Tag: dominic raab

The Party is Over: The Tory Party, That is.

By Daviemoo

The British public faces a stark choice: to continue to enable and embolden a wholesale corrupt political party, or to shake up a system that has failed us repeatedly over the last decade. As pressure mounts on Johnson to resign and a report by one of his employees is awaited, the question has shifted from “will Johnson step down” to “will the British public continue to be a doormat for the Etonian elite”?

Prime Minister Boris Johnson stands accused of lassitude, corruption and collusion in not only partaking in parties when the nation was on strict lockdown, but in engendering an attitude of utter Devil-May-Care wankery in the walls of our most respected institution of Great British Governance. True to form, Nadine Dorries took a running leap at a Sky News microphone to defend professional alcoholic and philanderer Boris Johnson this week ahead of yet more party allegations. She told us that we should accept the disgraced Prime Minister’s “fulsome apology”. Here, incidentally, is the dictionary definition of “fulsome”:

Nadine Dorries reportedly once stood near a dictionary

Unsurprisingly it was a matter of 37 minutes between me watching this interview with Dorries and with the breaking news of two more unsanctioned Downing Street carnivales. Angela Eagle, in PMQ’s on Wednesday, asked whether it might be appropriate to investigate the days parties DIDN’T happen in downing street as the number of known illegal or at least horribly ill advised gatherings numbers thirteen- as much as Eagle meant this as a joke, it may actually be taken as a collaborative suggestion for expedience from the opposition to assist Johnson’s employee, Sue Grey, in her report on what appears to have been a two year long Oktoberfest in the walls of Downing Street.

Like Michael Gove, perhaps we should all be drawing a line somewhere- and like Gove perhaps it’s related to the Westminster toilets- his location of choice, and the current location of the Tory party’s moral standing.

The incarnated marionette that is Jacob Rees-Mogg lost no time in disparaging fellow tory party members to curry favour with everyone’s favourite scruffy haired scrounger-in-chief, insulting Douglas Ross, one of over 30 Scottish tories, whose tartan pattern is simply the sad face emoji. Weak and ineffectual Ross may be, but for once he is genuinely interested in the good of country, party and nation by calling for the resignation of Crime Sinister Johnson for his piss-taking parties.

And back to Dorries, she defended the most tepid tweet of prime ministerial defence from chancellor and all around rich boy Rishi Sunak, saying he was absent in defending the prime minister because he was in Dorset and “there’s no wifi in Dorset”. Dorries apparently mistakes Dorset for a concrete and steel box sunk forty feet beneath the earth – or perhaps this is a tacit confession that Sunak is an anti vaxxer and therefore doesn’t have access to the magic 5G properties of a nice dose of moderna.

And then we look to Michael Fabricant- at least, in his capacity as MP and not in his second job as wig stand for H&M’s mannequins, desperate to split hairs – theoretical ones, much like his own head hair- over whether the laws were indeed broken. The fact that the court of public opinion doesn’t even need consultation because the prime minister himself has said it was a party and he did attend – and yet we’re being asked to both congratulate him on the bodies piled high and simultaneously to forget it all and move on. We’re being pulled in more directions than Michael’s hairpiece.

Rees-Mogg was quick to claim that perhaps the laws were too strict, and should never have been enacted- and between this and the claim by the Metropolitan Police that retrospective crimes wouldn’t be investigated, unless we happen to recruit for minority report style policing my future defence for any crime committed will be “it’s all in the past now, the law is too strict, move on- in fact, congratulate me on doing such a good job”. Let’s see how that works shall we?

Approximately 17,000 people have faced criminal sanction for breaking lockdown rules- and those claiming that they should be refunded miss the point that a refund acknowledges Johnson should also be let off- in my eyes, if you broke lockdown rules you- and he- are subject to punishment on behalf of those of us who did our damndest not to spread the virus.

Another person who bent the knee without a moment of question was Priti “torpedoes away” Patel- taking a brief moment away from writing authoritarian legislation whilst gently caressing her well worn copy of Mien Kampf, she put a message into the tory whatsapp group (imagine how dry that group must be… PORK MARKETS!) to let them know she stands with Johnson. Patel, known for having the moral fibre of a rusk- condemns misogyny but works for a man who talked about grabbing women’s arses, who is disgusted by racism but denies it’s systemic presence in the system she maintains, who thinks the death penalty is a good idea even if people are innocent of their crimes, who stands for protecting British citizens* (*unless you’re gay or of colour or disabled or naturalised as a citizen or a woman or old or poor…) and the age old Great British values of racism and inappropriate smirks.

But let’s not forget who is also culpable here- a reticent, sneaky and subverted media whose job is to inform the British public of newsworthy events and give us, uncritically, a picture of our world, our country and our politics, sat on reports of these parties even as their own colleagues attended! The media is as culpable as the tory party for attending these events and for burying them in the sand- and once we sweep out the self serving tory party we should be casting a critical eye over journalistic moxxie in the UK and asking why they felt it appropriate to obfuscate these vital stories.

Casting a broader eye away from the media and to the rest of the tory party, and widening the lens beyond partying we can see that this isn’t just a Boris Johnson and his criminal ineptitude problem- the tory party as a whole is institutionally corrupt, debased to a level akin to violence.

PPE VIP lanes now ruled illegal, the restoration of Patel after proven allegations tantamount to espionage only for her to bully staff out of a job, Theresa May’s hostile environment and Windrush reaction and that of her Grenfell response, Owen Paterson’s indignance at being found to be a scumbag and his insistence on blaming the public for being angry that he lobbied for a terrible company to give us terrible service, track and trace to the tune of 37 billion, delivered late and carried in the data-sieve hands of Dido “GDPR” Harding, a Brexit which has caused food, energy, petrol and more issues, Eat out to help out (“out” being COVID-19), Matt Hancock too busy having an awkward teenage looking fumble to be health secretary during a health crisis, Javid throwing off all restrictions as if being an open economy makes up for tens of thousands of preventable deaths, Dominic Raab trying desperately to google what time the sea opens as “Afghanistan Minister- Missed call” flashes up on his phone for the 7th time that day, Dominic Cummings tootling about the country with a car full of pathogen and who thought that driving a one ton machine powered by dinosaur explosions was a good way to make sure his eyes were in working order. These parties are the latest episode in a cascade of cacophony that is only outstripped by the thud thud thud DJing of the music in the basement of our most prized political institutions. Corruption is the surface level scummery of the tory party, and the only conserving that the Conservatives have done is to Conserve their own hides; the only person to lose their job so far in the allegations- provable ones- of illicit parties is a person who wasn’t even AT the parties but joked about them, as callous and cavalier as any attendee.

Johnson’s cabinet is being chewed up by the woodworm of corruption, but to try to assure the public that throwing him out will deal with this rot is to lie as surely as Johnson at the despatch box. If a cabinet is rotten you don’t replace the struts- you throw it out wholesale and get a new one with the hope this one does not succumb as did the last.

The British public only has one choice- not to “keep calm and carry on”. We have to evict this disgraceful and corrupt party from office.

Ultimately there is only one party that deeply concerns me overall- the tory party. And much like the ribald bashes thrown in Downing Street over the two aching years of pandemia endured, apparently solely, by the common man- the party is truly over.

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’s either a gentle step to the left or another goose step to the right

By Daviemoo

I can’t take any more political discourse that uses the worst “both sides” lamentations. So many people will insist on telling me that all politicians are scum, liars, wrong, bad- and the irony is that I don’t disagree. I’m aware that politicians are unprincipled. But the temperature of UK political discourse just keeps getting hotter on one side.

Let me make this clear before I move forward: I don’t like Keir Starmer. I don’t even particularly like Labour under him.

He’s made snafu after snafu, he’s slow to react, labour seems to be a seething pit of argument and discussion that amounts to the same endless friction that has persisted, albeit quieter, since 2019.

There are myriad issues that labour need to deal with. On Starmer, the latest sin he’s admitted to is that he will break promises if it means winning an election.

So many of the political savants I follow online or speak to in person happily decry Starmer, led by the latest op-ed from Owen Jones- and it’s not that I don’t understand why people dislike Starmer or Labour under his governance. I’ve sat quietly, swallowing back criticism after criticism as Starmer seems to drag labour further towards the center. I’ve defended him even when what he’s done has annoyed me because I’ve assumed automatically that there is some grand plan I’m unaware of or that he/ the labour leadership must know better. But the rabidity with which every single thing Starmer does is shocking to me, even as someone that frankly thinks he’s a strange mix of a bit wet and also ruthless towards those who he should be courting.

Where, though, is the perspective? So often I’m told “not tories is not a good enough reason to vote for someone” and in normal times I’d agree. Under a shoddy but functional government, that argument would of course hold weight but right now it folds like damp paper.

The tories are responsible for a disasterous mismanagement of the pandemic. Hancock killed scores of older people by discharging them from hospitals into nursing homes, was more concerned with meeting daily testing figures than actual practicable safety regulations, he had an affair with someone he hired using public money and is embroiled in sundry PPE scandals as are many, many MANY tory ministers. Patel forced refugees into unsafe, unsanitary accommodation which equates to prisons, and is set to do more to worsen their situations including opening “camps” in other countries to keep them- and has worked relentlessly to ensure that any meaningful protest in the UK is curtailed- purely as a reaction to unrest under her own government’s shoddy handling of the new civil rights movement BLM. Gove’s revealing tapes about wanting the north to suffer and calling us toothless, Raab- a man who accused the UK workforce of being amongst the laziest despite us working longer hours and on average working later, and when sick- abandoning his vital duty as Afghanistan fell, to stay at a hotel that it would take someone on minimum wage over a month of full time work to afford ONE NIGHT at. All the tories refused to vote for free school meals then when the UK public pressured them they mis sold the contracts and inflated the prices for sub standard goods- and MP Ben Bradley in particular said that his constituents would use the vouchers in “brothels” and “crack dens”. Rob Roberts was disgraced by sexual misconduct claims and yet continues in his role unabated. Lets also not forget about the horrendously inept minister for Education, Gavin Williamson and his myriad mistakes, most prominent of which was declaring proudly that the Co2 Monitoring systems for schools would protect children from covid- despite none of the monitors being installed when children went back. All of this of course helmed by the racist, sexist, xenophobic, bumbling and useless prime minister we’ve had foisted upon us – Alexander Boris Johnson. Racist articles and books, homophobia, islamophobia all of which he refuses to apologise for, corruption claims stemming back to his journalism days including a confirmed claim that he doxxed a journalist for a friend to allow them to suffer physical violence, calling huge salaries “chicken feed”, laughing and joking about the swaths of dead from covid, talking about bodies piling high in the streets, telling us lie after lie after lie about brexit from the alacrity of trade deals with the US to telling UK companies to “fix the issues with their supply chain”, to simply failing to understand the vital difference between animals slaughtered for profit going to farmers VS culling of animals at huge loss to their owners. He’s raised national insurance, caused inflation in bills, made food shortages nationwide… Johnson’s failings, both personal and professional are long and storied, and yet beloved he remains by many Britons who see this rich, daffy and doe eyed fool as one of them. Johnson wouldn’t stop to put a person on fire out, used to burn £50 notes in front of homeless people and wreck their businesses for fun, has had affairs behind the back of his cancer stricken spouse. He is a moral failure of a human, and a professional failure of a politician and those who love him fail to see that they have enjoyed supporting a confection, a fraud and a fake.

The tories may not always have been the party of scum, but scum they are now. Giving credence to the continued efforts to support the tories in their vast and storied failures, the british press- how anyone can continue in good conscience to allow the tories to run roughshod over the country they claim to love is beyond me.
Sometimes I feel almost paranoiac about it- it can’t possibly be as bad across the board as I see it? And yet the evidence is there, plain to see.

I don’t blame the tories for everything negative in my life, but for those things they are attributable, the links are plain and I cannot but judge those who- I can only assume- wilfully miss this ignorance.

Given all of the above let us be frank: British politics is a hellscape.

But this then is where my frustration mounts. Again, I think Labour has myriad serious issues at present and understand how poorly they are performing. And being told by it’s leader that he will lie or break promises to win the vote is hardly endearing. And yet I cannot feasibly see them as worse than the tories, bearing in mind the litany of things I’ve mentioned barely scratches the surface just of the last 5 years.

I understand, truly, why people would have huge distaste for Labour at present. But how can one truly thing that the better alternative are the tories.
People are so often calling labour centrist that they forget just how far right the tories have gone, and as someone who considers myself far left I often look longingly for a party that actually represents how I feel on myriad issues but the other parties in the UK I unfortunately know- specifically based on how our political system works – are a waste of time.

Any vote that isn’t for the opposition is a waste, and people can decry labour as centrist or corrupt or no better than tories- but tories we have. We are under the thumb of the most corrupt government in living memory. And I can’t help but look to America as an example of a country who held it’s nose and voted in what so many refer to as a centrist melt. Biden is a disappointment in grand terms as is Harris, but we always knew they would be. But Trump’s presidency was marred with corruption scandals, tacit declarations of violence and an increasingly emboldened far right- much like this endless elitist rule by the tories has brought here.

At the end of the day I will hold my nose and vote for labour because any change, any move left however slight, is better than continuing down the dangerous path towards authoritarianism we are already too many steps down here. Until we find a political figure who reaches and unites more of the left in a way similar to Corbyn but without the long shadow he cast (don’t come for me, I liked him a lot), we have to make do with what we have or as always, votes will be split between a handful of indy parties, greens, lib dems and a big share for labour as the tories again coast to victory with less than half of voters wanting them to take power.

The temptation to push for huge change is there, and if it were possible to make a movement so vast happen it would be revolutionary- but until this movement takes place we’ll be doomed to repeat this fractured pattern of splitting and being overseen by those we do not want in power.

So it’s up to the electorate- a gentle step to the left or another goose step further right.

A government without shame

By Daviemoo

What to focus on, dear reader? As the British electorate are set- again – to allow another government minister to slither out of a mess of their own creation, I want to focus on the specifics of Dominic Raab’s blatant dereliction of duty and ask- if the rule of law doesn’t apply, and common decency doesn’t apply – what does?

“The sea was closed”

Do they think we’re stupid? Yes. They do. The government that has lumbered it’s way from disaster to disaster over the last 18 months has officially given up on trying to find any credible reasoning for it’s misdeeds. This is the only conclusion a reasonable person can come to when hearing Dominic Raab proclaim that he was “working in his hotel room” and wasn’t paddle boarding, because… “The sea was closed”.

I for one would like an intimate breakdown from Mr Raab, detailing the no doubt lengthy and fastidious process that the Cypriots go through every evening to close the sea, and what measures they must take every morning to safely reopen it- though I do sense Mr Raab may have skipped that, as we are painfully aware that this government knows or cares very little for a safe reopening. Raab’s allies are all singing the same refrain of “what difference would it have made” or “he works hard”. We don’t know but it may have helped a lot, and of course he does… that’s why he can apparently afford a £40k holiday….

This though, is the standard set by a government headed by a man who said he “could not meet with families whose loved ones had died of coronavirus until their litigation”- of which, there is none – “had finished”. Boris Johnson, over a year on from this suggestion, still has avoided meeting the families of the bereaved – mind you, there are now over 131,000 official coronavirus deaths, and authorities estimate this is closer to 150,000 so one can suspect Johnson would have quite the task on his hands. That is if his hands weren’t busy ebebebe, painting I uh… ah… model ah… buses… Mind you, Johnson’s darkly anti-litigious career is positively littered with this type of bumbling. Fired twice for lying, caught out on PPE funding, allowing the Johnson Variant into the UK, casually laughing at the mass unemployment of the mine closures, callous indifference towards the deaths of tens of thousands, letting bodies pile high for all he cared about- suggesting people may “live longer” when catching covid. Suggesting we take a “gender neutral approach” to decarbonising with the G7. Misappropriated funds for a flat revamp, racist and homophobic language, another breach of ministerial code for jetting to an event on the public dime- the top man is the bottom of the barrel.

Let’s look instead then to Priti Patel, accused by a government employee of bullying- Johnson’s chosen investigator concluded that Patel HAD bullied staff- not only that she had bullied staff, but public funding was then apportioned to her victim as compensation- and just so you know, it’s quite a sum. Anyone who looks at the self assured smirk of Patel knows that underneath the arrogance lies a human so bereft of genuine kinship, one knock to the ego may produce bluster that could relocate small fishing villages like a category 5 tornado. Patel’s propensity for limitless confidence in the face of being wrong was recently recirculated on social media where she staunchly defended the death penalty- even in the face of being asked whether she thought it was right that people may be wrongly put to death… At least she applies the same logic to British citizens as she does to any non British people- basically, let them die if they’re an inconvenience.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, ghostly Victorian chimney sweep of the front bench and reject of Geppetto is, according to a source of a source of mine, quite friendly to the workers in parliament- which is surprising considering he’s so openly ambivalent towards the health, wealth, working conditions and general ability to survive of a gut wrenching portion of the British public at large. Mogg once sang god save the queen as one of his own party tried to open up a discussion about the separation of the Royals from the state- one can only assume he believed he was auditioning for a lead role in the musical “Bad Politicians and the Systems they Protect”.

And who can forget the man that Cthulu aspires to be – Michael Gove, a man with more drug rumours surrounding him than Freddie Mercury, who literally had a party with people carrying trays of cocaine around. Gove’s unhinged toilet pape-sorry, book, spells out the conspiracy theories of a man who thinks that Jewish people are conspiring against him – newsflash Mr Gove, jewish people hate you just the same as… well, everyone else. Even your ascerbic wife, a woman who drinks vinegar for fun, couldn’t stand you. I look forward to the @ExWestminsterWAG column on how you couldn’t figure out how to satisfy either yourself nor her, so you just decided to drain any trace of satisfaction from the rest of us as penance.

How about Rishi Sunak, a man whose budget is so full of holes that you can only see the actual legislation in direct light. Desperately begging the UK to return to the office, Sunak seems to forget what happened when he begged people to Eat out to Help out, a scheme that would have been better named “get coronavirus at a restaurant”. The budget Sunak apparently scrawled on the back of one of his office property owner ledgers continues to sprout holes as he eyes up his next move- screwing the older voters who put the tories in power. Turns out that no matter how many locks you put on something, the tories are happy to saw through it if it stops another recession – but let me guess, LABOUR LEFT US WITH NO MONEY? 11 years ago… guess that decade of austerity was for nothing huh.

And this, ladies, gentlemen and those of a non-binary nature- is our front bench.

Is that not enough? Let’s look at other prominent figures via their actions.

Matt ShamCrook- Sorry, Matt Shaglots- apologies, spell check – Matt Hancock, the health secretary who was too busy trying to meet at the time impossible testing figures to realise he was fucking a woman who wasn’t his wife- a man so creepingly servile and thin skinned that someone questioning him in parliament prompted him to tell her to MIND HER TONE- ironic for a health minister to undermine a literal doctor asking him questions about the veracity of the PPE that kept her colleagues from death…

Or how about ex PM Theresa May, a small and shy woodland creature often seen scurrying through fields of wheat to try and find something to make a Brexit deal with. Many were desperate to humanise may when she stepped down as PM as she openly choked up – a sentiment which was curiously absent over the mass deportation of people the UK resettled here to make a success of itself, or during her many hours speaking about the Grenfell disaster, or in response to her own tenure as home secretary. I don’t pity May, and I certainly don’t enjoy seeing her often speaking critically of the flatulent suit that is Johnson- she enabled the nightmarish government we see before us, and remainer she was but her weak kneed pontifications about Brexit being the right move emboldened a fervent electorate to allow the no win situation which is currently baring the backs of our supermarket shelves like an onlyfans creator’s previews section.

A lesser figure

This is the standard set by our current government, a government I remind you with a gasp inducing majority. It would be charitable at best to suggest that too many folk in England are politically engaged enough to understand the repercussions of having this government in charge, or of the building blocks which led to this mess.

I’m currently-slowly, begrudingly- reading books by previous tory party MPs who explain how their party began folding long ago, and how like the butterfly effects, the small ripples of principled tories stepping down to make way for corpulent fools like Johnson have led to this situation we’re in now.

Captain Hindsight? At least he’s looking…

People so often look at me and say “but you trust Starmer?! Boring captain hindsight Keith?” and to that I say, I have novelty pens I trust to govern more than a significant portion of our government at present. And I would happily take a small, shuffling step to the left, than have to bear another clomping goose-step to the right.

Do I think Starmer is a hot political figure who will revolutionise politics? No. But I also don’t think he’ll continue curb-stomping the British electorate like this government is- and if I’m wrong… prime ministers can be asked to step down. I’d take a prime minister who just does the job of prime minister over a man who is doing the equivalent of supping a pint at the dispatch box while he tells his lad mates how much shagging he got up to this weekend.

Get in the Corbyn

I was a fervent Corbyn supporter back during his tenure, but the never ending “well Corbyn would have” folk, while well meaning, give me a certain level of frustration. I didn’t think even then that Corbyn was perfect- I have to laugh at those who make any attempt to decry his sartorial choices being as my toilet brush is not indistinguishable from Johnson. I would have liked to see Corbyn as PM, to see what he could do and I do feel that England may be the poorer for it, because having a PM who cared about the electorate would have been quite the breath of fresh air after the endless recycling of politicians who would mulch the British voters to make the rose garden bloom. But it didn’t happen, and Corbyn wasn’t a perfect political figure. I urge people who think like this to stop- now- and look at what we have and realise that if you have the luxury of bowing out, soiling your vote and saying HE’S A RED TORY about Starmer, a lot of people behind you are dying or have died – literally, because of tory policies. The increase in foodbanks, reticence of changes in law about buildings with unsafe cladding, the callous dismissal of the at risk during the entire covid crisis, especially now- benefit cuts, no free school meals- this is what this government fosters, and if you don’t actively, intelligently, vote to oust that- you’re party to it. There is no “I’m just not that interested in politics” any more.