The Lockdown Files are important- nobody would deny that. Equally, we cannot lose sight of a broader, more terrifying picture in the swell of information from Hancock’s phone. The government continues to attack trans rights, demonise “small boat migrants”, platform ignorance and sow deeper division over Brexit. By all means pay attention to this story- but don’t forget about the rest.
No information in the “lockdown files” has shocked me. So Hancock leaned on the press not to report an influx of cases due to Sunak’s “Eat Out to Help Out” scheme- is anybody shocked that “people mingling during pandemic spread the virus” was a thing? Hancock should be arrested for industrial manslaughter- so should Sunak. Families who lost loved ones due to their hare brained schemes and self indulgent idiocy should be allowed to sue them. They should be castigated, reviled from high to low, never allowed to forget. But these are not shocking revelations that I don’t think anybody ever expected: I mean, really, dear reader- is it absolutely mind blowing to you that Matt Hancock, a man shallower than a Wilco’s spoon pushed to look after his public image? I already knew the man was a seething moron because I had to listen to his waffling prestiges on the news every day. Are you particularly surprised that our Prime Minister Sunak would watch your nan choke on her pleural fluid if it meant an extra £12 in taxes collected? It’s about as surprising as finding out that, shock horror, Boris Johnson likes to shag a lot of people he’s not married to.
But the government’s behaviour prior to and during this pandemic has demonstrated exactly who they were, are- and will continue to be.
Rather than knuckle down, they buckle- refusing to review economic models that have been thrown into abject chaos with the double fisted throat punch of brexit and the pandemic. Instead of focusing on how to protect and enlighten the British public, to combat disinformation, to improve British lives- they sow culture war seeds then use the sweat of red faced nationalists to water them. If it’s not small boat migrants or trans people or “THE GAYS” it’s people of colour or women, all bothering everyone with our polite requests to be treated with a modicum of respect. The government and a compliant media relentlessly feed us with the idea that we need to pull ourselves up with our bootstraps, that it’s nobody’s fault but ours – unless its migrants or LGBT+ people or our mothers, sisters and daughters.
The most frustrating part of the Lockdown Files is that it’s predictably being used by the media to justify a narrative that we were forced to abide by inhumane conditions. Perhaps we were- but what alternative was there? Should we have all taken the risk, never followed any restrictions and just hoped that getting infected with covid multiple times wouldn’t kill or disable us or our loved ones?
Lockdowns were awful. I grieved for my mother in total isolation, couldn’t even hug my father or touch her coffin to say goodbye to her. I didn’t do it lightly. I did it because my mother’s death from cancer was not a simple passing into the afterlife- her body was failing and, much like covid, her lungs filled up with pleural fluid and she drowned in front of me. And if I knew that there was a one in a million chance of suffering that fate, much less passing it on to someone else, someone with a wife and kids, I’d never have done it. I don’t know how much the government misled us- I’d like to. But I don’t regret being in lockdown if it meant that I didn’t get covid more (I’ve had it twice and am currently trying to find out if I have permanent lung damage from last time) and that I didn’t play a part in making more deaths inevitable.
The tories are scum. I’ve no doubt they manipulated us- because that is the essence of the tories. But they didn’t need to do it by enforcing lockdowns… The sleepwalking public in the UK has allowed them to decimate our protest and strike rights, made barely a peep as they enforced harsh new voting laws which currently have an estimated 2 million people without ID, they have unleashed a hurricane of hatred towards minorities and vulnerable people. All of this in plain sight, all of this widely spoken about.
As the tories continue to firm up on their nonsense plans to “stop” the small boats “crisis” one has to roll their eyes. Today, Braverman was quoted as stating that she hopes to “break the business model of people smugglers” with harsh new directives aimed at punishing… the people they smuggle? Firstly, if you aren’t going to do anything to the people smugglers one would assume they won’t care. Secondly- people smugglers. Not known to be the nicest of folk. They don’t and won’t care what happens to the people who get here- because they got paid already. Thirdly- there are ways to easily deal with people crossing on small boats. Opening processing centres in key countries would mean that those seeking asylum could do so from abroad and be retrieved should they be successful. But the government does not wantto solve the “small boats” issue. Because if they did, who would they blame for their uselessness? The moment the government actually makes a depreciation in small boat crossings it will be hailed as a victory but they will never actually try to solve the root issue- because these crossings make a convenient scapegoat. The same with every other minority with whom the government is playing chess right now.
From transgender rights and equalities being the subject of casual debate now, to Badenoch, our “women and equalities” minister who ignores myriad studies about benefit schemes for those suffering menopause, who cheers the bravery of a woman who says she would vote against equality for lesbian, gay and bi people- this government is utterly bereft of policy, they are without direction and vision and rather than any attempt to do better, to help the British people – they unfurl new banners to rally behind in culture war after culture war. The conservatives themselves are the rot at the center of our society- Boris Johnson was the first prime minister found guilty of breaking the law in office, Sunak has now broken the law twice. Braverman has been warned her rhetoric is akin to that of Adolf Hitler and she “refuses to apologise for it”. Hancock mocked the British public, saying we needed to be ‘scared into compliance’- treating us as cattle, rather than human beings with whom he could reason.
The conservatives are not good for the British public- they are malignant, a stain on our country. They help nobody, stand for nobody, stand for nothing. They should rightly be punished for every scrap of information leaked in the lockdown files- but this is not their only transgression, their only crime. They have spent years letting us down, severing our ties to a better economy, a brighter future, deepening our immersion in fake news. They play to the basest crowd, ignoring the majority of the UK who are decent people wanting for better. So if we are to hoist them by their own petard, let that petard weigh heavy with the shrapnel of the tories in totality- not a mere sliver of their crimes, neglect and abuse.
The rise and rise of polarisation has been a theme of everything I’ve been speaking about for a great many years now. From politics to consumption to the increase of moral panics, and then into the responses to the coronavirus pandemic, humans are being confronted by issues that pose great danger to us. So why are huge proportions of the human race determined to go with outlooks that may damage- or quite literally destroy- us?
There are two main arguments that absolutely flummox me every time they come up- and they do come up, every day. Climate change, and coronavirus.
Studies going back decades show that climate change is a huge threat. Sea levels could rise, the earth could heat up enough to disrupt sea currents which would cause mass death of marine life, the weather could be so destructive that we’d see mass death as crops wither in the fields. The main contributors to this emerging disaster are big businesses who refuse to do anything that may damage their profits- the main enablers are governments, who accept what we can probably call “legal bribes” to legislate protections into law for these businesses to continue. But behind the scenes, those businesses have also sunk money they could have used to change their models for something more green, to flood the internet with disinformation about climate change- and for some reason, a huge subsection of human beings- not big business owners or the politicians they pay for, but just everyday people have taken this information and fashioned it into a fight.
Climate change is not something you can deny if you believe in science. It’s happening. You might not be able to see it every day, but it is happening. It’s like denying the existence of the sea floor- you may have only seen it on documentaries but it is there… Yet these individuals are convinced that it’s all a scam, designed to tell us how to live! The core thinking that seems to revolve around this type of mindset is, as I’ll lay out here, rooted to the idea that essentially these people are extremist libertarians who don’t want to be told how to live. Oddly they’re fine with the laws that say they can’t be gunned down or robbed, that they legally own their own home and so on- just the suggestions they could throw paper and plastic in different bags are the ones they don’t like.
We see the exact same mindset with the coronavirus deniers- because yes, in 2023 people still exist who think coronavirus is a scam, made up. Having caught it in November and still having lung problems now, I can assure you it’s quite real and though my second brush with COVID-19 didn’t kill me, having lung problems 3 months later and having been forced to lie in bed for a solid week, death isn’t the only way viral illness can affect your life. But still, if they don’t deny covid they refuse to imagine a world where we’d continued on as normal and likely almost a billion people would have died. A survival rate of 97% sounds good until you realise that that means if everyone on earth was infected once, 240,000,000 deaths would have occurred just from viral infection. I, though, have been infected twice, some people multiple times. Three and a half United Kingdom’s worth of people would have died just from COVID, then those who needed healthcare outside of viral infection would have died due to overwhelmed hospitals. Supply chains would have completely fractured, goods would have ceased production. Famine, death en masse, long term health issues. All a worthy price to the people who think covid is a scam though!
The prevalence of these mindsets seem to revolve intimately around one thing- a cocksure attitude that you’re so right that it doesn’t matter about the possibility of being wrong because you aren’t, so these heinous scenarios could never occur.
Frustration buds from two main points here: if I’m wrong about climate change, we sink a lot of money into new energy solutions that hasten technological development and we harshly tax businesses for refusing to update their business model. I’ve no doubt a harsh pursuit of green solutions would cause societal change that would cause issues to the populace but we already have issues causing the populace problems -floods in Pakistan that wipe out whole villages, days so hot in the UK that asphalt melts, crop failures in vast patches of eastern Europe due to abrupt weather changes. Complaining about problems when there are problems is reminiscent of those who took pictures of empty shelves during early 2020 and posted them to social media saying “this is what Corbyn’s England would have looked like”, failing to see the irony of posting photos of Johnson’s England looking like their apparent idea of a worst case scenario. No, there is no easy way to pursue green solutions- but when the cost of not doing so is a smouldering crater for a planet perhaps it’s worth doing so.
You, when raising this, will predictably be met with people who will scoff: It won’t happen at all, it won’t happen for a long time or it won’t be that bad. The same absolutist confidence that I see as one of the main reasons humankind is doomed.
The world doesn’t have to follow the worst case scenarios for it to be a disaster. We don’t have to face ecological wipeout for climate change to ruin millions, tens of millions of peoples lives. If the seas currents do change it will affect those whose living relies on the sea not doing so. If the sea levels rise it will affect coastal living. If the climate stays the same as now the horrific flooding and storms and weather irregularities will continue- and that is a disaster already occurring. But the possibility of worse to come is still not enough- because the people who push the oppositional thinking aren’t directly affected; or are, but are not invested enough to care.
Looking at covid- this is not a virus that is simply going to vanish. Thousands of people a week are still dying. “What would you have us do” they will reply, “another lockdown that ruins peoples mental health and does nothing”. I don’t actually know how we could ever tackle coronavirus, but the issue is- there’s a gulf between “doing nothing” and “zero covid” and people refuse to budge one inch, refuse to wear a mask because “they aren’t effective” (I just finished reading my third study that shows they are). I asked an anti masker once, why do they bother you so much and after cornering her enough she confessed the truth. “I just don’t like being told what to do”. The terror I feel, being surrounded by a not insignificant number of people who will risk becoming a vector for a virus that’s ruined my lung capacity because they get offended at not being asked politely if they don’t mind very much to cover their face for five minutes is immeasurable. I can’t not go into this without mentioning how ridiculously obvious it is that these people are wrong. I keep seeing people posting about “adverse reactions to vaccines”. Yes, there were always going to be adverse reactions to vaccines; it’s been a known side effect since vaccines were created, and when you scale that up to billions of doses, shockingly those side effects that we already knew about- happen. You know what didn’t happen? The explosion of severely autistic people you were all talking about 5 years ago. If vaccines caused autism I suspect giving out over 16 billion vaccines might have caused a spike in people with autism… and yet here we are.
When it comes to covid and our thinking- if we’re wrong, you look a bit stupid because you’re wearing a mask when you don’t need to. Masks don’t cause any of the nonsensical rubbish people talk about, if they did, doctors and cleaners and builders would all be sick constantly. The worst that happens if we’re wrong is that you look weird in public. If you’re wrong, you are spreading a disease that can be as bad as a nasty cold and having had a few it’s rude and gross to spread that anyway, it can cause illness severe enough to take a 34 year old off his feet for a week and give him long term health issues, or it can mean someone ends up choking to death as their lungs fill up with pleural fluid. Is it worth that risk? Still, for many of these people, yes- hence my semi withdrawal from a society I was, until now, unaware was absolutely filled with people ranging from deluded to frighteningly callous.
The reason we’re told masks cause disease is because they can’t just rely on “I don’t want to” as an argument on an international scale. The reason we’re told that green solutions would decimate industry is because they think those industries won’t be decimated by an earth that becomes close to uninhabitable. And when it comes to other arguments- about marginalised groups etc, you will often find that it’s not enough to simply dislike others, no- people of colour are causing a “white genocide” just by existing, gay people are corrupting your children with drag, trans people are trying to sneak into spaces not for them… I often wonder if the people who fall into these utterly ridiculous ways of thinking genuinely believe them or they know that “I just don’t like them and I don’t want to change my mind because being wrong equals losing” is a stupid mindset.
Being wrong is not a sin
People seem determined to conflate incorrectness with losing. Being corrected on something you’re wrong about is not losing. Rejecting correct information and clinging to bias, bigotry or abject nonsense because you cant possibly be seen to be wrong is. Being wrong is usually a huge part of how we learn. We study at school and we write our sentences out and the teacher corrects our spelling and grammar and we learn. We make errors in our calculations and we’re shown where we make a mistake and we do better. Why does the idea of being corrected suddenly go from par for the course to equivalent to “losing” as soon as we leave mandated education.
The reason culture wars are such lucrative social currency is that the world has decided collectively that it’s better to fall into a tunnel of disinformation that backs up a lie than to bend to the acknowledgement of the objective truth. And many people without morals exist who are all too happy to partake- from Tucker Carlson whose show is so wildly unreliable that he has had to declare that he does not tell news but is a fictional show, to pundits in the UK like Jeremy Clarkson who is so blithely unaware of his radical hatred of women he writes columns about flogging and sexually assaulting women he doesn’t like.
Hartley-Brewer, Oakeshott, Coren, Johnson- these people’s careers are built on spinning the idea that the objective truth- of good relations with the EU, of climate change, of viral mitigations- are all bad. That we should be able to do exactly what we want, where and when we want because it is our right- and yet when your rights conflict with others physical safety, when your simple wish to display your face to the world consists of an unbalanced risk of viral disease, why is it suddenly feeling over fact, for the people whose moniker has always been, fact over feeling? Fact, climate change is real, you can see it happen in real time. Fact, masks work, vaccines work and covid kills. But we live now in the world of alternative facts, of fake news, a whole deep pool of comforting mistruths that people can dive into if simple reality is too much.
Ultimately, I wish I could say I didn’t care. I wish it was as simple as letting people get on with it. If you want to end up choking to death because of covid or going hungry because you set the world alight, I wish I could let you get on with it. But you’re dragging us down with you. The stupidest most selfish humans in existence are using the rest of us as collateral. And I am sick of it. If you want to die- die. I won’t stop you. But stop wrapping the noose around my neck too, and telling me to stop complaining about it.
We’re asked to move on from partygate. Just like we were asked to move on from the paterson scandal- move on from PPE VIP lanes, move on from late lockdowns and lacklustre pressers with poorly articulated advice. We’re asked to move on from a brexit that has pushed inflation up and contributed to (though not caused) the cost of living crisis. How many times will we be asked to move on, how many scandals must we endure before our society simply gives way. Johnson courts the rage of a wounded nation and asks our forbearance. I say no- do you?
The first time Boris Johnson faced recompense for his lies was the last 1980s. He’d shot off an article to the Times newspaper which included a quote from one of his relatives which described a salacious relationship. Readers were enthralled by his piece- until it turned out that Johnson had quite simply made the quote up in its entirety- in fact, his family member had died over 13 years before Johnson had described the events in his now fictional piece. The Times, quite rightly, fired him and Johnson faced a tough brush to scour clean from- that of a lying journalist. But many who know and have known Johnson have always been happy to make excuses for the man- ebullient, funny, a people person. All admirable qualities, until you contrast this with the other side of Johnson. A liar, a philistine, homophobic and most of all desperate to claw his way to the top.
Dominic Cummings today reminded us that Johnson described himself as “the fucking fuhrer” and as Mhairi Black harkened to with her haunting speech against encroaching fascism in Parliament only this week, this is all too close to the truth: Johnson’s unrelenting assault on parliamentary standards, aided and abetted by his cronies and a coalition of people who think he is the best man for the job and people who simply don’t care because they don’t trust any politician, has been an unprecedented ruination of the long standing pillars of democratic surety that have underpinned British living since long before our forefathers began casting out to other nations. Johnson’s ravening of the political codes of honesty, transparency and decency has led to a paralysis within parliament, an impossibility of holding the man to account. Prominent political journalists and MPs alike cringe in embarrassment as they see him trotted out to other nations, ostensibly to serve the role a prime minister should by making links with our fellows across the globe- but, always, without fail we await another gaffe, another stupid quote, another silly outfit or ostentatious speech punctuated with “forgive me…forgive me… forgive me” as he shuffles through his poorly prepared notes.
The office of prime minister was always meant for the best of us- for those amongst us who could rise to the challenge of overseeing a nation of people hopeful to live up to our nation’s history as world leaders, as a nation of hard workers who respect each other. Where has this proud history gone under the frizzy haired stormclouds that forment a Johnson rule. We often hear “isms” when referencing other political leaders- Blairism being a prime example, and Blairism is not looked favourably upon by a vast swathe of us- so what does “Johnsonism” enclose? Is it a desperation to reach the top job only to abdicate your duties to beleaguered staffers who get so drunk on power that they will ignore not only sensibility but morality:
Excerpt of the Sue Gray report where flagrant breaches of COVID guidance are written off as a “comms risk”
This is indicative of Johnsonism in its’ essence- Peter Oborne describes the time that he worked under Johnson at the spectator, where Johnson was rarely seen and left the running of things to more talented and able fellows, but was happy to sleuth in to take any credit whether due or not. But the converse is also true- Johnson, as he has done with partygate, is happy to hoist junior staffers on his admittedly short petard. Whilst taking what he calls “full responsibility” he overlooks the release of Allegra Stratton whose crime was to joke about the parties, he overlooks the sacking, moving or redeployment of staff to “shore up” Number 10- surely full throated responsibility would be that of a man humble enough to realise that these events occurred under his leadership and is indicative of a man seen as such a poor leader that they could occur in the first place- a man who realises he cannot lead, should not lead and will therefore step down to allow someone who can to take the reins.
But Johnson only seems comfortable when embroiled in scandal. Selling out his country comes naturally to him, as he did when he allowed himself to be cajoled into switching from remain to leave. Johnson’s only goal has ever been to be given the invisible crown of prime minister, and now it rests heavy upon his head he refuses to be wrested from his seat- no matter the cost.
Of course the world stuffers under this cost of living crisis- but we see other countries rushing to help- Spain implemented the sort of windfall tax labour has pushed for. Germany has issued care packages to its lower paid residents to protect them. Other countries are scrapping VAT. Johnson’s government is too deeply embroiled in the thrashing death throes of self preservation against its own scurrilous actions to actually help people. The usual mealy mouthed promises were mocked in today’s PMQs- what has actually been done to help people he was asked, and all we got was the usual recitation of thousands of nonexistent pounds for people on universal credit and open falsitudes about upcoming relief which are only enacted to bury rage over the Gray report- interspersed as always with fruitless swings at the opposition who haven’t touched power in 12 years and deeply disturbing jibes at leaders passed.
Johnson’s government exists as a self perpetuation of bad governance- the bad governance will continue under Johnson, and Johnson will continue under the bad governance. The tories should be routed from power, torn out root and stem for their open rebellion against their much touted phrase, “the will of the people”.
The will of the people is thus:
Credit YouGov poll
Over sixty percent of the British population has held for months that Johnson should leave his role, because honesty and integrity are not parlance for the working class, they are discs of the spine that holds up British pride in democracy- and Johnson is spineless. If he truly wished to fulfil the will of the people, his next step is clear.
As to his enablers, they fought their way into Downing Street on that very promise- to fulfil the will of the people- even today, they declared that brexit was done, not even a week after the intractable promises Johnson made to blow up his own post brexit trade agreement meaning that negotiations would restart- hardly done, is it? An Irish MP asked Johnson to promise that Brexit wouldn’t deter the government from assisting Irish citizens- he could not fulfil that promise. So is Brexit done, or will we still keep watching British standing in the world’s eyes diminish for the ego of one? Every MP who stands behind Johnson has signed their own temporary contract. Not one who willingly backed this man and sang his praises will remain in post when the change to remove them comes.
For Johnson’s government to continue is to endorse more despatch box lies, more fragmented promises and more figmentary notions of bettering a country who will only suffer beneath the weight of a man wholly unprepared for the job he has been given by grift, not graft.
To harken back to one of his own MPs during the initial findings of the Downing Street parties- in the name of God, go.
Daviemoo is a 34 year old independent writer, radicalised into blogging about the political state of the world by Brexit and the election of serial failures like Trump and Johnson. Please check out the rest of the blog, check out Politically Enraged, the podcast available on all streaming platforms and share with your like minded friends! Also check him out on ko-fi where you can keep him caffeinated whilst he writes.
It is quite apt that this piece’s title is a paraphrased quote from Edmund Burke, often regarded as the philosophical founder of conservatism. Remaining silent at a time when truth to power must be spoken is often the catalyst for corruption to take hold, embed its toxic roots and create something so diabolical.
In the context of an institution, it can have the knock-on effect of keeping the silent in an uneasy state of complicity – speak up, and risk losing everything you have garnered so far, damn yourself while also acknowledging that you benefited from the corruption. Stay silent, condemn others to the corruption, and allow its toxic roots to strengthen and grow until they can no longer be removed without doing away with the institution entirely.
And this is why it is so apt to reference Burke; this is the situation Conservative MPs find themselves in.
It has no lie that the Conservative Party has placed many of its electoral hopes upon the character that Johnson portrays. To many across the country, he isn’t Johnson, Mr Johnson or Prime Minister – he is “Boris”. He created an “every-man” figure that relates to the common person in the street (despite having studied in Eton and lived a life none of us could ever imagine!).
It seemed like a great idea at first; pinning their hopes upon “Boris” won them a landslide in the 2019 election, helped them convince the British people that they could “get Brexit done” and had the power to vote through whatever legislation they wanted.
And then, as it goes with every tale too good to be true, reality hit hard.
He is currently overseeing a cost of living crisis, with the options to implement a windfall tax and cut VAT to lessen the impact on citizens being rejected – by himself and his government. Asylum seekers arriving in Britain are being sent to Rwanda. The right to freely vote and the right to protest are being infringed upon. Inflation has hit a 40-year high, reaching 9%. The “oven-ready deal” Johnson promised on Brexit had expired, with the plan to rewrite the Northern Ireland Protocol rejected by both the EU and US.
And, of course, he is the first sitting Prime Minister to have broken the law. This is a fact that no matter how much Boris Johnson would like to brush under the carpet, isn’t going away anytime soon.
While so many sacrificed seeing loved ones, some for the last time, Johnson broke lockdown rules and held illegal parties in 10 Downing Street.
What has been the response from MPs, to everything that has so far transpired? Have they held a vote of no confidence, kicked Johnson and his allies out of the party and reformed top-to-bottom?
Not quite…
A flurry of “no confidence” letters here, the occasional television interview calling on Johnson to resign there – but no action. The threshold needed to trigger a vote of no confidence has yet to be met, and the MPs that make their grievances public continue to serve under the Prime Minister.
They stay quiet, while evil triumphs.
Jack Meredith is a prominent political activist found on twitter, tiktok and often writing for the Lib Dem Voices- his social media is linked at the top of the article.
This morning’s front page of the Daily Mail is dedicated to Sue Gray, and is a desperate attempt by the Conservatives to smear a woman who may be about to release a bombshell report into the lacklustre leadership number 10 has endured under the eternally prevaricating hands of Boris Johnson. Even the snippets of the released report were a tacit indictment of leadership at number 10 under Johnson: but the stories in the news made that clear. Suitcases of booze being dragged into the back door, sneering civil servants mocking the sacrifices of the public on video despite the seniors involved clinging to their role and drugs being found in the toilets of our most ancient and esteemed political buildings. The findings speak for themselves. As many in the UK shear off into debt and hopelessness under the cost of living crisis, as more fold their businesses because they cannot compete with bigger competitors thanks to the red tape of brexit and as still more sign off sick from work because there is no mitigation against the coronavirus that still quite literally plagues us, the government wraps tightly around itself for protection: but what good is a government more dedicated to self preservation than the country it swore to serve?
Rishi Sunak still continues to ignore the increasing cacophony of voices asking for an emergency budget to ease the cost of living crisis- will this be released at the same time as the Sue Gray report to distract us? Or will the report be a wash, protecting Johnson et al from the accusations that they are simply not up to snuff when it comes to representing the UK as a functional government. One can only imagine the cruelty behind a government who holds back vital relief as a figleaf to cover its continued dodgy dealings- and yet this is the government we have. Johnson appears to have murdered half the cats in London at this point, so desperate he has been to fling a fresh corpse onto the table at PMQs for weeks to distract from the shambles of his cabinet: and yet no amount of salacious stories can detract from the very real bodies of the over 155,000 dead covid patients, or the upcoming wave of people who starve or freeze because simply living in the UK has become too expensive. Today Johnson’s face adorns the Guardian as he apparently “insists that working is the solution to the cost of living crisis”- yes, make more money for the conservative government who wasted billions on dodgy PPE, wrote off still more in covid fraud, who signed a brexit deal that has decimated businesses across the length and breadth of the country– but don’t work from home of course, you’ll be too distracted by pelotons and ironing to make that vital money to ease us through the crisis that’s completely out of our control and has always been in the hands of the tories.
And what have the tories done over the last six months to prepare us for this? Spent hours shoving officials into every news stream to talk about how minor and unimportant our officials throwing off the laws they enshrined is, blamed woke lefty remainers for being outraged about lacklustre race reports of the relocation of refugees to Rwanda, or made fat jokes at Ian Blackford when questioned about their behaviour. This is the bar of governmental probity set by Johnson, and the sooner he is gone the sooner we can ask that this bar be raised- and yet a core of the British public still admire the man for simply ploughing on like the titanic across the face of an iceberg- but we cannot hate the people who believe Johnson is above reproach because he has cultivated this opinion carefully via manipulation across the face of the country over many years.
Once upon a time, the Conservative party was a party that commanded respect for their rigour in adhering to the letter of the law- now they are stewarded by a man who is so dishonest we find ourselves questioning even easily provable statements he makes: people spend their time untangling the prime ministers’ words which are always dishonest at their core: G7 recovery is slow when he tells us we excel, the vaccine rollout is a storming success when it has all but stopped, the virus is over as hundreds of people die a week, brexit is done as he argues the importance of a border he signed into existence, work will fix the cost of living but he has done nothing to address the root cause of energy pricing, infrastructure, he hiked NI… tories tories tories, always the answer comes back to the government and their poor showing, but listening to them, we refused the lockdowns, refused the vaccines, refuse to work to address the cost of living- Johnson creates the problems then uses the population of the UK to soak up blame for them- and to the rest of the cabinet?
From a justice secretary with an appetite for scrapping human rights protections and replacing it with his own twisted version of what protection he, a man who believes “British workers are amongst the worst idlers” to a foreign secretary who was forced to resign for holding meetings with foreign officials for undisclosed reasons- and is now being asked to do the same over her lies about humane conditions for refugees and signing off on multiple bills which break international law- from a culture secretary who doesn’t understand the funding model of channel 4 and ITV and who thinks 96% of people being against privatisation is 96% of people for it: then we have an education secretary who wants to place trans children in harms way and endorses smacking, a transport secretary who denies the very existence of brexit backlogs… these are the bedrock of the government that continue to rot away at their own tenet of “the will of the people”. If the will of the people were to be observed, Boris Johnson with his 26% approval rating would be clearing holes on a golf course or back to writing his poorly researched columns: but still he sits on the proverbial throne of the UK and the UK public continues to reap what it sowed by installing such a man.
Whatever happens next the UK is in for a rough ride: even if a Starmer government took over tomorrow, a hostile press plus the malfeasance of the tories’ 12 year tenure has poisoned the UK’s political purity and left us with myriad issues- and so many are asked to believe over and over that the only cure is to just believe in Johnson harder, believe he can fix his own mistakes.
Brexit was a byproduct of the UK being sick of the status quo, an arguable thumb on the nose of our collective ire with how things were being done. When people realise that this constant upheaval and political punditry to the detriment of the everyman, woman and they is the status quo under Johnson and that they could have it better under someone else: what will they do?
I’ve been told many times that I cannot rely on a litany of the terrible things the tories do to endear people to voting for an alternative: and yet I have to ask why? Why people are willing to accept this over anything else? “Labour would be worse” doesn’t wash with me: I’d rather see Starmer, or Rayner, or anybody else on the left try and fail than watch as Johnson continues to wrap his tendrils across the face of our struggling country and drag us still deeper into the mire of his government’s creation because trying and failing is, by all accounts, better than wilfully allowing the UK to degrade as Johnson climbs on our piled bodies to claim he alone is above it all.
Daviemoo is a 34 year old independent writer, radicalised into blogging about the political state of the world by Brexit and the election of serial failures like Trump and Johnson. Please check out the rest of the blog, check out Politically Enraged, the podcast available on all streaming platforms and share with your like minded friends! Also check him out on ko-fi where you can keep him caffeinated whilst he writes.
As the met concludes the investigation they had to be pressured into a vast portion of the country is left asking ourselves: did the met police perform the coverup many of us suspected- and are we now stuck with a dead cat for a prime minister?
In November 2021 when news first broke of parties in Downing Street, there were many amongst our number in the UK who were less surprised that our government ministers would flout vital safety law than shocked it took so long for another scandal to surface.
At the time huge interest was piled onto those who were in the know: Pippa Crerar’s journalistic moxxie turned up evidence that Allegra Stratton, who had already been struggling as the tories’ answer to the UK press secretary in the form of Jen Psaki, had openly joked about the fact that the rules had been thrown off at the height of lockdown, giggling with her colleagues about cheese, wine and impropriety. The video showed what could charitably be referred to as distain for the rules as tory staffers laughed about ignoring safety guidance, especially in the line “and it was not socially distanced”. We wouldn’t have long to get used to Stratton’s face smirking across our screens before a new, HD Stratton video emerged: her resignation, tears running freely outside her house as she assured a raging public that she would “regret her actions for the rest of her life”. But what actions was Stratton referring to: she had merely joked about the rules being discarded by colleagues? So naturally came the next line of questioning: if the woman who joked about laws being broken at the archaic heart of british democracy was to go- who else would? What would the punishment for this rule breaking behaviour be?
Cut dramatically to bombshell after bombshell: there were MULTIPLE parties! Sunak was at one! And it didn’t take long before the revelation we all waited for: Boris Johnson, prime minister was in attendance at not just one- but several- of these events.
Johnson, for his part had fallen on his usual habit of trying to lie his way out of trouble: after all, he lied his way into Downing Street on the promise of getting brexit done (how is that going, Prime Minister- fixed the border yet?). But the collective weight of grief, anger and appetite for truth (mixed as always with our obsession with scandal) meant the british public would not, as we have been told by a multitude of Johnsons’ staffers, “move on”. At first Johnson denied parties had taken place at all, the idea was ludicrous! Then he gravely assured us he was as furious as we were at the accusations- how very dare his silly staffers hold parties in his residence! Then came the denials that he attended any events himself- then photos of him at said events rolled in, to which he responded that it was not a party, it was a work event- then photographic evidence of him reclining with multiple staffers and his wife and the decorator for his flat appeared- was this a work event, with people who weren’t staff there? Well no, he said, it was a party- but he didn’t know it was a party you see, how could he, for the prime minister who flew from a meeting about Putin’s use of a deadly toxin on home soil to a KGB agent’s son’s party couldn’t possibly know what a party looks like- then when emails confirmed he did know it was a party the tact changed again- yes it was a party, he did know it was a party but he didn’t know parties were against the rules but he was very sorry and he would commission a report into it all so we could see the extent which our democracy was being mocked.
When the Gray report was inches from our outstretched fingertips suddenly the met police leapt into action- despite earlier stating they did not investigate retrospective breaches and predictably the line shifted from “just wait for the Sue Gray report” to “just wait for the conclusion of the met police investigation”. Wait, wait ,wait they said, forgetting it seems that while they threw back cheese and wine and laughed at podiums we had lost two years of our lives to isolation and now we were being asked to wait for justice to be served to those who couldn’t adhere to the same rules we had. Now the Gray report remains the only bastion of hope for holding the government to account – but therein lays the flaw that exposes the deepest issues we have with forcing this government to account for its wrongdoings: you cannot force someone to account for something they don’t feel regret over.
Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, the staffers- nobody feels remorse for their actions: they feel irked that they were exposed and embarrassed, angry that they had to divert resources away from what they actually care about to try and placate what they see as a sea of baying ingorami and confused that they should have to defend their actions. The line will go that “nobody died so who cares”. We are force fed lines about cake and Prosecco and how everyone just wants to be angry and offended. But not one amongst those who helped topple the respectability of british politics understands the root issue.
We- the people- were expected to follow these rules, asked to do as we were told, requested to do what was right, moral, safe- because at the same time as Johnson was quaffing wine and discussing the robustness of cheese with his colleagues, people were sat on the floor of their homes, desperately depressed and alone, mourning people whose chests were filling up with liquid as they drowned- funerals were held with barely any attendees. People were driven to suicide by trying to do the right thing and protect others. Mothers lost sons, sons lost fathers, fathers lost brothers. A million new disabled people, damaged in one or more ways by infection with a dangerous virus, many- most- of whom tried their best to avoid catching the coronavirus. We were told Johnson was only at one event for nine minutes- nine minutes I would have loved to have spent with my newly widowed Dad, or one of my two sisters as we all struggled to cope with the loss of my mother.
The breaking of rules was a big issue because even one slip up, one forgotten mask, one unwashed hand could have meant further spread of the virus that has stolen two years of our life and continues to kill hundreds of our countryfolk a week. Some of us worked hard for two years to ensure we stuck as best we could to the rules laid down by the Johnson government and to see his open flippancy in defying those rules then to watch the met gently chuck Johnson on the chin, employing the notion that Johnson cannot be punished for every event because they happened at his home so he “had” to be there is not our own chuck but a slap to the face.
The Johnson government has desperately tried to amend what it sees as the flaws of British society- wilful disregard and distrust for the office of prime minister- but who can respect a prime minister who drags us, still connected at the artery of Ireland, from the EU and watches us bleed whilst blaming them for the damage- who can respect a prime minister who “shook hands with” covid patients even as the deadliness of the virus was being questioned, the man who enforced harsh rules and penalties on everyone else but never for one moment believed he would adhere to them himself – the man who took away protest, made it harder to vote- the man who has utterly prostrated himself at the altar of ego, heedless of the cost of his own lies even as we paid the price.
Boris Johnson is, I hope, the worst prime minister the UK will ever see. The question now is not is he the worst: it is how long will he remain in post, and until Johnson realises that his desperation for validation will not be sated by a country sick to the back teeth of his embarrassing actions, he will continue to drag us further into the cut de sac of fruitlessness that his worse than lacklustre tenure has provided so far: so to the tories who surround Johnson and seek to protect themselves as much as he, remember this: your days are numbered and you are tarnishing yourselves every moment you remain his loyal lapdog. History is written by the victors and you lose every day you stand by his side. Either relinquish your white-knuckled hold on the hackles of the man who has destroyed you or go down in history as an enabler of the worst prime minister in the history of the United Kingdom.
Daviemoo is a 34 year old independent writer, radicalised into blogging about the political state of the world by Brexit and the election of serial failures like Trump and Johnson. Please check out the rest of the blog, check out Politically Enraged, the podcast available on all streaming platforms and share with your like minded friends! Also check him out on ko-fi where you can keep him caffeinated whilst he writes.
As Boris Johnson’s fist tightens around the throat of democracy, one has to ask: will he jump or be pushed, and will we be gathered around the coffin of our long standing governance before long… or can we resuscitate the UK’s political sphere into something recognisable when he goes?
Many scholars who study authoritarian regimes have spoken out about commonalities between the conservative government and more radical and open authoritarian governments across the world: one of the keenest scholars of authoritarian legislature is known as OpenBookshelf on several social media platforms, and I recently invited her to speak with me about authoritarianism.
The meat of our conversation focused around the subversion of any attempt at democratic discourse under the Johnson regime- from the effective illegalisation of protest to seeking to overrule judicial decisions, effectively giving the government unilateral powers of censure: these are tools of truly toothless governments seeking to solidify support under the silence of the oppressed.
Johnson’s cabal embodies the antithesis of “the other”: rich (but not all rich), white (but not all white), brash (but not all brash). It is a cabinet that personifies the worst aspects of the British public and seems to work to the destruction of the offices they helm, all the way from a home secretary whose parents naturalised and who harbours what seems to be a sociopathic distaste for people who come from overseas (all legally, as there is no illegal way to seek refuge…), a simpering culture minister who did not know that the de facto video hosting site for everything from politics to cookery to DIY, YouTube, was being “used by young people to learn things”– a chancellor of the exchequer who has been overseeing the rules that allowed his wife to pay less tax than she was due to pay in the UK and refuses to clarify whether he too is a benefactor.
The problem with this cultish populist government, if you’d like to pick one specific problem, is that this acidification of the pillars of democracy will lead to a fatal erosion: and what will be left when the corinthian columns of freedom no longer exist?
Well, to fret over that, one has to believe they do still exist and I, for one, do not.
In a democracy, a government who obtained 44% of the vote overall would not be in power with a huge majority: the tories spent more time splitting the left vote with endless smears of a fairly decent politician in Corbyn, promising empty shelves (as they delivered not once but twice during the pandemic) and escalated bills and taxes (as they have now provided so expertly). But Corbyn’s labour had it’s own myriad problems from upheld claims of anti jewish sentiment to internal saboteurs, and the left vote was split so widely that we have this watered down opposition bench and a furious SNP desperate to extricate itself from English politics and be done with Westminster once and for all- however you may feel about indyref one or two, it would be churlish to deny that Scotland has founded grievances especially after watching the tories openly jeering Ian Blackford during today’s debate about Johnson’s wilful lies at the despatch box: any pretence that Scottish politics is respected in parliament is belied by their actions.
Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’
Winston Churchill, speaking about democracy and it’s flaws
Democracy may not be perfect- America’s downfall to and through Trumpism and the UK’s similar crash and burn into Johnsonism has demonstrated this. And yet Democracy means something tangible to all and sundry who rest under it: it is infinitely preferable to the invisible shackles of other rules where the will of the people is so thoroughly ignored or discounted.
In a democracy, a failing and floundering party in charge would not be propped up by press punditry, where regulars who knew of Johnson’s failure to uphold the standards of the PM would have reported without delay, or going further back would simply have been honest about his unsuitability for the job. Instead he was painted as the roguish journo turned political pundit who would magically MUGA- Make Us Great Again.
In a democracy, a party who repeatedly broke manifesto pledges is… well, par for the course, unfortunately- everybody knows that manifesto pledges are subject to change dependant on the conditions of the world but the conservatives are diligent at one thing only: disregarding manifesto promises under the guise of covid, brexit and war. Many conservative voters have been programmed to believe that the war in Ukraine is responsible for escalated energy prices and tax hikes: but both were decided long before Putin’s fist came down upon the border of Ukraine and this can be seen on this very blog- I spoke months ago about the proposed NI hike and my disgust at a government wilfully raking money away from the British proletariat. The broken promises aren’t the main issue so much as the lies around their reasoning: a desperation for cash, the wilful dismissal of concerns around energy storage and long term green infrastructure and terrible health secretaries forcing restrictive contracts on doctors, or more bothered about kissing colleagues than running an effective health service have led to an NHS strapped for cash and bent backwards over the knee as covid continues to kill over 500 people a day.
In a democracy, then, we would see feasible solutions to a government who has proven itself unable to front its duties: but we don’t. We see a desperate cadre of MPs more concerned about their pay packets than the corruption seething at its core. Johnson was not the architect of the erasure of democracy- it far precedes him- but he is the accelerant, the petrol upon the slow burning flame that has now turned into an explosion through our oft highly regarded political spectrum and this is glaringly obvious to those who dare to stare into the flash point.
Under the last labour government the education secretary resigned because exam targets were not hit, despite the protestations of the prime minister of the time. That is honour, and duty and overall the brave ownership of a job not so well done. In place of that long respected system of accountability we now see cronyism at it’s finest as Johnsonite stooges circle the bullet-riddled wagons to protect a man who has completely derailed transparency in politics.
Johnson’s ascent to power was solidified between (as Supertanskiii has spoken extensively about) client journalism a la Laura Kuenssberg, an ever increasing tory bias at the BBC and a desperation to empower a right wing leader with supposed Charisma: whatever you think of Johnson, somehow he manages to capture the credulity of smarter people. He has been described as roguish and comedic, hosted TV shows and written entertaining articles utterly bereft of fact. Add to that the indulgent upbringing of a boy who is quoted as saying he wished to one day be king of the world and powerful friends like Evgenny Lebvedev assuring him that he would rise to the top job if he backed brexit and you see that Johnson has both clawed for the job and been pushed uphill by those with agendas he could fulfil: now at last that Brexit has decimated the economy but deepened the pockets of the already wealthy, perhaps his ‘good friends’ are done with him at last- will the PM so known for leaving the wreckage of marriages, friendships and reputations in his wake hear the crash when his marionette strings fall loose at last and he falls to earth from his ascension?
Until Boris Johnson is ousted from his lofty perch and finally feels the sting of repercussions for his scorn towards the office and the British public we will only see this merry go round of fervent front benchers and unashamed back benchers forced before us to defend, deny and distract us at the valuable expense of our dignity and the last shreds of their respectability. The conservative government has long commanded my grudging respect as a party that will ruthlessly do what it takes to uphold it’s own values. Now it does not even have that. I am not their target audience, not their voter base- but their expert job in alienating their voters to enshrine a man who has destroyed their credibility has been something to behold, and until they decisively show Johnson the door for his misdeeds, his shadow will be cast long and wide over the always detestable but once, at least, respectable- Tory Party, henceforth known as the party of illicit parties.
Daviemoo is a 34 year old independent writer, radicalised into blogging about the political state of the world by Brexit and the election of serial failures like Trump and Johnson. Please check out the rest of the blog, check out Politically Enraged, the podcast available on all streaming platforms and share with your like minded friends! Also check him out on ko-fi where you can keep him caffeinated whilst he writes.
On the 20th March 2020 my mother finally passed away after days of agonising struggle due to terminal cancer. The pandemic shrank to a dot in my periphery as the woman who raised me passed slowly away before my eyes. As she let out her final breath I knew my world was immutably changed. And whilst this is not a unique experience, the world of isolation I then awoke to days later was: mourning in isolation was agonising, but I, but my sisters, but my dad, but many other people did it. And as we awoke daily to a world of death and sickness, mourning our loved ones, Prime Minister Boris Johnson threw unashamed parties at the seat of British democracy. So the question now is: consequences or a shirking of the rule of law… do we live with democracy or mockery?
I remember the first day of lockdown, sitting in my flat watching the news, petrified to even open my front door. I lived in a high rise at the time, my neighbours door directly next to mine, neighbours further down the hall left and right. Our hallway became a danger zone: what if they had it? What if I went for a walk, for my mail, for some milk- and caught coronavirus? Fortunately for me, I was too absorbed by trying to make sense of a world where I couldn’t text my mum and ask her questions: how are you? How was the day? That was ripped away by cancer, and all too many people face this horrific reality. But others are lucky: they have family, friends, a support system.
Not only did I have to face a world bereft of that voice of comfort I’d had since birth but I couldn’t even be around another person.
At first it wasn’t a struggle: I just wanted to be alone to absorb it all. But as it began to dawn on me that I was that much more alone the weight began to pile onto my shoulders. I kept picking up my phone to text her and realising I couldn’t. I kept finding things I’d ask her: what can I read, what’s good on TV, what was she eating? Gone. But then the memories: seeing her getting weaker, smaller, paler, sicker. I just wanted to talk to someone about it and as I sat there alone with those awful thoughts repeating I coined a phrase for it: I just wanted to get the venom out. I wanted to talk to someone to remove the poison from those memories, to seek comfort.
I didn’t.
I was alone for the entirety of the first lockdown bar running into my ex and close friend down by the river in Leeds. We stood feet apart petrified of infecting each other. I knew coronavirus would probably make me very sick judging on what’s happened to me before when I’ve had other viruses. So we said our hellos, I said some brief fluff about coping and then went back to my flat alone where I found a wine glass mum gave me and cried.
I don’t want or need sympathy for it: losing your mother is an unfortunate inevitability for vast swaths of people. Losing your mother to aggressive cancer is also too common. But facing the enormity alone was bizarre.
Eventually I started going for daily walks and ironically, instead of following the towpaths down by the river or any of the usual nature rambles I headed into the city: because every normal walk was packed with other people. I walked desolate streets, turned around when I saw others making sure I avoided people at any cost. All the while, my brain liked to replay the horror over and over again.
My mother’s passing was the opposite of what you’d want for your loved one. It was not peaceful, there was no dignity. Only a slow agonising crawl to the end. And I relived that over and over, day and night. Alone.
Fast forwarding over a year of grief and much isolation, we approach the time of the partygate leaks.
My instant reaction was to laugh: I was so numb to tory corruption, ineptitude and disingenuousness that at first I thought it was funny that these people couldn’t even apply the laws they created to themselves. Then the laughter stopped. I thought about how I wasn’t allowed to carry my mother’s coffin because of risk of confection. I thought about how I had to speak to four people, all socially distanced at Carleton Crematorium. I thought about how I couldn’t hug my dad as he openly wept as I read out my mother’s eulogy. And I remembered my mother’s co workers gathered feet apart near the doors of the chapel as we left, unable to come in. And a sense of injustice so profound I could barely contain it welled up in me, so strong I could barely contain it. I wept openly to my friends that night (on voice note because omicron was spreading at the time)- isolated again and facing this news.
The balance of this piece is not ever to say that the laws were unjust: anything that contained the horrors of coronavirus and protected people was necessary. It is a rallying cry to action for those who lost family, friends and more, or for those who just did the decent damn thing. We sacrificed months of our lives gladly to keep people safe, to “stop the spread”, we “hands face space”d, we “got boosted now”. Meanwhile the foetid government’s corrupt members, from lowest administrator to the very highest man himself, eschewed responsibility to themselves, to each other -to us, their electorate, for the sake of quaffing wine and beer, for Christmas parties, leaving do’s and more. Photographers caught jolly moments we couldn’t fulfil ourselves. We did what we had to do whilst our highest elected officials, those we used to be able to expect the most from betrayed us, our trust and our country as a whole.
I’ve had my upset around being alone to mourn written off as “gutter journalism”, “political fluff”, “nonsense” and more by conservatives more bothered about keeping their own jobs (and second jobs no doubt, for they have dropped any proceedings into the fallout from the Paterson scandal) than decency, justice, political surety.
Ineptitudinal attitudes around brexit will eventually scar over into functional trade as, down the line, adults step in to undo the damage of a Johnson tenure. Economies will recover, world esteem will rise. But our loved ones will not undie.
The conservatives cannot be trusted, must NOT be trusted to continue to drag this great nation to it’s knees, to prostrate our justice before the altar of hedonism that is right wing populism and Boris Johnson in particular must be cast from his starring role as charlatan in chief, with his puppet Rishi Sunak in support as bank robber. Nadine Dorries and her clueless gesticulations over a media she is undoubtedly not in control of yet oversees, Dominic Raab’s “ships passing in the night” acquaintance with justice… the list goes on 539 times.
Britain deserves better than this. We, you, I- deserve better than this. When people say Boris Johnson tried his best it matters not whether it is true. If it is not true and he did not try his best, he was not fit to be prime minister. If he did try, and this is his best: he is not fit to be prime minister.
Daviemoo is a 34 year old independent writer, radicalised into blogging about the political state of the world by Brexit and the election of serial failures like Trump and Johnson. Please check out the rest of the blog, check out Politically Enraged, the podcast available on all streaming platforms and share with your like minded friends! Also check him out on ko-fi where you can keep him caffeinated whilst he writes.
What was it that broke me? Was it the not feeding school children? Was it the continual Hokey Cokey in and out of lockdown? The deaths of over 150,000 people in the UK? The illegal VIP lanes for PPE magnates to get rich off of defective equipment which was meant to keep people alive? Perhaps it was the lassitude in throwing all restrictions off but gaslighting everyone into “doing the right thing” when people already can’t afford to. I don’t know any more. But what I do know, what I am convinced of all the way down to my bones- is that the Conservative party must face repercussions for their repeated dereliction of duty now, or worse will happen when they break us all.
James Cleverly recently said that we “don’t need a power vacuum at the heart of government”, as if Johnson’s departure would leave us with no prime minister, like a rudderless ship. Firstly the post would be filled but secondly, if a ship has spent it’s time repeatedly careening into dangerous waters perhaps the rudder is faulty. Better, I say, to have a power vacuum at the heart of government than a moral one.
Not just Johnson, the entire Conservative party is complicit in their disgusting actions. Every single dishonest politician who has gone on the news to defend Johnson, to embellish his leadership during the pandemic has done so because of their own pathetic self interest in remaining employed over saving human life. None of the sycophants resting on the front bench would be there without Johnson – Truss who has repeatedly shown herself to be a fool, Dorries who apparently owes Johnson her “undying loyalty” because nobody else would have someone as dense as she in power, Rees-Mogg, a man so ostentatiously wankish that even his own side dislike him, Raab who by all accounts is such a horrific person I dare not write accounts of what I’ve heard he’s done for fear of being sued, Fabricant who seems to want to turn himself into the Poundland version of Johnson, Kwarteng who, at this point, I genuinely believe has a fetish for making himself look like Johnson’s key fluffer on the news.
It goes back further than Johnson stepping into number 10 as the prime minister. It goes back longer than I’ve been alive. The conservatives have mismanaged the UK for decades when they’ve had the chance, and the labour government everyone looks back on in shame only really began to fail in earnest when they adopted conservative ideals. But focusing on the last 13 years of conservative rule has been like watching a person strike a match and gleefully set fire to their own bed because someone told them a foreigner lives downstairs.
Every single day the conservatives push people like those this blog is designed to support, needling us by describing us as woke, picking on our gender, our sexuality, denying the racism felt by anyone not white, telling us that we just need to budget better as we see less money hit our pockets, that we need to take personal responsibility- but our own best efforts are made moot by a populace who just want to pretend coronavirus is gone because it’s an inconvenience. The UK has long prided itself on stating it’s full of strong hard bitten people who live off the pride of our relatives having gone through the blitz- those people survived by taking basic safety precautions and we besmirch their memory every time we talk disparagingly about wearing a mask.
Without fail, the conservatives continue to take aim at our values, taking a paring knife to the bone of protest rights which is only restricted under authoritarian governments. And a complicit populace allows it.
But for how long?
I wrote a post on here once called “The Radicalisation of the Left” and that felt dramatic at the time- but now it’s a label I identify with. I’m radicalised against the moral bankruptcy of this government, disgusted by their flagrant abandonment of a populace beaten into complicity- and disappointed by the sheer amount of, and I hate to co-opt this phrase from anti vaccine propogandists but- sheep.
Sheep are the populace of a country who walk around crying out happily that they have a freedom that runs with it a risk of death. Sheep are the people who allow their government to break the law – repeatedly- and simply respond with a shrug and an “all politicians are as bad”. Because they aren’t all as bad. I hate Teresa May for all she did in fostering the hostile environment but you can be damn sure no parties would have rocked number ten under her.
The conservatives have wilfully sold us out over and over and over- allowing businesses to rake in astronomical profits from us as we were home using our energy more last year, refusing to implement windfall taxes to recoup any money from them and choosing instead to stick their hands into our pockets. They were too cowardly to implement strict restrictions and enforcement during a period where hundreds of people were dying every day. Choosing enrichment of friends, or in people like Paterson’s case themselves led to people dying because of equipment or tests that should have been properly funded and managed. They installed an NHS abolitionist as health secretary after allowing the previous post holder to focus on his mistress instead of his vital role. They have not at one single point willingly put the public first- always choosing to focus on business, on economy and even then, even then when focusing on their, one could say charitably “pragmatic” endeavours they failed. The economy of the UK has been ripped backwards by the worst Brexit outcome.
And so it’s now that I, and I’m sure you too, begin to wonder when the last straw will fall- the camel’s legs are shaking, the next piece is drifting slowly towards it’s back- will this be the one? What will it be? More rights being taken away, another monetary crisis, another scandal? The conservatives think if they can get through Partygate then it’s all said and done. But when they continue to cling to power when nobody wants them there, when they continue to spit in the face of the populace they are meant to (as public servants, lest they need reminding) serve, how can we democratically expect justice to be done if they are the ones holding the scales aloft?
I suspect that the conservatives are due for a fall, and I honestly hope it happens within the system in which we’re trapped- but every day the conservatives turn that system inside out, make it pointless and make a mockery of those who had an iron solid belief in it’s ability to mete out justice. But that iron solid belief is white hot with anger and buckling and something more sinister lurks within it.
As Johnson announces he may not step down from prime ministership for nearly a decade and as the conservatives shore up efforts to roll back even more rights including quite literally THE HUMAN RIGHTS ACT, one can see the steady course of the UK as we head towards their authoritarian dream and how it will end as a nightmare for them. Westminster stands as a tenet of our democracy- but if the lie of no democracy is outed to the masses then Westminster must be torn down brick by brick because it no longer serves the people. Democracy does not exist when a prime minister who has admitted his complicity in hosting and attending illegal events escapes punishment. It does not exist when a government is repeatedly brought to account in court by the gooodlaw project as the only body who tries.
The tories fail to realise that if they continue to propagate the lie of the system that doesn’t work eventually even the slowest amongst us will be radicalised into action and when this happens every smug press interview about the will of the people, about getting on with the job will be shot back in their faces, the shards of the lies they told cutting deep as the anger of an exhausted population explodes into open rebellion.
I don’t call for this rebellion, I am no leader- but I will partake in it. I will make my voice heard in the cacophony against the Conservative party. Because we gave them the chance to lead and they fiddled as Rome- then London, Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, burned.
Let the conservatives face justice before us all or let us take justice into our own hands. If it’s the will of the people that the conservatives be torn from power then who are they, or I, or even you to deny it?
viemoo is a 34 year old independent writer, radicalised into blogging about the political state of the world by Brexit and the election of serial failures like Trump and Johnson. Please check out the rest of the blog, check out Politically Enraged, the podcast available on all streaming platforms and share with your like minded friends! Also check him out on ko-fi where you can keep him caffeinated whilst he writes.
Last week, the country was treated to more frustration as the long awaited Grey report became the imminently released, redacted, gutted of substance Grey press release- grey is an apt colour for the report, stripped of the colour needed to understand just how deep the rot runs beneath Westminster. And the Met finally came forward to step up to the challenge of upholding it’s already tenuous reputation as investigative officers- but today, a damning report into the institutional misogyny and open disrepute of Met officers casts an even deeper shadow into whether those we are meant to entrust with the rule of law- both to create and to uphold law- can be trusted with those jobs.
“I would happily rape you”
This is a message sent from a serving met police officer to a female officer. Many would ask that we request context- but unless the context is “here is something I would never say to a woman”, nothing can justify this.
It’s been too long and widely known that misogyny is the bedrock of the police force- from a high rate of officers who have committed domestic assault (reported in the US though similar studies mirror this in the UK). Even in this report, officers confess – one stating that he needs to “take the missus out as an apology for backhanding her”. Another officer proudly declares “if you hit a woman they love it. Biologically programmed lol”.
I’ve long puzzled over why men who claim to love women would also speak about them in these terms. The disturbingly high propensity of men who look at women as nothing but sexual gratification machines is a societal problem and must be dealt with- two years of social distancing has worsened this mindset amongst men already susceptible to these disgusting trains of thought.
But even this deep, dark layer of misogyny and casual admission of lawbreaking is only the surface: Should a force systemically infected by the foetid pus of bent coppery be the ones to hold the shining light of truth up to a government similarly infested with islamophobia, misogyny, racism and of course a derisive attitude to compliance towards safety laws? If the met, too, scorn laws behind closed doors, how does one divest them of the authority granted by the corrupt state?
There exists in depth a wealth of reporting and evidence into how police corruption is obfuscated behind legal loopholes, created in camaraderie with other officers willing to bend legality for others that they simply do not believe applies to them. Similarly, hot off the press is the scraps of the Gray report, which no doubt in the fullness of time will bolster the claims of top to bottom corruption, rulebreaking and a culture of intimidation which allowed the Conservatives to flout the laws that they themselves implemented for public safety- after all, this is not a government known to adhere to legality.
The rot of rulebreaking runs how deep?
The conservatives, like the met, are become the face of corruption already suspected, now confirmed. The entitlement of both civil servants and officers of the law, who feel that they need not treat other’s safety with the seriousness of we mere mortals is a worrying indictment of ageing institutions in need of either an urgent shakedown, a root deep clearout- or an imminent scrapping, to be replaced with those who are willing to uphold the laws they are bound to create and uphold.
It’s a very societally typified fear to dilly dally over changing failing or failed institutions. Politics runs through our every aspect of life, from pricing of goods to working hours and wages- it’s inextricable from the lives we’re currently leading and therefore must be approached cautiously when looking to change it’s facets, to ensure that we do not accidentally create more problems than we solve. But when it comes to the met, policing is becoming a more obviously not fit for purpose drain on public expenditure- record numbers of officers refusing vaccine mandates both in the UK and stateside, the BLM protests and subsequent exposure of systemic racism to people who had previously been allowed to hold the shield of ignorance with impunity and this report which shows an indifference towards public wellness- the huge expenditure of public funding to an institution as archaic as the police when it’s members are so keen on ignoring the laws they are employed to maintain… it hardly seems a good public investment.
Many members of the public support our style of policing without listening to experts in prison abolition- this, of course, does not mean a lack of policing, but a reform of a system that is designed only to punish those who have (or are found guilty of, to be more precise) committed crimes- recidivism (the tendency to commit crime again if you have done so already) is disgracefully high because there is no element of rehabilitation that works functionally in our prison services, and rehabilitation must come forefront in the efforts of law enforcement to actually deter offenders from committing further crimes and to make their lives better, otherwise a vicious cycle is maintained which will only worsen the strain on the system, and those subject to it’s failings.
But indeed, turning from the police force and it’s deeply ingrained failings to the government, do we not see the parallels? A system created long ago, maintained in its archaic presentation (from lingo to the preference of parliament as the seat of power), a system now subject to the weathered scrutiny of a public who have watched with increasing horror and anger as our elected officials desecrate the office. And powerless are we to change this decomposition of our political probity… or so we are led to believe.
Perhaps there is a reciprocal nature between our institutions – from a royal family scandalised by accusations of racism and sexual assault to a government slowly disappearing into it’s own salacious reports of ineptitude, on to a police force crammed with officers who close ranks on fellows who commit the crimes they are tasked with investigating. And here, at it’s roof- the dislocation we do not wish to acknowledge. Where does that invisible gap between “us” and “them” start and finish- what would we have to do to escape investigation into coronavirus law breaches? Who would we have to be descended from to escape scrutiny for sex abuses? Is it money? Name? Influence? Or simply the you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours of one group of corrupted individuals propelling forward more corruption by protecting another, back and forth like blades of grass, rotting in the same field? And again beckons the urgent question- how do we deal with it? Let us be honest here and everywhere- let us shine our own lights into the dark and confront it together: we must not be burdened by institutions that do not protect us, that do not enhance our lives. What is good for society? Institutions that serve to make it better- not maintain, not enforce- improve.
Until we overhaul our institutions, until they work for us, we continue with the foot-on-the-neck obedience of rule by oligarchy.
Police- corrupt
Politics- corrupt
Monarchy- corrupt
And so I ask you reader, as I run out of road- what comes after?
Daviemoo is a 34 year old independent writer, radicalised into blogging about the political state of the world by Brexit and the election of serial failures like Trump and Johnson. Please check out the rest of the blog, check out Politically Enraged, the podcast available on all streaming platforms and share with your like minded friends! Also check him out on ko-fi where you can keep him caffeinated whilst he writes.
Forgive me for the rambling -As I write this on my lunch break at work I’ve posted a video I recorded this morning about some of the sacrifices I made during lockdown which have yet again been made fruitless by the incompetence of a government unable to follow their own rules. It’s past time that this blustering, self aggrandising mobster government be sent to the gulags of history and judged as a failure- not just because they are criminally inept at the job, but because they are criminal full stop.
A very American problem
The right have many a method to stay in power. In America, Donald Trump never won a popular vote- but won his first term as president due to an antiquated votership system, the Electoral college -and may have won again were it not for the valiant efforts of supremely invested politicians like Stacey Abrams who worked tirelessly against gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement. Abrams should go down in history as one of the truest patriots America has ever seen, and her heroism is unsung because America still fights in it’s hear for freedom from a dictatorial cancer – not “conservatives” or “republicanism” but the monster these two types of right wing populist politics have created- the GQP, a bent and blunted force for uneducated Americans to rally around, blaming the blacks and the fags and the jews for their woes- and not long standing contempt for working class Americans, not a broken health system which will bankrupt you for the sin of developing cancer, a deeply propagandist education system more interested in teaching the masculine values of waving a flag and a laughably flawed justice system which allows the gunning down of an innocent sleeping paramedic or protester with automatic weaponry.
Where is England’s Stacey Abrams?
The toxicity of tory
In the UK, the voting system in combination with the differences in voter demographic, mixed with a terminal indifference to politics for younger people have led to the continuation of the tory government. Right wing parties dropped out of the running in areas where tories could gain seats to prop up Johnson, and though over 50% of the UK voted for left wing parties we have in place a tory government with an almost unprecedented control of the house of commons. There is the first piece of evidence to my claim – instant switching of alliegance to tory just to win, even if you didn’t believe in their aims- you just wanted that 52 to 48 result respected. But do you know what else we have after twelve years of tory rule? Under the conservative government, poverty has risen, income inequality has skyrocketed- quite literally as Richard Branson achieved his wet dream of space flight as the rest of us wrote costing sheets to make sure we can afford rent and bills. Anti LGBT+ hate crime has escalated over 300% in 4 years.
The concerns of women about corruption in the police force, both from female officers and hapless women harassed in the street were met with ridiculous sneering contempt – flag down a bus, they were told by flippant Met Officers who backed and still back the tory government- why? Because they are given unique power to attack thsoe who stand against them. Meanwhile the met completely fails to investigate repeated, open, obvious breaches of the covid laws and restrictions which have seen over 5000 Londoners in court paying fines- and, I hasten to add, rightly so. To break lockdown is to thwart attempts to control and curtail a dangerous pathogen. So why are the tories uniquely protected against prosecution, as Cressida Dick wags a bony finger at journalists to dissuade further questions that may bring out more queries?
We have politicians who try to hold the government to account – Zarah Sultana is prodigious and fearless, Dawn Butler passionate and eloquent, Rosina Allin-Khan a front line worker who still finds time to visit parliament and beg the government to explain it’s lacklustre efforts. As an aside each one of these women of colour have been met with belligerent repudiation, told to “mind their tone”- a sentiment oft- weaponised against people of colour and especially women of colour who do not play to the demure-seeking demands of bigots.
The crux of this post is to make people realise that right wing people will do what others simply won’t because of decency. Be it solemnising a company then, before the company is even formed lobbying it to parliament to supply PPE (as a tory lord did), creating a VIP supply lane, using problematic language to slap down women of colour, or- as today’s news displays, showing pathological indifference to the suffering of people trying their best to curtail a pandemic’s deadly spread.
This pattern of thinking leads to a question I’m often asked- do you think all tories, all brexit voters, all right wingers are racist, homophobic, bigoted etc? Not necessarily no- but they do what I won’t. They compromise on these issues. “Oh I don’t hate foreigners at all, i just *insert reasons for voting here*”. It seems to me that if I didn’t hate foreigners I wouldn’t vote for something that gave the strong and close to undeniably did in fact do that. And always with these voters they’re allowed plausible deniability. Brexit was for taking back control -of what? Our borders? We had more control in the EU. Of our legal decisions? The tories are trying to remove scrutiny from courts. Of our position as a world superpower? Our economy is decimated by brexit, international trade in and out is down, we have trade deals that WORSEN our GDP and we are a laughing stock, a tiny group of islands left to float in our own “anti-woke” seas, now swimming with happy british fish and, of course, tory approved human shit.
Voter ignorance or voter indifference?
Right wing politics, at their face, seems only to be about no compromise. We want this! We want the woke cancel culture agenda to end, we want the trans people’s rights gone, we want to continue to deny our imperialist role in slave trading, in white supremacy, in a devastatingly clear-cut class system. But that’s the lie- right wing politics is nothing BUT compromise from the voter’s level.
Voters who claim not to hate LGBT+ people somehow mysteriously fail to clarify that they are disgusted with the lack of action from Liz Truss who has been in the role for years and has just, again, rolled back the end of the consultation period for a complete block on conversion therapy in the UK- though 3 other countries have done so in the last 2 months. Voters who claim to be disgusted by racism will bend to apoplexy over the statue of a previously unknown slaver being torn down in disgust, and who borrow Johnson’s line of “context” to explain his comments about watermelon smiles or letterboxes.
Voters who say they don’t want foreigners coming here will stare on with blank eyed indifference about news headlines about atrocities the UK committed whilst holding tenderly on to the hand of the US.
Right wing votership is, in my eyes, about one of two things: the ability to wholeheartedly vote against your own self interest and protection because it will also make everyone else unhappy, OR the ability to vote for what you think is your own self interest whilst actually voting against it, under the guise that it strikes a blow against your imaginary enemy.
…but who IS your enemy?
Who is really making your daily life worse? The tired, hungry migrant in a boat out at sea who just wants to make it to shore without being tossed into the maw of the sea to lie with the bones of countless others? Or is it the politician gesticulating about the necessity of taking more money from your salary to prop up a health system they have criminally underfunded for their dozen years in power?
The ostensible links the right make are easily broken- but only if you are capable of listening to fact. Hate the hundred or so migrants who come here a day? Think of them as offsetting the death toll caused by conservative reluctance to place restrictions on the country to curtail coronavirus infection. You hate benefit fraud? Only a few dozen convictions- and who, may I ask, is in charge of the benefit system? It would be the very government you support who don’t and won’t change the system, because they know you can be angry at benefit cheats- instead of politicians who claim £50 back for a charitable donation. MP’s expenses combined would be more in a month than benefit claimants get in a year, even if they fudge the system. And yet the anger is spewed at our underprivileged fellows- because we don’t feel entitled to rail against the creators and maintainers of that flawed system.
Not all right wingers are this type. Some vote right knowing what they are voting for. Some want this sort of draconian rule by people who decry the censorship of language- you’re not even free to call people like me faggots these days- whilst supporting laws that effectively end the ability to demonstrate in public, which make voting more difficult and inaccessible to those who are already under-represented in parliament- tangible freedoms lost or pushed into the distance whilst people get angry about the non-existent thought police.
Still more are simply beneficiaries of the system. We’re taught to worship trickle down economics even as those at the top swim in oceans of wealth hoarded away from us and as our throats run parched, barely sustained from the drip drip drip of financial offcuts. Wealth disparity in the UK is at a terrifying new height- not just because of the pandemic which no one truly predicted, but because of brexit, because of a foolish lack of foresight by a government only concerned about enrichment of the already rich and by the complicity of an underclass who believes that the north star of the Union Jack is their guiding light to supremacy in the world. Just because the man who owns the company you work for is rich and the company is making world beating sales- doesn’t mean you’re prospering as you desperately try to save to pay your mortgage. And again – who maintains that system of tax cuts for your boss and tax hikes for you… but let me guess, Boris is a man of the people? You like his hair? Does he just “get” you?
It’s come to the point now where I wish right wing voters would just say the real truth, the truth we all know but never call out because “wokeness” and “censorship”, because “I’m allowed my opinion”. People vote right because they do not understand what they vote for. You might be able to install a government that will roll back protections for those nasty trans people – but they are also a government who will force you into debt, crush your pension, close down your workplace and- whilst you wait at home, desperate to make sure your vulnerable mother doesn’t lie choking in a hospital bed as a plastic clad nurse tries to offer her muffled words of comfort- they throw back bottles of champagne which cost more than your daily salary.
Right wing voters compromise on their morals to install governments who work against their own people- and are too dense to see it.
Did I make you angry?
Good.
The point of this entire blog is to make people who think in opposition to me THINK about what they believe or vote for. If you truly believe for a single moment that Boris Johnson is the best representative for you, that he understands your daily struggles from a popped tyre to redundancy, you’re a fool. We are chess pieces on a very large board to the tory government. And the time to oust these flagrant shills is so far gone it can’t even be seen by the naked eye. If you truly wish to prove me wrong, and that you’re not willing to compromise your morals then show me by not voting for the people who “make me pay less tax which is good even if I don’t agree with them on drowning migrants”.
The United Kingdom deserves a government better than we have, a government who will work for the good of us all, a government run by those who have lived our experiences, have faced our issues, who are cognisant of our frustrations. Not a nodding dog of moral vacuousness who prattles on about building back better, about hands face space, about get boosted now- the only three word slogan the UK needs is “you’re our employees”.
Daviemoo is a 34 year old independent writer, radicalised into blogging about the political state of the world by Brexit and the election of serial failures like Trump and Johnson. Please check out the rest of the blog, check out Politically Enraged, the podcast available on all streaming platforms and share with your like minded friends! Also check him out on ko-fi where you can keep him caffeinated whilst he writes.
It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it. The idea that our nation could give in to fascism. But that’s the insidious reality. We aren’t “giving in” to it- some Britons accept it, condone it, and think it’s a good thing because fascism, the politics of discord, division and elitism reinforces the bone deep conviction that to be British is to be superior, as surely as white supremacy is the conviction that skin colour is equivalent to superiority. Do you think the citizens of Germany in the 30’s thought things would escalate to their heights? Some knew, cried out, shook their fellow citizens with the dire need for action and were ignored- are we headed down the same political path as the literal Nazis?
It’s almost comically ridiculous to think of the UK as a fascist nation. A great many things lined up politically to allow Germany to slip into such horrific politics. And it’s only yesterday I was talking about totalitarianism- I know, which is it?
But when you stop to examine the state of affairs in the UK, the desperation with which I push my anti-tory agenda becomes clear.
People will tell you that “all politicians are the same- labour are as bad as the tories”. It’s nonsense, pushed by a gleeful tory party who thank people for endorsing the quiet humdrum that’s allowing creeping fascism to take hold.
Look at today- Johnson’s party is in deep trouble. A party at number 10 in December 2020- as we all followed the rules put in place to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Horrendous behaviour from selfish and disgusting individuals.
This must be punished- but to overlook the horrendous actions of the tory party outside of the headline grabbing bluster of their disregard for life is to miss the overarching theme of a government up to their necks in corruption, desperate to hide the stench and to extend their powers to being held beyond reproach.
Is fascism the right word?
Looking at policy implementation and general political output from the conservatives over the last 11 years, a slow burn into an explosion appears to have allowed this strange slip towards the far right.
Fascism relies on nationalism, firstly, and the weaponization of the Union Jack as a symbol of imagined freedoms. The aggressive push- not just for Brexit, but for a total severing and complete dissolution of the relationship between the UK and the EU- the spinning of EU officials as unelected officials muddling into UK business and stirring the pot instead of conglomerate sensibility and safeguarding. The sickening stories of migrant “incursions”, open glee or indifference to refugees drowning at sea, the mentality that any and all from outside are evil and coming to steal jobs, money, women, land. The idea that there is the “right” type of British- from gender identity as one of the most hotly debated and pointless (trans people will exist regardless of their access to clothes, toilets, prisons, healthcare…) tropes. The disregarding of our true history, linked intrinsically to colonialism and the slave trade in favour of the mealy mouthed notion that we just happened to be there. The embrace of a fictional history where Britain were always the heroes instead of a nation aggressively pushing it’s agenda. Nationalism is one of the key tenets of fascism and nationalism is as deeply rooted into British culture at the moment as it has ever been.
Look also to the fact that fascism opposes liberalism – explain to me why else this constant, laughable “war on woke” is being thrust to the front of every red topped newspaper, every magazine wrapped in salaciousness, every bottom drawer chat show.
Woke is simply defined as aware of social injustices involving systemic racism, but has swollen under the half lidded stare of those fed up of hearing about how their behaviour contributes to other people’s oppression at worst, unhappiness at best. And before I was referred to as a woke liberal on the daily, I was often called a marxist- often by people who, when I requested if they could define marxism, would hurl abuse and block me or, if in person, give me the look of someone recently concussed.
The press gag
Looking at accountability for the government also, we see concerted effort to expatriate them from the regular flow of accountability – firstly, open plans to prevent the government to be reported on negatively by the media, as seen in these headlines:
Sources: The Guardian, and Press Gazette
The curtailment of freedom of the press is an irony and embellishment at best- as seen in the footage of Allegra Stratton gleefully mocking the public with journos, the Christmas party at Downing St was already known in journalistic circles, kept in the dark until a time where the headline would be most salacious. Nevertheless, the freedom of the press to report on the government honestly and allow genuine public reaction has always been both vital, and increasingly distorted in the UK. The BBC, long reported as a paragon of journalistic integrity is now seen by many as state sponsored propaganda- on both sides of the political aisle. Many say this means it’s doing it’s job well. But when one side says “this is far right propagandism” (stories of trans people as sexual deviants, migrants as criminals and more), and the other side says “it’s not far right ENOUGH”, you begin to realise this is a misnomer- and intentional. The BBC’s funding comes from the government, so any implication that bias cannot apply to the BBC is wrong- especially under a government desperate to throttle press freedoms, and who has installed ex donors to highest office at the BBC.
Again, the pushing of the fight for trans equality – ridiculously framed as a “debate” – would you call it the “black rights debate?!”- is clear evidence that this manufactured culture war is being fed to blinkered people, desperate to assign their difficult lives to a physical, to a person, to a group- and trans people fit that bill, ironically, to a T. If you weigh in to the anti trans side you are an enabler of fascism, but this time it’s a different group in the crosshairs. If you genuinely believe a small group of people who identify AS WOMEN want to take away women’s rights or stop the use of the word woman you are both stuck in an echo chamber and hopelessly misdirected to fight against women you should be calling ally.
The public’s handcuffing
But it’s not just the press whose freedom to report honestly about the actions of the government has been throttled. We as individuals are seeing our rights removed, throttled, oppressed. When we, as a large group are dissatisfied with something, one of our most basic, fundamental, vital rights is to gather in numbers and stand in solidarity- so when the police, crime, courts and sentencing bill was introduced after the BLM protests, most of us knew it for what it was: not just a lazy attempt to stop the police from being held accountable for a poor job and seeping corruption (see the murder of Sarah Everard and the met’s predictably ludicrous response). It was a co-ordinated push to prevent the British public from uniting together under issues so vital that we co-ordinated to speak out against the government. Notice the reaction to women gathered at a vigil for a fallen woman, murdered by a policeman- violence, cruelty, arrests. Notice the reaction to peaceful protests- police hitting sitting protesters with shields, batons, provoking a violent reaction to justify this legislation’s supposed urgency. And the British public endorsed it! Then suddenly up arises Insulate Britain, a group set on solidifying it’s uselessness with gestures designed to frustrate the public- not actually fix the problems it complained about- and magically this already insidious legislation is amended to prevent us from blocking roadways, ports, etc, etc with mandatory sentences and uncapped fines. Coincidence? Hardly. I don’t believe Insulate Britain are tory stooges, but I believe they were manipulated into thinking their mission would do anything but allow condoning of this disgusting government pushing restrictive policies.
Everyone else as “the other”
Even the refractive divisions amongst British politics viewed with a wider lens than tory trouble has allowed for fascism to bubble and boil under the surface- hyper right groups like the BNP, Britain First, Farage’s UKIP party- and indeed pundits like Farage, like Julia Hartley-Brewer, Katie Hopkins, Darren Grimes- all designed to package up another step, another step, another step to the right, further, further- and normalising it. Cheap slogans like “taking OUR country back”, “building back better” and every other ridiculous daubing you can think of, all designed to promote separatism and create the mythological “other” who wants to come here, steal our jobs, change our laws, kill our women folk. Take away the politely indignant bluster of these individuals and lay bear their deepest agenda- Britain First- The literal name of one of the fascist parties.
But putting Britain first isn’t a sin or a crime, it’s what should be a necessity for those of us, whether nascent Brits or not – working for the common good is not a sin or a crime, and framing it as such has created a wave of rage against… nothing. The memo that none of the angry supporters of these supposed revolutionaries gets: everyone wants to work for the common good- or do they?
Look back at these social commentariats- who among them pushed sacrifice for the common good of all Brits? Or did they all, to a man, spend the entire time telling you to be selfish? Throw off restrictions, look after your own needs, wants, requirements? That’s the true face of the nationalism they pushed, it’s not about inclusion of your own, it’s about exclusion of the other- now no longer presented as some mythical foreigner or trans woman- now the other is your fellow countryman, the sheep in the aisle with you wearing a mask.
Platformed to present outrageous- but not TOO outrageous views, always just enough to provoke reaction without backlash, we became numb to it. We allowed these shills to push the painkiller that let the government inject increasing fascism into the country.
Who is the other now? Is it the refugee clinging to a dinghy on the offchance they make it to shore, the trans woman working in the coffee shop, the fellow Brit who thinks brexit didn’t work out well? Is the other everyone? Or is it no one.
Nationality as status
Furthering nationalist agendas, let’s look at the removal of foreign people’s ability to move and settle in the UK without specific reasoning a la the visa system. This gives British nationality a “status” of attainment- an attainment that could only be revoked in the minds of foolish people who believed your deep ancestry instead of location creates nationality. We’ve all seen the radio clip of David Lammy being told he’s not a “proper” Briton because he’s not white by an ignorant caller on LBC. That’s not a rare mindset- it’s common. People who are born here but born with dark skin are seen as “tolerated” Britons- disgusting as that mindset is, it’s frighteningly prevalent. And those, like the doctors who work for the agency I work for, who attain citizenship through hard work do a damn sight more to be able to call themselves Britons than those of us who simply were born here- and yet their citizenship is seen as not real by those who think it’s a status, instead of an accident of birth or a transactional relationship. And now, to add credence to this flawed view, Patel creates legislation to strip citizenship of those she and her fellows do not agree “should be” British. Nationality is a flawed and foolish concept.
The nationality and borders bill further separates those from abroad from us- another nationalist pandering legislation.
An attack on legal protections
Legislation tabled by the tories recently has been so fascistic as to create terror in the eyes of those who understand the implications.
If the government creates legislation which contravenes human rights, judges can rule against it, forcing the legislation to be reviewed until it does not do so. But not only do we have a Justice Minister in Raab who wants to repeal the human rights act and “create their own”, we have a government actively pushing legislation which would allow them to overturn, overlook or outright ignore the rulings of judges in cases of judicial malfeasance. Any rulings would therefore become advisory and would allow the culpability of the government for transgressions against law, land and the public to continue unabated.
This is quite literally one of the steps that the Nazis took before the beginning of World War 2- the unbinding of judiciary scrutiny from government action.
This unshackling of the government is a terrifying move to allow a government we cannot trust to access their full potential in authoritarianism. They must be stopped from instituting this bill.
Brexit’s “benefits” only benefit the far right
The rise of nationalism came when the EU was cast in the light of legislative oppressors, meddlers and more towards the UK, infringers of a sovereignty we already had.
The severing of oversight from a larger body who could sanction or impose legislative challenges of members is, was and would always be the goal for a government aware that they could seize and maintain power so long as they stirred the issues aforementioned. The cataclysm of brexit came in legislation – with the damnation of the NI protocol as a hinderance and the reason brexit has caused issues, and with the in your face horrors of very real goods, medicine and food shortages. But the true damage was the breaking of long placed bonds on a corrupt government now free to ramp up their power- at the expense of a populace battered by fighting for union and fighting against a virus. Our resilience has been worn out, fighting figmentary culture wars and this exhaustion has allowed this horrific situation to sweep forth.
Equally brexit benefited the rich- and we all know which side of the bench the rich usually sit. Relocation of businesses and evasion of scrutiny of taxation and ill gotten gains is a core tenet of this current tory government. Let those subject to the law be damned in the face of those above it- the law of the EU, the law of the land, and the laws of the time.
The overt denial of systemic racism from a report claiming contributions from experts who didn’t even know they were being consulted and the almost immediate drafting and imlementation of legislation criminalising aiding “immigrants”- note, not refugees, plus the regularly falsely pushed line – pushed in fact, on the 6th December by Scott Benton on the news, that you can be an “illegal” immigrant (again- refugee) has allowed the British public’s most dense subset to imbibe an automatically negative perception of anyone who challenges their rigorously structured fiction of “the unwashed dangerous foreigner”.
The strangulation of the unheard voter
I’ve written a piece on my blog before about voter disenfranchisement- I urge you to read this piece, as the dangers of creating difficulty in votership are impossible to understate. Mandating voter ID will, intrinsically, affect the voting eligibility of the poorest in society. Passing legislation to remove ID documents from voters is a terrifying step towards fascistic restrictions on votership- if the cornerstone of democracy is the allowance to partake, then any efforts to restrict access to this even under the guise of “preventing fraud” is the dismantling of a democratic right. And please remember the 2019 election resulted in less than 50 accusations of voter fraud and six proven cases- out of tens of millions of voters.
Ultimately, I am terrified that we are past the threshold, through the looking glass. We have borne so much under a party so clearly bent on self preservation that they have resorted to actual fascist implementation of policy.
The question now is two fold and simply: What next? And what else?
Ever since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, something politely termed as debate has raged between a deeply factional society. Bodily autonomy and freedom are two terms thrown around often by people who simply don’t understand the concepts they’re discussing. And whilst we’re told as we grow that we sometimes simply need to learn to disagree civilly with people whose views differ from our own- what do we do when those views carry potentially deadly consequences? Is someone’s skewed view of liberty worth dying for?
What is freedom to you?
It’s a question I’ve asked myself hundreds of times throughout this pandemic. The answer is more closely tied to the repercussions of Brexit, oddly. Freedom to me was the right to rights themselves. Losing the right to free movement sickened me, as someone who always loved, and wanted to move to, the continent but was prevented through fear of distance between myself and my family. The right to rights is a strange sentence, but being bound or restricted But as the coronavirus spread around the world and I saw the death toll mount, I- and many others- knew that our freedom was imperilled.
As the pandemic has raged on burning away people’s lives, making people long term sick, tanking economies, worsening wealth disparity many people have woken up to injustices- but in very different ways. Some of us fight with desperation to remove a government intent on enacting damaging laws, from the throttling of our democratic right to protest, to curtailment of our ability to aid those in distress who are not UK citizens, to removing “dissidents'” citizenship, to the enfranchisement of voting by implicitly attaching a cost to votership.
Some rage against a system they see as horrifically authoritarian for enacting emergency powers to restrict movement and interaction amongst people- enacted to control the spread of the coronavirus but to some, the reasoning of “a virus with a 97% survival rate” is a flimsy one.
This is where so many of us fundamentally differ. In 2020 the human population estimate is 7.753 billion.
If 3% of these people died, this would be a death count of 232,590,000.
Two hundred and thirty three million lives. This of course only factoring in the deaths from coronavirus. All too easily, the deaths from delayed medical treatment, from delayed ambulances, from exhausted physicians are written off.
One of the main kickbacks from my speaking in support of coronavirus restrictions is “what about deaths from the vaccine”.
This is understandable- but does not account for the fact that any deaths are sad, especially unnecessary ones like coronavirus deaths- or deaths from the vaccine, regardless of how low the risk. We should count these deaths as deaths due to the pandemic- because no coronavirus vaccine would be needed without the pandemic. Equally, look at the escalated rate of suicide due to isolation. This pandemic has a huge death toll, that extends it’s sinister reach far beyond the death brought by being infected and every single one of these deaths is a loss, a travesty and should not have happened. The way deaths have been manipulated for a political agenda is disgraceful. Ultimately and objectively, mass death is not a political decision- and the philosophical arguments can be bandied back and forth, but ultimately behind politics and philosophy are humans laid suffering from something that went from being an unprecedented worldwide event, to preventable for the most part, if people curtailed their contact.
The emergence of coronavirus allowed an unprecedented glimpse into the mindset of so many around us, people who openly distain others’ as long as they don’t feel controlled, coerced, don’t feel spoken down to, don’t feel like they have to make changes to accommodate others- forgetting of course that if others didn’t do it, they would also be at risk.
After two years, it’s openly a hostile move to walk into a shop- a place you have to go to buy food- without wearing a mask. Some see it as a laughable move which won’t prevent anything, some see it as a symbol of oppression and control from the state, others simply do not care and still more are a mix. There’s also a small subset of people who just like to annoy other people.
Those opposed to mask wearing, to social distancing, to lockdowns or any other measures declare that it’s their right to DO WHAT THEY WANT. They state that they shouldn’t be controlled, coerced, forced to do things they don’t want to do. But I have to wonder how often they follow that thought pattern to it’s apex of “for the common good”. Nobody that I know wants to wear masks, wants to get vaccines, wants to spend weeks alone. It was, I believe, seen by some as a civic duty or, more simply, the right thing to do. Was it? I believe so. Some are diametrically opposed.
When it comes to politics and more, it’s inevitable that disagreement will pop up. But the sheer volume of working class people cheerfully arguing that the economy can’t be allowed to fail if it means keeping people alive is terrifying – it’s the height of “it won’t happen to me”.
And of course it’s right and normal for humans to disagree on matters- but matters of mass death? It’s a strange world we’re forced to live in where people believe that their own, their loved ones- and strangers, who they don’t know- will die and that’s a worthwhile sacrifice.
It’s completely understandable that people are sick of living the lives we’ve had to under coronavirus- but it’s so often missed that people’s lives will continue this way until the virus has become endemic (we all knew from the start we’d never eradicate it). It’s the very people up in arms about masks and health measures who necessitate it’s continuance.
I read the story of an oncology doctor on Friday, who had to cancel a cancer patient’s operation because the bed they would have taken was now filled with an anti vax covid patient.
The covid patient would likely be moved to a ventilator soon, but the loss of that precious window for the cancer patient likely meant that they too would die. The cancer would grow, it would metastasise and just like that, another two people who didn’t have to die, but died, because of this virus- and because of the choices of an anti vaccine enthusiast.
Your choice to kill?
You see, there was a tipping point in the pandemic where your choices were miasmic and didn’t have the sway to hugely impact on the outcome. We were uninformed, we were all waiting for more research, more information. And now here we are- where your personal choices, from declining to wear a mask to refusing vaccines- are in a very real way, wreaking real life consequences upon people.
I’ve always levelled a deep and profound blame at a government simply unable to act decisively. Wishy washy guidance, hand wringing over following their own rules, duplicity- but now the onus truly has shifted to a split with those who wilfully will not comply building off the ignorance of the Conservatives.
It’s confusing that people are being given the choice to risk others’ health, all under this strange umbrella of bodily autonomy. Many of the people who support forced birth have appropriated their hated moniker, “my body, my choice”, for their crusade for the freedom they find difficulty in defining.
The co-opting of pregnant people’s rights
A pregnant person can, and should, be able to choose what happens with a pregnancy for many reasons, from whether they wished to get pregnant in the first place, financial and emotional readiness, health, safety and more. This isn’t a debate. A pregnancy can’t go on without a body to co-opt, but a body can go on without a pregnancy. Human beings are not incubators and pregnancy can have horrific consequences- from thinned bones, post partum depression and psychosis, scarring, bleeds… death. Every pregnancy constitutes a risk towards the pregnant person’s health. Their body will be, no matter how smooth a pregnancy goes, permanently changed simply by going through it.
And when it comes to being forced to take vaccines, this argument is, while controversial, more understandable. But that’s the essence of “my body, my choice”. You choose not to take a vaccine and you take on the risk to deal with consequences- societal (being excluded from mass events etc) or personal (dying or becoming disabled from long COVID). And of course, anti vaxxers will point at the death rate of vaccines- but again, this is bodily autonomy in action. Choosing to take the vaccine is you choosing to take that risk- negligible, but existing risk. Every person who died from the vaccine to my knowledge took that needle because they chose to, and accepted the risk.
The gleeful appropriation of “my body, my choice” is a misnomer. Pregnancy doesn’t spread via the air. Pregnancy only puts risk on the body of the person carrying it. You won’t spread mass pregnancy simply by being in a room while pregnant.
Outside of a pandemic the choice to make is whether to take a vaccine. Whether to take that risk, on the off-chance you come across the disease in question. During a pandemic, the choice is NOT to take the vaccine when there is a silent timer counting down to your exposure- and whilst it’s seen as bodily autonomy to make that choice, it’s not bodily autonomy- it’s bodily tyranny, because your mere presence in a room- especially if you’ve been wandering around with no mask, no social distancing, no vaccine- creates a risk, removing everyone around you’s bodily autonomy, their choice NOT to be sick. So now the question is- does one person’s bodily autonomy supersede that of the rights of everyone they could come into contact with?
People believe the merits of the anti vax movement- but isn’t it strange how the movement went from telling us that vaccines cause autism (neurodiversity by the way is a normal condition and function, though there are naturally extreme cases) to being silent, when 5 billion doses of vaccines were deployed over months. Suddenly the threat is “oh within two years you’ll be sorry”… about what?
Once some credible evidence comes to light we can discuss the nuance of whether vaccination vs non vaccination is worthwhile. Otherwise we continue to debate the efficacy of medicine that works vs rolling a lottery of disability, sickness and death.
Do I have to die for you to change your attitude?
Lets say coronavirus didn’t kill anyone but makes them sick like I was. Desperately poorly for weeks, exhausted, dizzy, sick, unable to eat, unable to sleep, in pain, headaches and more. I lost weight, I was light sensitive, my body ached. I still have a cough in December and I stopped actively suffering in mid October…
Is it worth running the risk of spreading that en masse? Even without death, mass sickness and disruption to peoples’ lives is a huge ask of everyone you may walk past in a day.
Society has not changed, no matter how much we can state it has. Change would be adaptation to the crisis at hand. What has changed are the circumstances in which people can easily advertise to you whether they care about those around them or think their own welfare comes first. No longer can we believe the myth that humans would try to collectively come together to protect each other- because all too many of us have joined the war on coronavirus on the wrong side.
The societal shift
One can’t necessarily pinpoint why society is how it is, and it appears that it’s a mistake to imply that we haven’t, at our core, always had this type of person in our society who will refer to those who make sacrifices for the collective “sheep”. But sheep do what they do out of fear, and out of instinct. I’m not overly scared of coronavirus, of isolation, of masks and vaccines- I’m scared of human beings who would rather lash out in violence than give simple proof that their claims of government takeovers, of poisoned vaccines, of masks causing health issues.
Until we can move past this virus as a collective, this battle will continue and the victims will continue to mount until common sense can stretch to both sides of the aisle. There will always be exceptions to those who can follow restrictions. But there will also always be those who spurn them. And the question continues to gather urgency – how long can society countenance the outliers when their actions, or lack thereof, endanger us all?
Every day in the UK, being in any way politically savvy becomes more and more mentally exhausting. Bottom drawer pundits from Farage to Hartley-Brewer or McKeith or Melville bombard social media- or, often, the airwaves- with their self involved, “me first, but I’m also a patriot” backwards mindsets much to the frustration of those of us who count ourselves among, if not the decent, at least those with humanity.
In the last week, as restrictions were debated and finally brought back, I’ve seen an uptick in the relentless, background hum of online abuse from anti…whatever’s. Anti lockdowners? Anti maskers? Anti vaxxers? They’re not all the same but they all share disturbing common threads.
It’s pointless to point the finger at people with this mentality and try to speak to their compassion for others- it quite literally isn’t there. Today I had the misfortune to discuss this with an anti masker- who happily explained that she thinks that “if it’s your time, it’s your time and nothing will change that”. That’s her justification for not wearing a mask- an indelible belief in fate.
I posed the retort that perhaps it wasn’t someone’s time, but her not wearing a mask made it so- that her negligence could lead to someone else’s death. She mumbled incomprehensibly and went back to doing what she was doing. I suspect it hasn’t changed a thing in her mind- she’s decided that she can wander through life as the arbiter of other people’s fate, and that she’s not responsible for her own actions- some other force in the universe is.
What a stupid, ridiculous point of view. Slight inconvenience for you could mean the difference between Christmas dinner at 4pm or a nurse shoving a plastic tube into your airway to try and stop you from drowning in pleural fluid.
And now here comes a new variant, a variant which threatens Christmas apparently. “It’s not Boris’ fault” scream the usual cabinet of buffoons, correctly of course- Johnson didn’t create or even wilfully import the variant. But we’d be in a better position to face it (if it truly is more virulent or transmissible) than we are, were it not for his flat refusal to have done even a minimal amount of work to combat everything that came before it.
The Enablers
I’ve seen countless numb minded pundits like the above cadre of idiots talk about their civil liberties, their RIGHT to be unimpeded. I have a question for them: Do you think I give a shit about your civil liberties if they run the risk of killing my dad? Do you think I’ll lose a second of sleep over whether Julia feels uncomfortable in a mask, whether James Melville felt unwell for 3 days from his vaccine, if those things led to me still having one parent left? Why is you feeling a bit uncomfortable because of a scrap of cotton needs to come forefront in the spread of an illness? I’m not linking their social media- it’s a wasteland of stupid, angry, reactive takes about how they’re unbothered by the plight of anyone that doesn’t happen to be them, and to drop my amateur blogger spiel for a moment- fuck those monsters.
Scrap the worst case scenario arguments of death or long term disability, are you actually telling people it’s fair for them to run the risk of being sick with something that ranges from feeling generally unwell to being extremely poorly- as I was- for weeks, because you feel irritated by material? How laughably self involved do you have to be to think that’s a fair trade off?
I also got told by someone else recently that because it was just like a bad cold for them they don’t see the need to worry. Do you want to know what covid was like for me? My stomach wouldn’t digest food. I was so exhausted I panted going from the bed to the sofa. It felt like my chest had hooks inside, stopping me from taking a full breath, as if my chest wouldn’t expand as far as I knew it should, could. My temperature spiked over and over and over again. I couldn’t sleep. I coughed until i threw up on myself. You’re telling people it’s fair for them to go through that or worse, because you’re so self involved you think it’s a right to show your face to strangers. Equally these arguments also come from people paid to be hypocritical. The worst pundit for this nonsense is Julia Hartley-Brewer- a poisonous oaf whose opinion could be bought for a steal, provided it’s rancorous and knee jerk enough. Brewer protests that the virus that’s killed 160k people, made millions long term sick and made still more extremely unwell is merely an inconvenience to her as she talks about how trans women will take away women’s rights whilst also admonishing a female MP for speaking out about the frustrations of finding childcare- over the course of days- on her public forum. The fact we have so many of these pundits ready to act like voices of authority is half the reason the UK is so deranged. Critical thinking is long dead, and long live the era of listening to the ill informed speak confidently and completely incorrectly.
At this point we’re not fighting a virus- it’s embedded itself into a world weary from safeguarding and will be around for years, decades and perhaps forever- I don’t know. We’re fighting the ever rising tide of selfishness and ignorance that pervades a society that allows people to speak such ridiculous disinformation. From grand plots about a societal mass murder scheme, to oppression and slavery to the madness of nanobots reprogramming our DNA (for what! There’s never an answer when you ask!) people with foolish ideas are platformed, exalted and respected and experts who dedicate decades of their life to this EXACT SITUATION are sent death threats for speaking out.
Look at it on a different front. After the horrific drowning of 27 people at sea only a week ago, RNLI have released confirmation that one of their boats was prevented from going to a distress call by fishing boats. Imagine a desperate exhausting journey away from a regime who took over your country, that took all of your money away that took weeks and ends with your boat sinking and you drown at sea because right wing fishermen take issue with you not drowning in the ocean. If you can look at me and tell me these people are not bottomless scum then you’re either deluded or a good liar.
The issue of course is what we DO about it. There’s a lot of division amongst people which doesn’t help with anything, but equally nothing which would affect us touches these people. Calling people from Brewer to Lawrence Fox out on their idiocy rolls off them like water off the proverbial duck’s back. Trying to appeal to their humanity results in, at best indifference and at worst a gang of ardent followers attacking you. So what do we do? Of course we can coexist with people whose views differ from our own, that’s fine- but look at the ideologies we’re aligned against: people eagerly demonising trans women, people who actively demonise gay men and women and bisexuals as perverts and paedophiles, people who think that islam is coming to swarm Britain, that migrants are a bigger threat than authoritarian politicians who are stripping back everything from free movement to protesting and narrowing our options for goods to fill shelves, decimating our economy and ultimately the lurking threat of people who believe, in their heart and soul, that their right to show their face in public is more vital and core than your health.
Trying to cope in a nation of people who believe that if they don’t experience it, it doesn’t happen is one of the most demoralising things I’ve experienced- it’s been a life long lesson for me. I’ve had people tell me I don’t experience homophobia from heterosexual men, for example. It’s pretty simple to understand why two men being asked questions like “who is the woman” is annoying, not to mention misogynistic, or why people who assume they have the right to ask you about what position you are in bed when this isn’t information you really want to volunteer is ok. It’s quite straightforward to understand that people who call you a kiddy fiddler because you’re gay are scum, that people who threaten to punch you because you think pecs are sexually attractive and breasts aren’t are stupid. We have to share the world with these people – how long are we meant to peaceably explain that we just ARE and we don’t have to justify ourselves. Our existence, who we think is sexy, who we kiss, who we fuck- these aren’t things that affect you, and they don’t affect others negatively- and yet we’re told that us existing is a bridge too far.
And the irony is that it’s TIRING to be the people who are trying to move things forward, past this virus. We do what we’re told by scientists who have tested to confirm the efficacy of masks, of vaccines, of simple social distancing so we do it- then we’re thwarted by the very people who say they shouldn’t have to bear any of it for a single minute. “What about my mental health” is the usual cry, from people who I’ve openly seen sneering at those whose relatives died alone in ICU beds. And led, countenanced and babied the entire time, whether they like him or not, these people are overseen by a populist weakling of a prime minister, Alexander Boris De Pfeffel Johnson, a man pathologically incapable of actually instilling some iron into the spines of people so pampered by their lives thus far that they think covering their mouth and nose to pick up 40 teabags is tantamount to a spell in Guantanamo bay.
Johnson again dropped the ball today (what’s that, ball 2743928490372?) when he refused to say it would be foolish to hold large gatherings at Christmas. “We’ll do it anyway!” sneer the idiots, as if their actions are bravery – not being able to adjust to any situation doesn’t mean you’re brave, it means you’re stupid.
And above it all, how often do you see people like I did today, strutting around a supermarket maskless and sneering as if they deserve applause for their decision to bare arms in the war against covid- they, of course, fighting on the virus’ side. Do you think you look brave, or strong, or smarter than the rest of us? I’ll forget about you after 5 minutes- you mean nothing to me. Your actions both frustrate me and make me laugh, because the height of bravery for these people is to show their chins waggling in the wind generated by the refrigerated sections of a supermarket.
True bravery is doing the things you don’t want to. Going without the support of your loved ones, wearing the uncomfortable thing for the sake of safety, and sharing space with people who gleefully share memes about how doing the bare minimum to stop a contagion from overwhelming hospitals and derailing everything from plastic surgery to cancer treatment is “pathetic”.
Me and my friends have, all this time, held the line of blaming the government for their shambolic messaging, which is true, their contrary advice, which is true, their lacklustre and delayed responses over and over, which is true- and their cavalier attitude towards throwing out the restrictions to please the noisy and the stupid.
The government bear a huge, personal amount of responsibility for this- but in a country where people who act like the worst facets of society are disturbingly common, it’s well past time the people responsible for this childish, weak and frankly pathetic behaviour bear their responsibility- you did this. You got us where we are. You’ve trapped us in this eternal state of open lockdown with the threat of virus or lockdown or more. You think I care about your personal liberties when you won’t even do the bare minimum to safeguard mine? Think again.
I suppose the ultimate question posed has to be: when do we say “enough” and take our society back from the loud, gruff and cowardly minority who has amassed support behind a spineless populist and his scum enabling cabinet? What will be the fulcrum upon which our patience turns- and what will be the igniting incident that forces us to stand together, shoulder to shoulder, and lay down a siege on the cowardice of a populace whose lack of consideration has grown from a thorn in our side to a wound that bleeds us, day by day, into sheer exhausted capitulation?
I refuse to use the word “leading”- the UK through the coronavirus crisis was always going to be impossible for Johnson. We have neither been led, nor are we through it -specifically because of this selfish, cretinous fool’s attitude. Bare below the elbows. Tie tucked. But desperate to show his sweaty, selfish face off for photo ops in a building filled to the brim with people sick and dying because of his, and his worm eaten cabinet’s selfish decision to protect the economy over human life.
The clear desperation of Johnson to make good of his mess in regards to the corruption scandals “rocking” Westminster (I air quoted rocking because- let’s be honest, who didn’t know that Westminster was rotten to the core under the tories) has now led him to the latest in a series of selfish blunders- wandering the halls of a hospital unmasked, his libertarian, or possibly libation addled mind aflap with nonsense.
To prove you’re worthy of trust as a prime minister, you would expect to go further, work harder, and set the examples. How many holidays has Johnson had since he took highest office? How many U turns? How many scandals, salacious headlines, protests and more has he inspired amongst the tired, beleaguered and furious populace of the United Kingdom. He has been so inept as to make the United Kingdom an ironic moniker, as Ireland and Scotland seem set to take steps to sever their connection to the rest, if only to escape feifdom rule by a man pathologically incapable of enshrining responsibility in his role.
It is only a matter of time until Boris Johnson steps down, or is removed. And he will be remembered forever as a blight on the face of political discourse and honesty in the united kingdom.
Let’s go back, shall we, to Johnson’s election win. Most prime ministers would roll up their sleeves as he so selflessly has in the picture above, and set to preparing the country for it’s exit from the European Union- they would be stepping into briefings on the economy, political division, racial disparity, wealth inequality – Boris Johnson went on holiday to “celebrate his win”- he’s also been on holiday three more times in the last year, mid brexit shortage, covid crisis, increasing bills, increasing NI and more.
The win was a shock for those of us who were left of the center- not just because Johnson seemed inept, but because it came a matter of weeks after police were called to his flat due to a domestic disturbance- the media covered this, but strangely it was seen as verboten to ask whether the man who would take highest office should have his personal life dissected- after all, Johnson’s past exposure to the press hardly painted the image of a salubrious, caring man. Fired twice for lying, exposed for doxxing a journalist so a friend could attack him for writing factual unkindnesses, had an affair when his wife had cancer and lying about it.
Once in the position he had so coveted, Johnson took little time to start appeasing those who put him there- his and Priti Patel’s comments on “do gooder lefty lawyers” preceded a huge spike in violence against said group- and yet an apology wasn’t even entertained. Finally, the right leaners had an unrepentant man in charge.
He didn’t have long to entertain his success at the polls. As coronavirus began to spiral in the news cycles, dogging our footsteps like the virus itself would mere weeks later, Johnson tried to appear unflappable on TV, boasting about shaking hands with covid patients- shortly before almost dying of the virus himself. The government’s reluctance to pre-emptively close the economy was responsible for the precipitous rise in cases- facilitated as well by their early determination to seek herd immunity. As soon as the mass deaths began to show, Johnson performed the first of his many U turns- but that meant little to those who now lay cold in the ground due to his lassitude.
Once the PPE chain corruption was established, it was only a short matter of time until an inquiry into who in the government knew about, and took advantage from, this practice of taking public money to produce sub standard PPE that would demonstrably cause deaths, or simply be a waste of vital public money.
Let’s also not forget the government’s determination to appoint Dido “data loss” Harding to the top job at Serco test and trace- slapping an NHS logo on an app doesn’t make it an NHS project, just means it is shielded from scrutiny in a way it should not as a business swallowing vast sums of public cash. Harding was a terrible choice, proven when her poorly run unit lost thousands of cases because they used spreadsheeting software that’s out of date compared to the software I use at work- but complaining about government corruption would do you little good- Harding’s husband heads up the anti corruption unit- and she is also good friends with Johnson.
Next to come was the discovery that Johnson had dismissed founded- proven- claims that Priti Patel was a bully who had demeaned and undermined her staff to the point that the public had to foot the bill for a payout for a staff member. Johnson’s sticky prints were all over this and the person responsible for the investigation was so incensed, he quit- but as his other job was to report on certain activities of Johnson this meant, somewhat dubiously, that months later Johnson would come under fire for being unable to prove who had paid the exorbitant bill for his number 11, Downing Street flat revamp. Was it the public? Who knew- until at the last moment a scrambling response from the government showed that Johnson had reimbursed a tory donor who footed the bill. Strange that a man who thinks nothing of money couldn’t have footed the bill himself.
We are, though, nowhere near the end of the strange tale of Johnson, part time prime minister and job share with the grim reaper and the snake who lied to Eve in the garden of eden.
Desperate to boost an economy that had already begun to flail under the pandemic’s necessary restrictions and the unprecedented disaster that was the brexit fallout, Johnson worked out a plan with the Chancellor of the Exchequer – Eat out to Help Out- that only took weeks to cause cases to explode in an utterly predictable way. But as long as the economy was rising, Johnson and his cadre closed their eyes to the rising covid numbers.
Suddenly, Johnson’s old ally Dominic Cummings filled the press with excuplatory headlines, trying to out the government as the nest of fools it was. Quotes Johnson had made were everywhere as he talked about letting our corpses pile high in the streets instead of locking down. And still the public forgave.
Next came his defence of Matt Hancock’s ineptitude. “He’s doing a fine job” said Johnson dismissively – continuing to defend this viewpoint even as Hancock was outed as a clueless, corrupt and inept health secretary- and even into the proof that Hancock was having an affair with an aide paid by public funds, more bothered about filling his hands with her pant suit than working on plans to save the lives of his fellow countrymen. Johnson rolled his eyes, probably thrilled that he wasn’t the only person incapable of fidelity – but as the public’s ire rose, suddenly Hancock announced he was leaving the role of health secretary and immediately Johnson claimed he had fired him. Demonstrably a lie- and shortly after this, Dawn Butler MP would call out Johnson’s lies in Parliament, something heretofore unprecedented.
Johnson’s government’s venom truly started to seep into the nation at the point where he decided to scorn providing school meals to school children.
Many ardent tories jumped out of the woodwork to repeat the same recycled media lines of “oh so they can afford cigarettes and iPhones but not to feed their kids!” And while none of us denied that there are some who will abuse benefits or mistreat their children, to tar everyone with that brush, and to deny children free food that would ease the burden on their parents and fill their stomachs was a truly monstrous move on behalf of the government.
This though, highlights a wider problem of the poison of the Johnson prime ministership. The emboldening of tory MP’s to self radicalise, to talk absolute tosh, to purposely be offensive or to do outrageous things. Ben Bradley accused his constituents of “selling free school meal tickets to pay in brothels”. Dominic Raab has accused the British populace of being amongst the most lazy – despite his insistence on not leaving his holiday resort as Afghanistan’s last defences against the Taliban crumbled. Priti Patel, already let off for bullying, her literal subterfuge against the nation forgotten, has now written legislation that has killed refugees in the sea- it has already happened, but you may not have read about it in our biased media. But don’t forget, this legislation is also widely hailed as illegal by other countries and has soured relations between England and Britain even more.
John Redwood, once hailed as an intellectual, regularly spends most of his time positing wild nonsense theories of how to improve relations between the UK and other places. Michael Gove, exposed for being biased against the north then made director of schemes to improve infrastructure in the north… the ineptitude, purposeful prodding and open idiocy of this cabinet is plain to see for those who look.
When his appointee to succeed the inept Hancock, Sajid Javid, immediately caught covid then threw off all restrictions, most of those who have railed and raged at Johnson’s inability to do a good job waited with bated breath, assuming that SOMETHING would stop the foolishness of our “freedom day”. Over 6000 people have died, needlessly, since freedom day because our government is derangedly driven to placate a small but loud minority of idiots- and a worse pandemic has spread in the UK- lack of consequence culture. But looking at the contents herein, can you be surprised.
The next hand clutching slip-up of Johnson’s was his deep desperation to facilitate a trade deal with India to make up for the yawning maw that is the post brexit trade deficit. His insistence on throwing off travel safety made it perfectly convenient for the delta variant to pervade the whole country, swaths of infections following his foolish decision to kiss up to the Indian politicians he hoped could enrich our trade. There was money to be made- money that came again at the expense of the vast majority of Brits.
And when Peter Bottomley MP said that new MPs find it “desperately difficult” to cope in their £81k salary with huge expenses, subsidised meals and more, at the exact same moment that the government removed the £20 uplift from universal credit, how much clearer could it have been that our duly elected did not, even in a blindingly fundamental way, understand the travails of the working class, either in, or not in the covid era? And again, during this latest scandal with Owen Paterson thrown under the bus and forced to step down he decried the salary scheme for MPs... why a man so out of touch with his constituents retains power so easily is beyond me.
This latest controversy has prompted a splashback that nobody could have predicted- Johnson’s determination to defend a colleague who provably took money to lobby for a company who has caused a surge in infections (strangely just before he faces an investigation by the committee) saw headlines from usually slavish newspapers critiquing his and his government’s foolish actions. Open evidence of corruption – “vote this way or your constituency will be defunded” has finally seen people shake off the pall of indifference we’ve been pushing back against for months.
But Johnson’s controversies predate his role as PM and continually during his tenure he has refused to apologise for contentious remarks he’s made in articles, from calling muslim women letterboxes, calling gay men tank topped bum boys and in his book, using the phrase “he was stupid because he was a c**n”, and far more. Johnson always falls back on context- always missing the point that the context makes the comments worse. He sticks to these views because this is how he sees anyone not of “his level”.
Johnson has, somehow, clung to the strange moniker of a man of the people, “just like us”- but how many people do you know that describes their £250k salary as “chicken feed”? Daffy Johnson is an affectation that too many British people are happy to swallow in their ignorance- ruled by elites, the UK’s government is as far from “people of the people” as you can get- and in fact, to quote a disgusting and inflammatory headline from the time where the path of Brexit was open to decision, at the moment this government walks ever closer to the deserved moniker of “enemies of the people“. A friend of mine has created a podcast about extremism based specifically on that headline that painted judges as traitors for questioning the legitimacy of the brexit vote, in case the severity of it is lost on you- and all the while, headlines just like that were thrust to the fore by a media determined to placate a rapidly right-sliding government.
And yet no matter how much evidence is thrust into the light by enterprising journalists, researchers and, of course, the “woke do gooder lefty lawyers” who work for places like the goodlaw project, Johnson’s strange and fraudulent presence as a man of the people just wont die- even with the death of 160,000 of his fellow countrymen Johnson has clung to popularity.
And today, 08/11/21, we see Johnson parade down a hospital corridor, bare below the elbow, tie tucked in, maskless and oozing ignorance. The face of our country, red cheeked and belligerent, determined to strengthen the foolish confidence of his populist base.
Many of us are awake to the injustices and corruptions of this government. When will the rest of us awaken from this spell, and finally step forward to remove power from a man desperate to obtain it, but fundamentally incapable of wielding it for good?
Politically Enraged 