Ladies, gentlemen, Jackals — our own indomitable Tony Jay:
“WHEN THE SHIT GO DOWN…”
There I was, trying once again to take a bit of ‘me’ time off from ranting about the Fall of British Democracy and have an actual life doing nice things with nice people (more or less successfully, I’ve been busy) but they only go and drag me back in, don’t they? It’s just an endless calypso of “I told you so!” with these motherfudgers, and there ain’t no low where they won’t go. I’m only telling you about all this because, frankly, the current Era of Sinemanchin and the Court that Mitch Built looks pretty annoying, so you could probably do with the odd dollop of “Look at those arseholes, at least we’re not them!” to ease your fretful brows. No, no, don’t thank me, I’m here for you.
Right, where to begin?
Remember the ‘Partygate’ scandal that blew up at the arse end of last year? Flobalob Johnson’s Downing Street posse exposed via insider leaks as having held a LOT of boozy office parties during the strictest Lockdown periods, which they piously denied, only to get shown up by more leaks, repeated as necessary to inflict maximum humiliation. I know it doesn’t sound like much, not when compared to the much greater crimes they’ve committed out in the open, but something about the image of chubby-cheeked Tory totty whooping it up behind the doors of 10 Downing Street seemingly every night before necking a couple of paracetamol and fanning out each morning to solemnly warn the peons how very important it was that they obeyed the restrictions their betters were gleefully ignoring has ‘cut through’ like nothing else.
Mucho anger was seen across the land, and lo, a great plummeting there was in Tory poll ratings. Johnson himself has been lying like a scabby floor-rug all the way through the shitshow, including numerous times on the floor of the House of Commons, which is an official Resignation Level Offence, tossing whoever happened to be closest at hand under the bus and hiding behind a series of ‘independent’ inquiries, the credibility of which have crumbled like sandcastles at the slightest scrutiny. He’s cornered and desperate, leaking authority like an incontinent gerbil and with a steadily shrinking circle of Cabinet loyalists willing to sort-of defend him while also casting a gimlet eye on the bookmaker’s odds for who the next Tory Party leader will be. If it wasn’t for the horrendous damage all of this is doing to the country as a whole, it would be my absolute favourite binge-watch TV show of all time. Right up there with Mandalorian, Witcher, and Hey, Duggee.
Now, leaving aside the whole “Have you no decency, man?” fulmination about why he hasn’t resigned (because obviously, no, he hasn’t, and no, he won’t, what are you some kind of moron?) we’ve reached the bargaining stage of the process. Having invented a family member with Covid symptoms as an excuse to go into isolation for a few days, Johnson evidently spent this period shitting all over those guidelines as well, because he emerged with a pair of ‘genius’ escape strategies that were clearly cobbled together in panicky face-to-face meetings with coked-up PR consultants throwing increasingly left-field ‘mind-missiles’ around while dragging the whole thing out (a simple note saying “You’re fucked, fuck off” would cover all the bases) in order to bulk up their billable hours. Both schemes were leaked to the media ASAP, whether by Johnson’s people or by those targeting him it’s hard to say and, when you get right down to it, pretty much irrelevant. Now that the Omerta demanded of the In Group has been broken, nothing stays secret for long. They’re all terrified of being left holding the bag so as soon as anything juicy enters their eyeline it’s straight on the old jungle telegram to friendly media sources and that’s that.
What did they come up with? Well, I’m glad you asked. Brace yourselves, these schemes are so damned sharp they could bisect your imagination if you think about them too hard.
Operation ‘Big Dog’. I shit you not, that’s what they called it. The plan being to draw up lists of Tory Party staffers and civil-servants who would be instructed to zip their plump and inviting lips while Johnson, in full-on Disappointed but Stern Statesman mode, ceremoniously ladened them with all the blame for his actions and ‘accepted their resignations’ before ‘moving forward with lessons learnt”. The idea being that ‘culpability’ and ‘responsibility’ are just non-corporeal NFT type things that can be traded off to the nearest mug and forgotten about. That’s just how this business works, yeah? Well, sometimes, yes it does. When the person demanding the sacrifice has either a deep well of loyalty or an even deeper bucket of treats to dip into, sometimes people will take that bullet, confident that their savvy sacrifice will earn them brownie points and a grateful leg-up in the non-too distant future. That’s hardly the case here, though, is it? Why guzzle the tainted Kool Aid for an incompetent boob like Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson when it’s pretty clear that he’s a spent force and all the future mojo rests with those dismantling his Premiership? I bet the sharp-dressed boys from Lye, Deaneye and Faykit Public Relations Inc didn’t dwell on that possibility for too long, but when you’ve got a fool for a client…
Operation ‘Red Meat’. Because big words can confuse little minds. Loyal(ish) Ministers (all of whom not-so-secretly see themselves as already campaigning to succeed Johnson) would go forth and bombard the Tory Party’s radicalised elements (MPs, Press, Membership) with a flurry of Hard Right wet-dream policies to get them all barking mad for two more years of this… whatever it is. Home Secretary Pritti ‘Salon Kitty’ Patel, announced she’d send the Navy into the Channel to Protect Our Borders from Browns (fap-fap), Culture Minister Nadine ‘The Goon from Mills and Boon’ Dorries announced she’d freeze the BBC’s budget and end the licence fee by 2027 (fap-fat-fap-fap), Health Secretary Sajid ‘The Squeeky Sontaran’ Javid announced plans to immediately strip away every Covid protection on the books despite hundreds still dying every day (fap-fap-fap-fap-FAP-FAP-FA-BOOOOOOOOM!).
Oh yeah, that’s some good squirrel-meat, and the ever-credulous News Media gobbled it up like the finest prairie oysters, but the maw is cavernous and its appetite endless, and these vomitus vol au vents barely touched the sides before reality closed back over the scene. The Navy let it be known that they wouldn’t be patrolling the Channel, and that if they did, they wouldn’t be launching any missiles at refugee dinghies, they’d be rescuing those poor people and bringing them back to safe harbour in the UK because that’s what actual human beings should do. The pushback against Dorries’ anti-BBC shtick was immediate, wide and deep (outside of the obedient placemen at the top of the Corporation) and boiled down to “Fuck off, dimwit. Like you’re going to be calling the shots in 2027?”. And while Javid’s cynical surrender in the face of the pandemic just to curry favour with the
BrextremistCovidiot Right of the Party will have disastrous real-world effects, in the long term that’s his balls on the block for when cases and deaths skyrocket again.And what has all this frantic dog-whistling achieved? Bugger all.
Very shortly after the launch of Operation: Let Rabid Dogs Lie, it was all in ruins again. Firstly, the whole Media-driven trial-balloon of how this signalled the first stages of a Johnsonian fight-back (cue the training-montage from Rocky IV and images of Johnson looking troubled on a toilet) was popped by a single tweet from infamous prick Dominic Cummings, the cranially malformed Russian Intelligence asset who used to be in charge of both the Vote Leave campaign and Johnson’s private office of political fuckery and who many people suspect to be the source (or maybe just frontman) for all of these insider leaks. Contrary to Johnson’s denial that he was ever aware in advance of the boozy Downing Street garden party he attended on May 20th, 2020 (the one he insists he mistakenly thought was a ‘work event’) Cummings claimed he has e-mail correspondence proving Johnson was well aware and had been warned it broke the Covid laws. Very quickly the word got around the News Media Twitterverse that there was independent corroboration of this and that Sue Grey, the shadowy civil servant currently heading up the ‘Partygate’ inquiry, would be questioning Cummings in person.
That sound you can hear still echoing around the mountaintops is Johnson’s pitiful yelp as the elastic band cutting off bloodflow between his testicles and his taint tightened another loop. The buffoon’s car-crash interview with Sky News’ Beth Rigby, where a visibly crushed Johnson blathered that “No-one told me that the Party (which wasn’t a Party, it was a work event, honest) was illegal” increasingly looks like the bubbles from a drowning man’s… uh…. mouth. He’d been banking on rollerblading across the razor thin line between Grey’s Inquiry conveniently finding that, while mistakes were undoubtedly made due to a wider culture of hard-working excess in Westminster, no clear evidence of Johnson’s deceit had passed her desk, and the ever obsequious Metropolitan Police declaring that, in the absence of evidence of clearly criminal criminality (which Grey’s inquiry isn’t actually empowered to make reference to, quelle surprise) they won’t be able to investigate the matter themselves. Cummings’s statement and his supposed evidence curbstomps that plan. We’ve already had a conga-line of Ministers trooping through the TV studios offering Johnson their total and unwavering support, but only on the understanding (wink-wink) that he hadn’t lied in Parliament (nudge-nudge), because lying there is, of course, a resignation worthy offence (say no more, say no more), thus giving the outward impression of support while simultaneously holding open the trapdoor for his inevitable plunge. Grey can either use Cummings’ evidence – in which case Johnson is proven to have committed a resignation level offence – or she ignores it – in which case Cummings just releases the e-mail, Johnson is proven to have committed a resignation level offence, and Grey loses everything she’s worked decades towards to give a moronic solipsist a few minutes of release.
Mmmmm, I wonder what’s the best route to a seat in the House of Lords?
Secondly, the noise level amongst Tory MPs in marginal seats, many of them in the northern ‘Red Wall’ constituencies (so called because the Democrats had the ‘Blue Wall’ in 2016 and our Infotainers are as lazy as yours) that went from Labour Red to Tory Blue in 2019 because they were told Corbyn would take away their precious Brexit, refused to fade away in the face of Operation: Dog’s Bollocks. Instead, and much to the amazement of court journalists with their ear horns firmly wedged up the rectums of only the most ‘important’ Government sources, the anger intensified, and rumours dribbled out of a so-called ‘Pork-Pie Coup’ (Oh, how not at all stereotypical of us Northerners. What’s next? Black MPs engaged in a Watermelon Coup?) whereby Red Wall MPs would flood the 1922 Committee (the unofficially official Trade Union for Backbench Tory MPs) with letters calling for Johnson to resign, 54 of which would trigger an automatic Vote of No Confidence. A lot of these Northern Tories are sitting on razor thin majorities and a ton of promises about a vote for the Conservative Party being not just a vote for Brexit and against Corbyn’s Commie Collective of Coloureds and Poofs, but a vote for more money from Central Government in the form of ‘Levelling Up’ funds. Sure, Tory cuts are the cause of the terrible state of many Northern towns, but that was because those people kept on stubbornly voting Labour. Vote for the Tory Party instead, they said, and you’ll get drenched by the moneyhose just like those Southern nancies.
Inevitably the combination of ‘Levelling Up’ turning out to be every bit the bullshit con-job those dirty Lefties said it was, plus the News Media turning against “that funny posh lad from off the telly”, has left these MPs sitting on powder-kegs of outraged betrayal with no halfway good message to tout in response. The decision of Johnson loyalists to tell these MPs that they owe their seats to Flobalob and so should be covering his warty behind with kisses has not gone over that well either. These MPs aren’t alone in fearing that Johnson’s unpopularity will tank their comfortable sinecures either, a lot of Tory MPs further South will be looking at the recent catastrophic collapse in the Conservative vote in the North Shropshire by-election (where a seat with a 20k + Tory majority went bye-bye) and thinking “I could lose my seat to a bloody Liberal-Democrat, how humiliating!” They’d be right, it would be, but are they going to do what they need to do about it?
Thirdly, and it’s linked to the above, one of these Red Wall MPs, a real piece of work called Christian Wakeford, just defected to Labour. Now, I’ve got plenty to say about this dollop of cold sick, but for now I’ll stick to its impact on the Johnson Premiership. In the short term it actually helped him. There’s a wide gap between the stripped-off, sweat-clad, all rolling around in front of a log fire with your old school chum internal Tory Party battles and actually jumping ship for another (not-quite as radically right-wing) Party. The shock of it, and the fear that moving against Johnson in the wake of it would be seen within their own Party and Membership as approving of Wakeford’s self-serving turncoatery, seems to have convinced quite a few angry MPs to back off from sending their letters in to the 1922 committee. But that didn’t actually solve the problem. Stymied from taking that particular course of action to release their frustrations, quite a few Tory MPs have started coming forward with accusations that they had been personally bullied and/or blackmailed by Johnson’s people and threatened by Tory whips, not just with regards to their own ambitions to become a Parliamentary Private Secretary and maybe someday rise to Ministerial-level responsibilities, but on a more cut-throat level, they either show proper loyalty to the Big Flob or they would find their constituencies starved of funds and infrastructure spending.
Now this verges on the “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here” territory, because isn’t this exactly how pork-barrel style politics has always worked? More to the point, this is exactly how Tory Governments have deliberately starved Labour-held constituencies for decades in order to force local councils to make harsh cuts that Conservative politicians then campaign against (sooooo cynical). To the legions of access journalists and court sycophants dominating our News Media this nasty misuse of public funds for partisan political advantage is just business as usual and no more surprising to them than Manchester United getting a highly dubious late penalty at Old Trafford would be to a sports journalist, but the simple fact that Tory MPs are making these accusations against a Tory Government has turned this into another major front in Großflobschland’s doomed war for survival. In response the usual suspects have been pushed in front of TV cameras to make the usual nonsense denials. No one had ever seen anything of the sort happen, they’re making it up, and an absolute peach of a statement from inside Number 10 itself that basically encapsulates the drivelling entitlement that Tories have been given to believe is their due. Essentially, there would only be an investigation into the validity of the claims if there was already evidence that they were true, which is illogical and arse-ended and entirely what you’d expect from this shower. Checkmate, rebel scum.
Except, what’s this? Rebel MPs are now saying that fuck-yeah, they’ve got evidence of bullying and blackmail in the form of secret recordings and texts. And that’s not all, former Minister Nusrat Ghani has even accused the Whips Office of arranging her sacking because other Ministers were ‘uncomfortable’ with her ‘Muslimness’, which is both utterly unsurprising and also a bit of potentially humiliating blowback for the Equality and Human Rights Commission that bluntly refused to investigate persistent charges of Islamophobia within the Tory Party on the grounds that important people get to police themselves. The usual denials were blurted out, but it was immediately apparent that this revelation had sent a cold shiver down the jellywobble spines of the Tory Inner Circle. The Chief Whip himself broke cover to insist that he was the person Ghani was talking about and her claims were totally untrue… which smacks a fair bit of protesteth too mucheth, me thinketh.
For some undecipherable reason Michael Fabricant, the seemingly fictional but actually mind bogglingly real Tory MP for Lichfield was allowed (or chose, since apparently no one is actually in charge of anything anymore) to take point on pushing back against Ghani’s claims with a series of statements accusing her of dishonourably plotting against Johnson, being ‘mediocre’ and making up the ‘lame’ reason for her sacking because ‘she doesn’t look obviously Muslim’. It’s hard to encapsulate in words just how badly Fabricant’s intervention has backfired, but try, if you will, to imagine a man who looks like Jeff Sessions’ dad fucked Andy Warhol’s biggest wig saying these things and you’re halfway there. Then it turns out Ghani told Johnson all about this last year and he just brushed her off, so that’s another wheelbarrow full of oops to add to the pile and quite possibly the trigger for a full-scale investigation of Conservative Islamophobia.
Wouldn’t it be nice if, just for once, internal Tory Party dust ups caused as much damage to all the rotten edifices of greed and corruption as they have to the country? This certainly could, and it’s all down to the breathtakingly arrogant fuckery of the walking Peter Principles running the Tory machine. Like Napoleonic generals hopped up on snuff and dreams of Imperium they’ve been force-marching their columns of conscripts from battle to battle, any grumbles drowned out by patriotic drums and threats of retaliation by cold-eyed NCOs. But when your Emperor has no clothes and every petty princeling has a secret room where they spend breathless minutes in front of a floor length mirror just staring at themselves wrapped tight in straining purple silk, the troops are pretty much bound to mutiny sooner or later. All power, all authority, rests on the degree to which “or else…” means something, and suddenly a lot of Tory MPs have decided that this new Media interest in Tory scandals has shifted the balance of power enough that “or else…” doesn’t mean shit.
It always starts with one, then three, then more, until everyone with a story to tell feels it’s safe to stand up and feel the cool wind of freedom blowing through their hair.
Another tasty little thing about all this muck getting flung about, one defence the spokespeeps from Number 10 are using is that Party Whips don’t have the authority to blackmail constituency MPs with cutting off funds, which is technically true but entirely besides the point. Whips would carry the message, and it would be sent on behalf of Prime Minister Needy McGimmeemore, but the person with his hand on the financial tap and final approval over all this would be the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi ‘The Guardian thinks I’m Dishy’ Sunak, the badly constructed man-mantis hybrid who has been ever so conspicuously not anywhere to be found while Cummings and Co are laying the groundwork for his (long planned) assumption of Absolute Power. It just so happens that Sunak’s Treasury has just written off nearly four and a half billion pounds in fraudulently claimed furlough payments made by the Government
to their donors and chumsto private companies during the pandemic. That’s a fuck ton of money, gone, poof, like dust in the wind. How many school meals would that pay for? How many extra nurses? How much of anything the Tories have gleefully flayed from the twitching meatlump that is modern Britain would that little nugget of The People’s Money have covered? Nice that this little turd of incompetence and/or corruption is bobbing around in the drinking bowl just as eyes start to turn towards the methodology and decision-making process behind the Treasury’s funding (or not) of individual constituencies, isn’t it? I wonder how much of this will be weaponised against Sunak when he inevitably makes his (failed on the grounds of melanin) bid to succeed Johnson?To be honest, although I’m a vindictive bastard, it’s all getting a bit boring and same-y now. As much as I enjoy seeing Flobalob worked over by the masked rascals of Cobra Kai it just needs to be over so we can move on to the Rise, Ruination and Resignation of the next Tory Messiah. This one’s done and dusted, impaled on the splintery post of his own lack of restraint and the whirlwind of unaccountability that has flattened centuries of painstakingly constructed filigree tradition like Godzilla doing Riverdance in a pair of Gene Simmons’ boots.
Unfortunately, it’s pretty clear that if it was up to them our Infotainment industry would much prefer to keep this daily percolation of misery bubbling away until the last icecap melts and the dolphins finally achieve their long-promised revenge. They love them some Flobalob, he’s a lazy journalist’s dream job and, when he’s not arranging to have them beat up, always ready to give them easy copy and a burble of words guaranteed to drive clicks. That won’t happen, of course, because they’re not making the decisions, and once the Editors send down the message from on-high they’ll all be there scrummaging around Bully Bunter’s leaking corpse and fighting to be the first to emote the line “…perhaps a certain inevitability to this most untraditional of Premierships ending with a fetish-fuelled murder/suicide pact…” into the nearest camera. Until then, though, they’re all rolling around in the shit like it’s Christmas every day, gasping over each fresh stroke of the lash and hammering their list of MP’s private phone numbers looking for the next newsworthy scoop.
In truth, what we’re seeing here is the inevitable end result of the British Establishment deciding to kick out the doors, walls and supporting beam-work of our national political superstructure in order to allow the Tory Party licence and freedom in which to assimilate the far-Right, faux-Populist, nakedly racist, kulturkampfer, anti-democratic, retrograde counter-Reformation which was formented (in this country, at least) by decades of increasingly extreme propaganda pumped into the brainfood supply by Britain’s radically Rightwing Press. The financial crisis of 2008 provided the spark that lit off a conflagration of anger amongst those who saw what little they had being at risk, and a blind panic amongst those who had taken it from them and feared being asked for it back. To deny that anger an outlet on the Left the Tories needed cover to make alliances with the social-media monsters of the rebranded National Front and their cash-rich foreign backers without being asked uncomfortable questions about it. But, as usual, tyre rims and anthrax, baby. You whittle a whistle out of frozen leper’s puss you should know that the best you’re going to get is a bad taste in your mouth. No half-measures allowed either, not with these wide-eyed paranoidicks who think the modern world is a cross between Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Kinky Boots. They wanted to see lips on tips and full eye contact or they were going to put the Tories in the same barrel as the Woke Elites of Islington Prime.
And so, there was Johnson.
What’s happening to him now is entirely due to a change in News Media coverage, itself triggered by a series of high-level leaks to the news outlets deemed least likely to bury them, itself triggered by a decision on the international donor/future employer level that Flobalob had served his purpose and should move (or be moved) aside. If it were down to our Hard Right Press alone, divided as it is between a handful of soulless billionaires all competing with each other to be this week’s least-shrivelled swinging dick, he’d be sure of his job for at least one whole term, even while being jerked hither and thither by whatever red-meat baited hook hung from today’s by-line. If it were down to the BBC alone, with its upper echelons firmly stocked with Tory loyalists, its senior journalists who have been Conservative cheerleaders since Daddy first bought them a pony, its finances always on the chopping block as hostage to tone and editorial content, he’d be safer than the punch-code to the Queen’s secret torture chambers under St Ormand’s Street Hospital. But they’re not the only game in town, and once it was plain that this remake of Humpty Dumpty was going to be a sustained barrage of escalatingly harder blows with submission the only approved endgame, they all made the strictly business decision that they had to jump on board the #pequodcruises bandwagon as a group, if with clearly differing shades of enthusiasm.
But the point needs to be made. Endlessly. This is who he was before Election 2019. This is who he was before he won the Tory Leadership race. This is who he was before he fronted the Leave campaign and made Brexit his personal oriflamme. This is who he was during two inept terms as London Mayor and afterwards as arguably the most useless Foreign Secretary Britain has ever had. The News Media could have done this to him at any time over the last two decades but they, as an incestuous body, always chose to do the exact opposite, no matter what the cost to anyone else. The Tory Party knew this, which is why they chose him as their figurehead. The UK’s problem isn’t Johnson, it’s Tories and their legions of enablers, and since those enablers installed likeminded ‘moderates’ in the cockpit of the main Opposition Party I have zero clue what to do about changing that in any major way.
But that’s probably exhaustion speaking. Every worthwhile journey begins with a single step, and it’s important to take proper pleasure in the first of those steps coming down hard and true on Flobalob’s throat.
Tomorrow might well belong to them, but for now, well, it can look after itself for a bit.
Adam Schiff Midnight in Washington Book Club – Announcements
Tony Jay
Now, I wouldn’t normally do this. But since I completed the rant up top, the situation has gone into up a couple of notches and events have occurred which I feel it would be remiss of me not to blather about a little bit more, just to tie the whole thing together and be really, really, ever so self-indulgent. I apologise in advance, but there you have it.
A POSTSCRIPT FROM BREXITANIA
“QUI MORITURI SUNT MENDACIUM TIBI”
It never stops with these fuckers, but some of this is going in the right direction.
You can always tell when a self-styled ‘ruling elite’ are on their way to the compost bin. Whereas before their every diktat shonk-thunked irresistibly through the machinery of state as smooth as a well-oiled piston, any problems in execution cloaked behind the illusion of invincibility and the applause of willing colluders, but it’s when the wheels start coming off that the whole farrago begins to judder and squeal like a pig waking up next to David Cameron and, before you know it, important bits are pinging off, gaps start appearing in the formerly well-maintained gearing, and a nauseating stench of burning authority starts coughing out of the ventilation system.
And that’s what’s happening right now in the UK.
For a week or more, every single question directed towards Flobalob Johnson or one of his coterie of hangers-on has been deflected with some variation of the phrase “Let’s wait for Sue Grey’s report before making assumptions about who choked who with a rubber chicken”. As often happens with these Establishment rearguard actions it rapidly became a commonplace joke.
“What would you like for supper, dear?”
“Let’s wait for Sue Grey’s report.”
“Don’t you think that tie is a little gaudy for a funeral, dear?”
“Let’s wait for Sue Grey’s report.”
“Voulez vous coucher avec moi, ce soir?
“Let’s wait for… um… how much for an Elvis and a bit of Robert Plant?”
It’s always the exception that proves the rule.
The assumption some made (and not without reason) was that Johnson had it all stitched up. Sue Grey is a senior Civil Servant, she knows exactly how backscratching works, and she has a CV littered with examples of when inconvenient evidence of wrongdoing failed to see the light of day. Her report would filter efficiently through all of the available facts to arrive at a predetermined conclusion that, while potentially a bit embarrassing for the Bumbling Beast of Blighty, would be carefully weighted to place all of the actionable blame on disposable drones, allowing Johnson – in his laughably undemocratic role as the person with sole responsibility for receiving and editing Grey’s report before deciding which parts, if any, should be made public – to cast himself as innocent of everything except a certain naïve trust in the ability of lesser beings to meet his exacting standards for deportment and behaviour (Belay that snark – Ed). Sure, that load of old codswallop would fail to pass the smell test in an ICU ward full of ventilated Covid cases, and it would barely begin to scratch the surface of Johnson’s loss of credibility amongst Tory backbench MPs outside of the Party’s most dedicated cracksniffers, but who gives a fuck about tomorrow’s problems? If it gives him command of that day’s narrative and enables his loyal bannermen to run headlines like “IT’S PARTY TIME – BATTLING BORIS BEATS BACK THE BOLSHY BORES” then that’s the kind of victory he savours the most. Just get through the next 24 hours and hope for a miracle, it’s worked before.
On the other hand, the contrary view held by many was that Johnson was already so very thoroughly screwed that his nickname might as well be ‘Sweetcheeks the Busy Cabin Boy’. Why on earth would a long serving Civil Service mandarin like Sue Grey throw away her reputation for a spiralling has-been like Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson? If, as I’ve said here many times before, the decision to deep-six Flobalob had already been taken months ago way, way up amongst the higher pay grades of Party Donor Heaven, she’d be an absolute fool to tie herself to him. Instead, she’d simply fall back on the perpetual Option B of just doing her job by assembling the available facts into a damning indictment of Johnson’s perfidy. It’s not like we don’t already know that there were illegal gatherings at Downing Street and various other Government (and Media) buildings during Lockdown, or that Johnson lied to the House of Commons when he (repeatedly) denied they’d taken place, or that every single person who attended these illegal gatherings knew they were breaking the law. Pop it all in a file, ostentatiously don’t attach a bland summary that could be Muellered into saying Up was Down, drop it on the Prime Suspect’s desk and retreat to a safe distance. Job done, Damehood secured, friends and colleagues pleased.
As of Tuesday, the very clear inference was that Johnson’s backers feared from ‘the buzz’ around Grey’s direction of travel that Option B was in effect, so Flobalob’s old University mucker and (for some unknown reason to do with being a compliant protector of privilege) Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Cressida ‘Whitewash’ Dick, had emerged from her fugue state to gift the Prime Minister another delay in the form of a Police investigation of the matter. Grey’s report would be quietly shelved while Dick’s Detectives combed through every blade of grass in the Number 10 garden looking for evidence suggesting the involvement of Borrowers, Caribbean Yardies or the mummified corpse of Richard Harris (that crazy hellraiser). Senior Tories can’t possibly comment about an ongoing Police investigation, can they? So, they just wait for the Media to move on, let the ire of the General Public towards them cool, then in a few months release a terse statement at 9.30 on a Friday evening stating that no credible evidence of criminal activity had been found. Worked before, it’ll work again.
That interpretation certainly didn’t last long. Before the day was out it was revealed that the Met weren’t so much jumping to Flobalob’s defence as desperately trying to claw back a veneer of credibility for their boss. There was no request for the Grey Report to be held back, and the focus of the Met’s investigation would be the “serious and flagrant” breaches of the rules to which there seemed to be no “reasonable defence”. Not just were there any illegal gatherings, but had the people who planned and attended them done so in the full knowledge that they were illegal and then taken deliberate steps to conceal their lawbreaking? Because that’s not something you just get fined for, that’s ‘Misuse of Public Office’ and that’s some serious shit. There had been hints that the Establishment was warning Dick (via timely interviews with former Met officers) that protecting Johnson any further would be viewed as self-serving cowardice and evidently, they weren’t imaginary. In addition, Grey was supposed to be taking statements from the Met officers on duty at Downing Street when these illegal gatherings were held, and since their testimony could be potentially explosive for more than one career, it was clearly time for the professionals to step in and make sure only the right questions were asked.
And that wasn’t the only thing that quickly went wrong for the Badly-Thatched One. It was time for another leak about yet another illegal gathering at Downing Street. This one for Flobby’s own birthday where his latest Consort of the Womb and their favoured interior designer (because Absolutely Fabulous > The West Wing or something) crashed the Cabinet Room to lead 30 Bunter Bunker staffers in warbling Happy Birthday to their boss. All of the hard work Johnson’s loyalists then did to flood the Media zone with bullshit Chewbacca Defence meditations on what may or may not constitute ‘A Party’ (deliberately) misses the point in much the same manner as arguing over what constitutes ‘Collusion’. It doesn’t matter what you want to call it. Illegal gatherings like this were banned, everyone involved knew it, and when Johnson stood up in Parliament to deny any of it had taken place, he lied. As in, he L. I. E. D. He told a mistruth. He gobbled to deceive. He made the Baby Jeebus cry tears of myrrh. He took a swim with Frankie Fib. Etcetera, etcetera, et-fucking-cetera.
And then, just to dispel any illusions about all of this not being a naked power-play by people who know every dirty little secret of this misbegotten era, another leak emerged, this one more or less confirming that Flobalob also lied about his involvement in hijacking the valuable time and resources of the British authorities in Kabul to arrange a PR friendly escape route for a hundred or so doggie-woggies while lifting not a finger to help get Afghans on the Taliban’s shit-list to safety, and this during the last days of the Occupation. The usual bullshittery is being deployed. When she wrote the letter confirming that approval had been granted for the Ministry of Defence to ringfence a flight slot for the evacuation of these animals, it was only as a simple constituency MP, claims Trudy Harrison, Johnson’s Parliamentary Private Secretary. Why would a simple MP be writing this letter, she’s asked, and why did you sign it as PPS? Argle-Bargle, says Trudy Harrison, or words to that effect.
This is probably why Bully Bunter has decided to get out of London for a very important trip to… uhhhhh…. wherever the hell he can get to on short notice and dodge the release of Grey’s report. Like an adulterer avoiding a subpoena he’s in the wind, so we can probably look forward to speeded-up footage of Johnson huffing-and-puffing past a crowd of interested onlookers while half a dozen busty women in hotpants chase him waving copies of it. Meanwhile the Bile-Cannon has been handed over to his underlings so they can distract the News Media with more fetid chunks of Red Meat. A brutal tightening of unemployment benefit rules that edges right up to the line of turning the victims of Tory cruelty into indentured labour. Loyalists creeping around telling backbench MPs that getting rid of Johnson will somehow necessitate an immediate General Election (it won’t) since he personally won the last one (he didn’t). Spokesmen spinning an entirely fictional yarn that Johnson is an Aragorn figure personally leading the Anglospheric Alliance to battle in defence of Ukraine’s freedom, and without whom all hope of restraining Vlad the Mad and Very Bad will crumble like a goat’s cheese cracker when mixed with a cheeky little Merlot.
Britain’s one inexhaustible resource. Tory wankery. Will it never end?
zhena gogolia
Wow, I saw the first comment and thought, “Who had time to read all this and have a comment on it?”
Your energy and wordsmithing are truly awe-inspiring. I just read aloud the phrase about the “incontinent gerbil” to my husband and he guffawed.
mali muso
Whew! I need a cigarette. And I don’t even smoke. lol
zhena gogolia
Will there be a soundtrack of “Yakity Sax”?
BC in Illinois
I get a lot of my UK updates by way of Scotland and the Scottish National Party, which is convinced that every step down that B Johnson and the Tories take is a step closer to Scottish independence. (Their glee of their celebration of the anniversary of India’s independence was fairly easy to interpret.)
Are we stepping closer to Scottish independence?
[Asking for a friend. I am, myself, four generations away from the Highlands.]
Geminid
@Tony Jay: Wikipedia tells me that the next Parliamentary election is not until May 2, 2024. I understand that the Conservatives can call one earlier if they want. Is there a possibility that they may have to face a general election before that date?
Yarrow
The Sue Grey report is never going to be seen, is it? Had a good laugh at the suggestion she drop it in serial form behind a paywall with a cliffhanger ever day/week. Heh.
Mike in NC
Boris appears to have a limited shelf-life.
greenergood
Thank you for your enjoyable, infuriating and completely justified rant, Tony Jay! As someone living one and a half miles between two nuclear submarine bases on the west coast of Scotland, I’m also a bit concerned about what going on in the Ukraine, especially as the UK subs’ movements seem to be a bit frisky, and the sea territory south of Cork in Ireland is set to be the site of Russia’s latest ocean manouvres : https://www.democraticunderground.com/1017707913
Tony Jay
@zhena gogolia:
That’s the only tune going through my head now. 8-)
@BC in Illinois:
One of the main reasons Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP did a 180 on their opposition to an early election back in 2019 was (IMHO) because they knew he’d win and calculated the twin indignities of Hard Brexit and Tory Misrule would be worth it if they led to an increase in the SNP vote and more support for an Independence Referendum.
Do they actually, deep down, really want to have that Referendum? Or are the leadership much happier with the situation as it is, retaining the goal of Independence as an unsullied beacon out there somewhere on the horizon without having to be the Government that navigates independence as a small state in a big and scary world?
burnspbesq
My sense is that Boris will not be defenestrated in the short term, because the Tories have no other credible candidates for the job.
Yarrow
Did you see the haunted Victorian pencil glossed right over the Queen? Not really a surprise since he lied to her.
Tony Jay
@Geminid:
They don’t have to, no. The Fixed Term Parliament Act was brought in by Cameron and has already been circumvented twice, in 2017 and 2019. If enough MPs vote for it we could have a snap Election within a few weeks, but that’s not going to happen. Until they kick Johnson overboard with all the blame for everything that’s gone wrong wrapped around his neck and the ‘fresh, new, dynamic face’ (bleaugh) that replaces him as PM has a good long period of Media love to burnish their halo, the Tories aren’t going to go near it.
SiubhanDuinne
@zhena gogolia:
@mali muso:
Theres some serious mind-melding going on here. Because I had two comments I wanted to make: one was “I’ll never be able to watch BoJo again without thinking of an incontinent gerbil,” and the other was “I quit smoking almost 30 years ago, but I want a cigarette after that!”
GMTA. They really do.
zhena gogolia
@SiubhanDuinne: Yeah!
Tony Jay
@greenergood:
It better stay quiet out there, that’s where I’m going on holiday in August. We’ve managed to find an island so remote the inhabitants watch an old VHS copy of The Wicker Man for a taste of what big-city living must be like.
trollhattan
Impossible for me to not conflate BoJo and Trump–god, they’re so alike, starting with absolute, unbound love of self. Posted this a couple weeks back, but it’s good enough to warrant a repeat.
Tony Jay
@Yarrow:
He’s such a preening hatesink, isn’t he? Imagine being so craven that you willingly draw the attention of a nation to your intellectual and moral shortcomings just to fellate someone as ungrateful and oikish as the Flobster.
That entire garbage rant was all just part of the pro-Johnson group’s campaign to scare Tory MPs back into their cages by threatening them with an Election that they’d probably lose right now. It’s all bullshit, constitutionally and legally, which Baron Meinster’s boring younger brother clearly knows, but trolling those he considers beneath him is just what Jacobius the Musty does.
Tony Jay
@trollhattan:
Yup. There was no excuse for voting for him. He was exactly what everyone who had ever met him and didn’t rely on him for a job said he was.
Test of national character, roughly 1/3 of the population badly failed it. And here we are; poorer, angrier and less United than we’ve been in centuries.
Benw
YOU BETTER BE READY
Tony Jay
@Benw:
This guy here. He gets it.
Yarrow
@Tony Jay: He’s just awful. Have you seen this horrifying video of him at 12 years old?
eclare
As always, I enjoy your reporting and perspective, so well done!
Yarrow
@Tony Jay: Tactical voting will be essential if you want to defeat the Tories. The FPTP system has kept the UK under their control for too long.
Anyway
Boggles the mind that Labo(u)r gets no traction against these incompetent corrupt buffoons.
Tony Jay
@Yarrow:
Dear. God. In. Heaven.
And not one person thought to chuck him in front of that Rolls Royce and marmalade the snotty little fuck?
The past, it was a different country. They do things far too politely there
eclare
@Yarrow: Jeezus….
Yarrow
@Tony Jay: @eclare: It’s something else, isn’t it? He looks like someone whose idea of fun would be ordering the servants to torture animals.
J R in WV
Where Tony Jay says “I bet the sharp-dressed boys from Lye, Deaneye and Faykit Public Relations Inc didn’t dwell on that possibility for too long, but when you’ve got a fool for a client… ” he makes me think of the famous American legal firm Dewey, Cheatem and Howe, Esq made famous by their legal work for The Car Guys of Boston.
Will return to the top to see what else Tony reminds me of in my ancient past…
Thanks for making the time to write for us, T J
VOR
Who is being talked about as a replacement for Johnson? From across the Atlantic Ocean I don’t see anyone in the Tory party who I would trust to water my plants.
JML
This. 100x this. It’s the same shite here in the USA and one of the reasons were still stuck with the bloated corpse of TFG still sending out waves of filth and destruction into the american politisphere.
VeniceRiley
Biometrics scheduled for next Tuesday! Out of the frying pan, into the fire … soonish!
Frank Wilhoit
Pseudophilosophically, today’s Tories are vastly more extreme than Labour have ever been, neither under Foot nor Corbyn (who is Foot-and-water, and a lot more water).
But Johnson understands his situation and what he needs to do to survive, and he is doing it. None of his MPs (because none of their voters) care about anything other than keeping Labour out.
Meanwhile the retrospective on Starmer’s leadership are already being written and efforts made to puff LOTO Wes Streeting; but the only person on either side of the House who has Prime-Ministerial stature is Angela Rayner.
PeakVT
It’s really a shame Posh Trump hasn’t been sacked for the UK’s terrible response to COVID*, because he deserves it for that. But if a bunch of stupid parties does him in, well, I guess that’s better than not at all.
* Obviously America’s response has been even worse, but that doesn’t excuse BoJo.
Other Other Other John
God, but I need a cigarette after that veritable flood of purple. I do indeed now feel juuuuust a mite, a titch, a scoach, a jot, a tittle, a miniscule iota better about affairs American, for having the opportunity to point and laugh at this public-school rabble and their self immolation. Hats off to you, Tony Jay.
Yarrow
@Anyway: Labour does get traction, but just like our gerrymandered system in the US and specially created states that guarantee a Senate For White People/Republicans, the UK has its own voting issues. The First Past the Post (FPTP) voting system means that in many constituencies the MP was elected with less than 50% of the vote. The opposition parties split the vote and the Tories get in.
In recent by-elections the opposition parties have indicated some level of informal cooperation so that the best situated party to win there campaigns the hardest , gets informal cross-party support, and all non-Tory votes go there. This strategy has has meant a couple of big upsets where long time (20 year plus) Tory seats have changed hands. This new poll should scare the Tories but still means the non-Tory voters have to vote tactically.
Tony Jay
@VOR:
Yeah, but as I was going to say to Burnsie, it doesn’t matter what we think, because we’re not the kind of people who would ever have voted for the length of half-filled lard sausage in the first place.
Within the Tory Party there are literally scores of chalk outlines that think they could, should and will do the job. After all, Flobalob got there based on nothing more than a crappy Churchill cosplay act and a gift for making journalists scared to offend him, why shouldn’t they?
Standards. We used to have them.
Yarrow
@VOR: Current front runners seem to be Rishi Sunak, current Chancellor of the Exchequer and the one who wrote off the 4.3 b GBP that Tony Jay mentioned above, and Liz Truss, current Foreign Secretary and a low rent Maggie Thatcher imitator (“be photographed in tank,” “take elocution lessons to speak more slowly,” etc.)
Kent
I’ve got Tony Jay’s explanation of BoJo on the one hand. And I have the 6-year-old girl on YouTube who sent him to the “naughty room”
I think my understanding of UK politics is now complete!
Steeplejack
@J R in WV:
“Cheatham,” to be less obvious.
Tony Jay
@Frank Wilhoit:
I wouldn’t scrape Wes Streeting off my shoe, and that’s only because I’d just throw the shoe away. Some stinks you just can’t scrub off.
It’s been particularly amusing watching the Starmerites try over and over again to silence, sideline, demote and denigrate Rayner for having the temerity to be Northern, working class and authentically opinionated, always forgetting that she holds an elected post just as legitimate as the one their Temporary Figurehead is keeping warm.
Every time a circle-jerk of them gets together to sneer about her in exactly the same dismissive, classist, misogynistic terms as the Tories use, I reminded that it’s because they really, really, really want to be Tories, they just didn’t go to the right schools.
Steeplejack
@Yarrow:
Liz Truss may be running less in front now that it has come out that she took a chartered jet to Australia for £500,000 at taxpayer expense (of course).
SiubhanDuinne
@Yarrow:
That is like something from a movie version of a Stephen King novel. SHUTTER!!
Yarrow
@Steeplejack: By the time they get around to a leadership contest that will be old news. Tories don’t really care about wasting taxpayer’s money.
burnspbesq
Perhaps Eddie Howe could be persuaded to replace Boris. Restoring credibility to Her Majesty’s Government would be quite a bit easier than his current gig.
Tony Jay
One thing I’m very much looking forward to once Johnson has been consigned to the Pit of Failed Nobodies is giving you the run-down of Who’s Who in the next Tory Leadership race. It’s getting harder and harder to say anything new about Gizzardface, I’m feeling the need to be obscenely direct about the failures of more absolute gobshites.
Kalakal
@Yarrow: And Rees-Mogg is talking complete crap as usual. Examples of the PM changing without an election include Bonar Law to Asquith, Churchill to Eden to MacMillan, Wilson to Callaghan, Thatcher to Major, Blair to Brown and Cameron to May to Johnson
Rees Mogg Full Of Constitutional Crap https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2022/01/rees-mogg-full-of-constitutional-crap.html
Brachiator
@Tony Jay:
So Boris seems to be saying “I did not break the law, but if I did, so fucking what. I am your Prime Minister no matter what. And look at how fat that minister over there is.
Also, do I have this right?
Tories: Vote for BREXIT and no immigrant can steal your job. Jobs for everyone!
The People: We voted for BREXIT. Still ain’t got no jobs.
Tories: Universal Credit expires after 4 weeks. You will take any goddam job available or die in a ditch! You are a bunch of lazy bastards!!
The People: What about a higher minimum wage?
Tories: Guess again, you miserable yobs!
Tony Jay
@burnspbesq:
Ha! It still includes plenty of sucking up to Saudi Royals and wishing you were in Europe, though.
Tony Jay
@Brachiator:
Yes, exactly, all of it.
It’s not even surprising anymore.
Greenergood
@Tony Jay: where’s your holiday- Cork, or the W of Scotland ? If Cork, the Russian exercises will be over. If W of Scotland, the submarine moves never end – every time a Vanguard sub goes past my window on the Firth of Clyde, I think ‘there goes 30 hospitals never built/staffed’ but Lockheed/Babcock/Thales shares are safe thank heaven!
Kalakal
And with exquiste timing another knife is inserted. During the evacuation of Afghanistan the UK made a a hash of the whole business. Quite a few Afghanis who aided British forces were left behing but 150 pet cats and dogs were airlifted out. The guy behind the effort was well connected and a chum of Mrs Flobalob, and it appears Flobalob overrode the MOD to prioritise the pusses and pooches. And Lordy, there are emails!
BBC News – Boris Johnson denies authorising animal evacuation from Kabul
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-60155840
Kalakal
As a bonus the whole squalid mess has given me my new band name. Goodfolks all prepare to be stunned by ‘Ambushed by Cake’!
The excuses and lies are beneath pathetic
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/26/ambushed-with-a-cake-defence-of-boris-johnson-inspires-mirth
J R in WV
@Steeplejack:
I believe you are quite correct. I did only hear about them on the radio, of course. Thanks for setting us Oll Korrect, though!
;~)
Brachiator
@Kalakal:
Rees-Mogg does not talk crap.
It is the finest, aged manure.
Steeplejack
@J R in WV:
Scans better on the 60lb letterhead stock. Elegant.
dimmsdale
Wow, Tony. Masterpiece-level language and wit propelled (if I’m not mistaken) by righteous and fully justified rage. The visual equivalent might be the Pythons’ “Upper Class Twit of the Year” sketch if the playing fields were composed of the broken, bleeding bodies of women, children, the elderly and the infirm. What horrid, horrid people. And we have them too, of course. The wheels maybe are coming off Boris’ (and possibly the Tory) wagon, just as the 1/6 commission and DOJ here are about to do to Trump’s jalopy (one would HOPE, at least)–but jeezus, the human cost of these peoples’ fecklessness. In any case, THANK YOU. If you ever felt like doing an exegesis of the Labour Party, I’d welcome it–I find their politics and personalities kind of incomprehensible.
J R in WV
@Brachiator:
Actually, not yet composted sewage from the local waste treatment plant…
Tony Jay
@Greenergood:
We’re off to Lismore, which I’m given to understand is midway between Oban and Tir-Na-Nog. Since it’s a bit of a drive from Liverpool, though, we’ve also got an Airbnb for a couple of nights right on the very end tip of the Firth of Clyde, which we were very surprised to see was bloody gorgeous country when we drove up it last year on our way to Bute.
We’re hoping that if we holiday there enough we can claim Scottish citizenship when England goes full on Blue Fascist.
J R in WV
@Steeplejack:
Yes, with embossed titles… and gold trim.
Tony Jay
@dimmsdale:
Oh Good Lord, I couldn’t. Speaking as a paid up Party member I paraphrase Cole when I say that I can no longer talk about the utter fucktards now running New New Labour without using language that could get me locked up.
Incompetent, immoral, deceitful wreckers who couldn’t organise a mass wank in a Catholic seminary, but would trample their own mother to get to a microphone so they could blame ‘The Left’ for it.
I guess that’s a maybe. 8-)
Steeplejack
@J R in WV:
But of course.
Tony Jay
@J R in WV:
Always a pleasure, JR.
Frank Wilhoit
@Kalakal: You mean Campbell-Bannerman to Asquith. (Apologies all round if someone has already pointed this out.)
Kalakal
@Frank Wilhoit: Yes, you’re right. There’s a laboured joke along the lines of “It’s unknown why I said Bonar Law” in there somewhere, he wasn’t even in the same party
JGreen
Unlurking here for a moment. Tony’s posts are always great, but since he can’t produce these masterpieces every day, you can get your fix of commentary about the latest adventures of Flobalob and his pals on YouTube. A guy named Phil Moorhouse does videos about the UK every day under the title “A Different Bias”, Most of them are about Johnson’s scandals and/or the failures of Brexit. They’re about 12-15 minutes each and while he doesn’t have Tony’s way with words, he gives you a very good description of what’s going on and some of the background too. The only possible problem is his (northern?) accent, but it’s not that hard to follow. Check it out.
Kalakal
@J R in WV: Private Eye makes extensive use of the legal partnership of Sue, Grabbit, and Runne
Miss Bianca
@zhena gogolia: Yeah, I’m afraid I lost it at the “incontinent gerbil” part as well. I was on a Zoom meeting at the time (multi-tasking!) and all I can say is, thank God for microphone mute and “no video” options. Otherwise I might have had some ‘splainin’ to do.
Brachiator
@Tony Jay:
I don’t get it. Rayner was on fire at a recent PM Question session, and I assume that she had full permission to blast away.
Bottom line questions: Does Labour want Rayner to be leader? Do they want Corbyn back?
I keep seeing Starmer kicked because he is a lawyer, not real working class, and most of all dull and not true lefty.
Does Labour want to win a general election, or are they happy to keep Tories in power until the right and pure and true Labour leader emerges?
mrmoshpotato
@mali muso: I’m only half way through, and I need a smoke and a stiff drink.
mrmoshpotato
@Tony Jay:
LOL!
Uncle Cosmo
@Kalakal: The law firm of Solly, Terry, Poor, Nash, DeBrutis and Short…wasn’t that Pynchon? (Google is not helping me here.)
Kalakal
@Uncle Cosmo: Wow, I’d forgotten that one
Salitieri, Poore, Nash, De Brutus and Short
Yeah it’s Pynchon from The crying of lot 49, it’s a pun on Hobbe’s line in Leviathan “Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”
frosty
@Uncle Cosmo: Yes, Pynchon. Salitieri, Nash, de Brutus, and Short. Probably from Gravity’s Rainbow where he threw out puns ad infinitum in several languages.
ETA I see I forgot Poore. And got the book wrong. Oops.
Another Scott
@Yarrow: Money … Money … Money … Money … Money …
12 year olds have an excuse.
Adult JRM? Not so much…
(repost)
Cheers,
Scott.
Ken
On the one hand, good for the Navy.
On the other, just whose orders do they have to follow, if not those of Her Majesty’s Government? Is this one of those weird UK things, where the Navy is technically under some obscure Earl who normally says “do what the PM and First Sea Lord tell you”, but legally can override them?
Tehanu
Just saying, Tony, I absolutely adore your posts on UK politics. You are a master of invective.
SectionH
This is a thing of beauty. Yeah, I’m gonna share it with some people I know in England. I think they’ll like it. [eta] A LOT.
Tony Jay
@Brachiator:
Sorry mate, this came through after beddy-byes, but I thought it deserved an answer.
Less permission and more “She’s the elected Deputy Leader and Starmer was out of commission with Covid”. The animus directed towards her by the Inner Circle has been intense and obvious. Remember back in the wake of the Hartlepool By-Election (when Starmer’s Labour lost a traditional seat to the Tories) there was a full-on campaign to blame Rayner and strip her of any real power. even though the campaign had been micromanaged by the odious Peter Mandelson? That failed in humiliating fashion and ended up with Rayner getting more power. Since then it’s been a litany of slights and micro-aggressions, the latest one of which was giving her a major speech at the start of the Party Conference that was deliberately bigfooted by Starmer’s announcement of changes to the Party election rules.
Basically, the circle around Starmer are paranoid fuckwits with the political skills of naan breads who look at Rayner and see someone ‘not of their faction’ and, recalling how badly that scumbag Tom Watson damaged Corbyn and the Party when he was Deputy Leader, want to destroy her so they can install someone like Wes Streeting.
It depends on what you mean by ‘Labour’. Personally I’d prefer Rayner over Starmer and his mob purely because she’s a conviction politician with her head screwed on right as opposed to a slimy bunch of backstabbing weasels with a track record of screwing up anything they touch and manipulating the bureaucratic machinery of the Party to exclude any other voices.
Would I have Corbyn back? On the one hand, yes, because he’s a very decent man who has been right on virtually every major issue and the way he was treated by the Establishment was obscene. On the other hand, no, because the caricature of him constructed by the Tories and the Right Wing of Labour would be a drag electorally and, frankly, he was far too moderate and conciliatory in his dealings with the ‘Blairite Bourbons’. They have to be crushed and driven out, otherwise Labour as a progressive force is dead.
The truth is, Starmer is dull, but I’d forgive that. I’d take dull over greedy and evil any day. His time as head of the DPP does have black marks, but I’m a grown-up, I know that sometimes you have to do and say things you’d rather not in order to achieve worthwhile ends. He might be a ‘Sir’, but he’s no toff, so that’s not an issue. But where he totally lost me was when he came into office promising unity and adherence to the popular policies of the 2019 manifesto and immediately declared factional war on the majority of the Party.
People who want unity don’t take the whip away from their predecessor on entirely spurious grounds just to pander to the Right’s taste for cruelty. They don’t install a Secretary General who makes it an expulsion worthy offense for Party members to talk about the previous leader. They don’t expel Jewish members for speaking out against Israel’s crimes. They don’t purge their Cabinet of anyone vaguely leftish and promote corporate funded slimeballs who spent the previous five years attacking their own Party.
The list goes on. I dislike Starmer because the faction he figureheads want to turn the Labour Party into a low membership, privately funded, corporate-friendly alternative to voting Lib-Dem, and to do so they want everyone like me kicked out. We’re supposed to be fighting the Tories, but far too many of his lot see people like me as the real enemy.
That’s a false choice. There’s fuck all evidence that Labour going Right will win them anything. I keep on hearing that Starmer’s mob are making the Party ‘electable’, but no one can point me towards any examples of them winning anything. Since they came in they’ve shed votes by the thousand and lost seats, so obsessed are they are with their idea of what ‘right and pure and true’ is. They’re up in the polls now not because of anything Starmer has done, but because Flobby is tanking the Tory Party.
Bottom line. I’d take any Labour Government over a Tory one, but the way New New Labour are going about it they’re going to complete Blair’s arc of driving away millions of former voters and wrecking the Party before they’ve even got to a General Election. Their factionalism and spite are unsustainable, and I simply don’t believe that with the Lib-Dems out there they can hoover up enough traditional Tory voters to make up for all of the traditional Labour voters they’re driving away.
tl:dr – It’s not just that they’re bad people, it’s that they’re incompetent as well.
Tony Jay
@Ken:
The Navy’s point was that the Government doesn’t get to order them to violate the human rights of refugees or break international law, which is what Patel’s plans for a Ring of Steel across the Channel would amount to.
seaninclt
@Tony Jay: because you got this stuck in my head now… blam
evodevo
@mali muso: You took the words right outta my mouth lol
Another Scott
@Tony Jay: Thanks for this.
I haven’t paid a lot of attention to Starmer, but what I’ve seen of him in PMQs and the like has been terribly frustrating. He doesn’t seem to understand that his job is to lead the main opposition to the Tories. Instead, he usually presents his arguments as “Well the Tories are implementing this bad policy, but they’re doing it badly and here’s how we’d implement this bad policy slightly better.” It’s no wonder that Labour has been losing seats under him.
:-/
Hang in there, and thanks for giving us a fuller picture of what’s going on over there.
Cheers,
Scott.