, goes I!”

Was it not Napoleon who said, “Every French soldier carries a marshal’s baton in his knapsack”?   The clear implication being that everyone, no matter how ‘low’ had the potential to become great.  And those words were said by an Emperor - the Little Corsican, risen to greatness!

Trump’s speeches may be, let’s be generous, “free-wheeling”, but he constantly hits the spot with his base and, although he has very low approval ratings generally, he is still riding high with the people who originally voted for him.  He knows (even he knows) that he did not get a majority of the votes cast in his election, not by millions, but he is now the President and not Clinton.  The Electoral College may be an anachronistic absurdity, but that is the system and that system got him elected.  We have the same sort of result in some elections in Britain where the party of government did not win the popular vote, but they did get the greatest number of members of parliament – and that is the system with which we have to work.

So Trump knows that “The Liberal Establishment” (whatever that might be) can say and do what it likes because he knows that it will have little effect on the forces that elected him.  Rather like the Daily Mail for me: it may be the most read newspaper in the country and have a mythical reach in articulating the voice of the disturbed right, but it might as well not exist for me because I NEVER read it.  Even when it is given away free at airports I shun its rancid pages.  So, for me, the Daily Mail can say what it likes, it doesn’t actually touch me. 

 

Yes, I know that the pernicious influence of the rag constantly corrupts our political discourse, but I, a confirmed Guardian reader disdainfully ignore it.  And that is part of the reason that Brexit happened.  As I continue to live my arts-heavy, opera going, European life style I have failed to notice or to take proper account of those who do not have, and may never have or want, the luxury of sitting in a stalls seat in the latest performance in the Liceu in Barcelona These are the people who may never have, to get slightly more real than opera seats, the right to a decent pension, or education or health service.

If you see a bleak future in which you are probably going to be worse off than your home owning parents then you look around for someone or something to blame.  And history teaches that, in the short term, the obvious victims are The Others.  Those people who are different: skin colour; religion; sexuality; politics; language; nationality – anything that can be shown to be a threat.

In this respect Trump is an idiot savant – and I don’t think that is a real insult, even if it does have the word ‘idiot’ in it.  After all, I am well educated, articulate, reasonably intelligent and sociable, but the highest ‘0ffice’ that I ever had was the largely ceremonial post of President of the Cardiff branch of The National Union of Teachers – where the real work was done by the Secretary and the Treasurer.  I chaired meetings and had headed notepaper!  And Trump is President of the United States of America after inheriting vast sums of money and becoming a reality show front.  Whatever else he doesn’t know, he certainly does know what buttons to press.

A key exponent of button pressing was Enoch Powell, most particularly in his ‘Rivers of blood’ speech.  Yes, I have read the whole speech and, yes I know that the key phrase did not actually occur in the actual talk he gave.  The whole episode is extremely distasteful, though, taken as a whole the speech is more reasonable than the fabricated extract by which it is known.  But Powell was no idiot, even in those far off days he knew a thing or two about ‘soundbites’ and he knew which parts would be taken up by the press and he knew the consequences.  Or at least he thought he did.  He could defend himself from accusations of outright racism by reference to the speech as a whole, but he could not defend himself from the political consequences of such a speech, that such inflammatory comments for general consumption would be. 

For me Powell will, for ever, be associated in my memory with a particularly incisive caricature by Ralph Steadman in Private Eye, which, if anything flatters the man!  

It is said that every politician’s career ends in failure and perhaps that is true of Powell.  After his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, although he was a national figure and idolised by certain sections of the population he was not in government in the cabinet ever again.  Although listened to and respected and reviled he did not have his hands on the levers of power.  He paid the price for his calculated speech.

Trump has said many things that, in their way, are just as astonishing and outrageous as Powell.  He still has his hands on the levers of power.  He has survived and indeed thriven and his standing in the Republican Party is even more secure.  To a large extent the Republican Party IS Trump.  This is an amazing achievement for a person whose statements have been so divisive – and there is the clue.  Division is his stock in trade.  He is not, and does not pretend to be a President of the whole of America.  He plays to his base, and that base is astonishingly accommodating.  He knows that his grasp on power is dependent on that base staying loyal and voting and they have to be fed the right sort of sound bites on a daily basis.

The latest gift to his base is a masterwork.  Today Trump has said that he is minded to end the practise of allowing anybody born in the USA to claim citizenship.  Trump has framed his possible executive order as being one opposed to illegal immigrants who give birth and then their children become citizens.  There have been howls of outrage and assertions that such an executive order would be unconstitutional.  That may or may not be true but it is irrelevant because Trump’s base will have heard yet another strong statement from their champion showing that their views are being held at the highest level in government.  Whether this order actually ever appears is not the important element here, what is important is the timing, so close to the crucial mid-term elections.

This purported action, together with the ‘army’ sent to stop the caravan of potential immigrants making their slow way to the Mexican border and the possibility of a presidential speech on immigration a few days before the elections themselves are all elements in a masterful display of ‘strength’ to energize the base.

If this strategy is the sole idea of Trump then it is a remarkable achievement in inventive marketing.  Ethically dubious certainly, but politically astute.  The fact that it is transparently opportunistic is not important because intention is more real than actuality.  Trump speaks his own reality and if you have bought into his pronouncements then The Word is all you need to know that your concerns are being met.

I have absolutely no faith that the people of America will produce the Blue Wave that is being hoped for.  None.  Trump has not fabricated the zeitgeist though policy or ideas – he is not creative enough for that, he embodies the zeitgeist, he is the zeitgeist, and if that is true what he does is, and is enough.

God help us all!