Sometimes it’s just the stark immorality, the irrationality, the sheer ugly insanity of it all, when reflected in a baying mob turned vigilante, that pulls you up short and offers the clarity of vision to see the poison that has infected this country’s political discourse.
It is truly amazing that the end of healthy democracy is represented in the man we now call prime minster.
We now witness a debasement of politics outside of a parliament. After what was said inside had already resulted in elected members losing their lives. A leader of the opposition was forced to be led away by police because the prime minister, aware that his words can cause fury, spreads lies about him to save his miserable skin.
Boris Johnson is a disgrace.
He will do whatever it takes to keep his power. If that means using Jimmy Savile’s tortured victims to make fun of him as Director of Public Prosecutions, knowing full well that populist conspiracy theories, rooted primarily in myths about paedophilia, establishment cover-ups, and other such topics, is just fine with him.
Johnson doesn’t care.
The prime minister was aware of the power of suggesting that Keir Sterner had intentionally let a serial child abuser get away with it. He knew he was giving the wink towards the wilder antivax, Anti-Establishment, Anti-Authority fringes that have served his well. He knew he was fueling the fire. He knew he would inflict wounds on the survivors. He knew it was a liar. But he didn’t care because what mattered to him was his own survival.
And after months, years, if not a lifetime, of ‘getting away with it’, of being caught lying, of bribing, of passing the buck, of disloyalty, of breaking the rules, of ignoring parliamentary protocols, turning a blind eye to lobbyists, cheats and ministerial bullies, humiliating allies, and of operating on a policy brief of sheer uncontrolled mendacity, this time, Johnson failed to read [even his own side of]The room.
Yes, Starmer was attacked outside parliament by the gullible, angry, and ignorant. But Johnson was losing ground inside the House.
Even the most loyal of his allies found the Savile smear unpalatable, while it was for us, just another example of how low this snake can descend.
Johnson has taken the integrity out of politics. Johnson has created an environment where evidence and facts are no longer considered to be the truth, and subjective opinions are accepted as gospel.
It’s a Trumpian perspective where black can be argued to be white and where the culture secretary, Nadine Dorries, the woman charged with overseeing the quality of our broadcasters, can, bizarrely, point-blank refuse during a television interview to acknowledge the indisputable fact that it was untrue of the PM to say that Starmer was responsible for not prosecuting Savile. Instead, she stated to the interviewer that she only had Starmer’s word as a journalist.
These are the times we live in.
We are being led by a double-dealing and duplicitous clown, who only has regard to himself and ridiculely for a legislator. He is only being saved by a police investigation into his lies.
This prime minister is the worst PM I have ever seen, and I lived through The Thatcher years. But his deceit has only made us more comfortable with his character. We become more accustomed to the idea that one person can be set straight so many times and still continue on regardless.
He is a man without shame, a man who doesn’t care about the dignity or privilege of high offices or the public he serves.
The former Conservative prime minister, John Major, has warned that the very bedrock of democracy is under threat because of Johnson and that parliament “has a duty” to act.
And yet for viewers in Scotland, who didn’t vote for Boris or for Boris’s Brexit, we are told there is a better way. The way to independence. And yet despite Johnson’s moral failings, despite Brexit, despite the pandemic, the hostility, the brutishness, the cost-of-living crisis, the SNP has done little to move the dial on support for that independence dream.
Nicola Sturgeon has promised to do “everything that’s within my power” to hold a referendum next year. But with Boris as the only argument currently being deployed as a reason for ‘yes’, he could soon be gone and then what?
The last independence referendum was lost by the numbers. Now, we’re back, with a campaign still not started and the SNP already in knots over pensions.
Although independence might appeal to the heart of many, it is an argument that has been won. Even Andrew Bowie, Tory MP, and arch-Unionist, can understand this passionate appeal. But independence will ultimately be won only on the practicalities, the nuts, the economics and the details about what happens to your and mine money and how it will all be spent. This work is still necessary.
And if your proposition to build a better future for Scots rests simply on the failings of one man then you’ll need more than just platitudes and wishful thinking to get us there.
