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!
