Tag: partygate

Really? During a cost of living crisis and the most corrupt prime minister in history you want to talk about GENITALS?

By Daviemoo

The law states that a transgender person- regardless of gender reassignment surgery- is their stated gender. So yes, by law a woman can have a penis. Whether you personally think a woman can have a penis or not is a personal decision, and doesn’t- and shouldn’t- change the law. But if you don’t have more important things to focus on than someone else’s genitalia then you live in unimaginable privilege and it’s time someone told you that.

As a young boy I was given a never ending list of things that made a man a man. If I’d imbibed them all I suppose I’d consider myself not a man now- or I’d have tried to become the woman bedding wood chopping dilettante that is constantly touted as what a “real man” is. Ultimately, whilst society can have a broad consensus on what constitutes a man or a woman it’s really down to every single individuals’ personal feeling, an answer that will of course frustrate any transphobic or regressive folk who read this- but think about it.
You know you’re a woman, yes? What makes you a woman? Is it just a lack of a penis or is it a multitude of things? And if someone else gave you a list of what they think a woman is that conflicts with yours does that make you less of a woman or is it irrelevant?
There is your answer to this entire protracted exhausting debate around gender. To themselves and in the eyes of the law a trans person is their stated gender and you can’t and won’t change that any more than the fact they are that gender to themselves alters your gender. NOW CAN WE MOVE ON?

Every day the media assails us with endless rhetoric around whether women can have penises, why do we need to call it chest feeding, what about bathrooms and shelters and on and on- as if suddenly 70% of children instead of around 0.7% identified as trans, as though trans people are positively sweeping the globe! It’s the new catchy phenomenon- that affects less than 1% of people.

Ah but then of course comes the argument- should 99% of people be made uncomfortable by this less than 1% of people? No… but they aren’t. Transphobia is not the popular theory we’re constantly told it is by right wing knee jerk reactionaries like the person who prompted this article today, the ever ineffable Nick Ferrari. Most people don’t feel uncomfortable around trans people because most people realise that a trans person is a person trying to live their lives in a world that seems to be doing its utmost to hinder that. Would I expect women to be comfortable with the pontificating, red faced pillock that is Ferrari tumbling into their gym changing room and haranguing them about their dress size? No. But Ferrari isn’t identifying as a woman, because he isn’t one. There’s a gulf between a trans woman and a cis man and the constant ignoring of this fact is what drives most of us who are not trans but are fucking sick of the endless recycling of the anti trans talking points are fed up of.

How often do you see strangers’ genitals? Me, usually about 50 minutes after I’ve hopped on Grindr, and other than that never.

I avoid looking at people at the gym because I’m not a creep- and if you, like utterly obsessive people like Staniland, spend your time talking about furtively staring at the dangly parts of strangers in the hopes of justifying your moral outrage, you may come to realise that you are the spooky one, not the person just trying to use the facilities.

Ultimately, I feel I need to say this very clearly for transphobic people- and I’m sorry to my trans mates, I don’t mean this to sound as insensitive as it will but- the correct answer to “can a woman have a penis” is I DON’T CARE. I don’t care what’s in your pants, what you were born with or as, I don’t care. I care about you on an individual level and the only time your genitals factor in is if I want us to see each other naked or if you plan to weaponise them against me.
The stats clearly speak to the fact that trans people are not a danger, not simply because they barely exist in the first place but also because trans transgressions (say that five times fast…) barely exist as well!
Websites developed by TERFS would have you believe that around every 3rd turn in a city a trans person is waiting to assail you with what they conceal beneath their clothes- it’s confected outrage and the fact that so many people endlessly fall for it is so consternating. Maya Forstater claims to care for women and yet has declared previously she doesn’t believe in period poverty and only referenced the overturning of abortion legislation in the days after it was leaked to say WOMEN, NOT PEOPLE. Truly, picking at language is the real indicator that you’re a champion of women.

With all of the things going wrong in the UK right now- coronavirus killing approximately 83,000 of us a year, a government making their own corruption legally unassailable, the breakup of the union, the worsening war in Ukraine and our ever increasing march towards direct involvement- focusing on whether a person has an inny or an outy in their private personal area is the height of pathetic. If you feel like trans people are encroaching on your freedom you may want to double check you can still vote after the restrictions on ID came in. If you feel that trans people are taking your rights away I hope you dont want to protest about it because you literally can’t do that any more without risking legal repercussions. And if you feel trans people are dictating laws and sensibilities to you, you may want to know that the government is enforcing laws that means the far right are able to visit and speak at universities and cannot be turned away.
All of the posture, bluster and noise around trans rights has done absolutely nothing but allow actual fascistic rhetoric to embed itself and breed in the fabric of the UK- and that’s why when people tell you you’re supporting fascists and authoritarians, they’re right.

If people keep their genitals to themselves what they have shouldn’t concern you, and if you don’t believe trans people are who they say they are you have the legally protected right to think so- but you also can’t go around blustering at people about it because it’s rude- so you have what you want, you can air your views, you already have access to single sex spaces -but if it’s now gotten to the point that you’re dissecting, in depth, what genitals people have and don’t have you truly have walked off the reservation. I urge you to get some perspective and focus on actual tangible issues instead of the concealing of genitalia.

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.

Neutering the ministerial code was not a shot across the bow- it was a declaration of war

By Daviemoo

In 1992, the ministerial code was formally introduced for the purposes of balancing the highest level of government against the accountability and standards expected of those capable of doing the job. Every company, organisation and group has its code of conduct, and if you are unable to meet these high standards you’re likely to lose your seat at the table.
Under a leader too weak, corrupt and lazy to hold his ministers- and himself- to the quality we should expect the UK is set to sink beneath what the government can muster themselves to do: not what they must do for the good of us all.

In every iteration of the ministerial code, themes have run concurrent: honesty and integrity. Transparency has always been absent- but when you imagine the weight of some of the information that passes through the office of the prime minister that suddenly seems acceptable. We don’t ask for every last nuance of political upheaval to be hauled before the masses and nor should we: but politicians have slowly become masters of extrapolating not telling the truth with lying and with building a bonfire of integrity, edging closer and closer to the fuse, all the while assuring us that we could expect the required & requested levels of the opposite from them.

The fact that it took until 1992 to introduce a code of conduct amongst politicians should have been the first alarm that something was not all well in British democratic discourse, and even having a code or a constitution doesn’t prevent political meddling: looking briefly to the shores of America we see the desperate thrashing of the left against the ever increasing radical right- no constitution prevented an attempted Coup in January 2021. These tenets are as tall as the clouds; but as wide as a strand of hair- though you can’t directly progress forward, it’s easy to step around should you be motivated to do so, and one could not ever accuse Johnson and his cohort of lacking motivation to circumvent vital scrutiny- we’ve read alarming tales of their fervour for being able to overturn judicial decisions, we saw them drop the reformations asked for out of the paterson scandal, they stripped back our right to voice displeasure through protest, they tell us to hold them to account at the voting booth whilst making that more difficult, they allegedly pay “bungs” to newspapers to report, or not report, what they need in the press.
Looking at this behaviour the idea that democracy and justice were a bulwark of protection becomes as fantasist as it is: all we have ever had to hold our upper echelon to account is the promise that they would adhere to this code and anything beyond that is illusory- so – every last one of us must stop expecting this low standard. If we cannot expect honesty of them we must demand it.

Johnson’s desperation to obscure his actions from vital scrutiny point to the idea that he must alter the very fundamentals of what scrutiny he is allowed to endure is a tacit admission that he cannot rise to the heights a prime minister must reach- instead he seeks to lower the bar so he can clear it and with that action he does not even ask the people our thoughts, he tells us that he knows best and we must sit back and watch- with the air of the misogynist husband who tells his angry wife to calm down, Johnson has put his finger to the lip of the nation in our fury, in our confusion and in our resistance, and shushed us: are we truly the nation who would take this slight?

The exsanguination of truthfulness

Honesty is a necessary part of the office of the prime minister, and something we could argue that many prime ministers long before the era of the Johnsonites has failed us on. Blair blustered us into Iraq, Cameron ran a referendum on EU membership to stop some of his MPs defecting to UKIP, selling it as a decision the people deserved to make when it was merely his attempt to wrench power back. May, a staunch remainer, flailed against the EU fruitlessly for months because she believed it was wrong to do what she was hired to do and she was deposed for it, all the while slated in the media as the lacklustre PM who was letting us all down even as she kept on top of other domestic affairs outside of Brexit: ultimately, her lack of fervour for the destruction of our relationship with the rest of the EU was her pyre – all of these events were a precursor to the level of dishonesty we now take as tacit from the office of the prime minister.
There is a method of torture known as death by 1000 cuts which is exactly what it reads as- a slow death, a shallow slash at a time. The person cannot escape and slowly, slowly, their blood drains until their body can be sustained no more. We were slowly bleeding from 900 wounds before Johnson’s government’s premiership- then he emerged and delivered the last 100 blows in quick succession.
If the lifeblood of a truly free country is truth, only an infusion could save us now- but the ambulance is in a nine hour queue to a hospital fit to burst with backlogged patients: will we survive this haemorrhage? Just like any wound, the longer we bleed, the less that is likely.

Dishonesty has, as we well know, dogged Johnson’s career as he has tumbled from vexatious attempts at literacy to being the laughing stock of a Brussels politician and somehow found the tenacity to scramble his way, always on the backs of those more talented and clever, to the office of the prime minister of the United Kingdom. So lacking in talent is Johnson that he may be the prime minister who initiated the deconstruction of the United Kingdom. Soon he will be the man who rules over a country who despises him, not the leader who unites several nations- all because he lacks the modesty to follow the true will of the people. It is easier for Johnson to feed the press machine that brought him to prominence and that he uses as a shaking podium, asking them to constantly press forward the storyline that everyone loves his caddish brand of politics and then to simply place his fingers in his ears and scream a bastardised version of the national anthem- as always backed up by his baying choir, the front bench MPs. Even as a huge proportion of the nation quakes in unleashed rage against the entirety of the administration, they continue to tell us collectively that we must move on from their betrayal: that is precisely what we must never do, for they will never dictate to us where we stand, why we kneel- or why we fight.

Integrity- democracy- illusory

One may have always disliked the politics of the conservatives. That is, of course, understandable- their politics was, and is not, for many. But one could never accuse them of the unparalleled heights of hypocrisy plain to see now. Years ago, an illicit affair would be enough to dismantle a politicians career and paint the entire party with the deep stain of shame- but politics has been gamified by a media that must exist by pushing salaciousness as our bread and butter.
The public love scandal- and politicians have been all too eager to give in, to align with a media who publicises every tawdry detail and as we have watched, agog, politicians have gone from the best amongst us, the smartest and most moral amongst us to affair having, children starving, fat shaming, law breakers- even now, the reports of the Sue Gray report contain a barely concealed glee that politicians drank, fought and had sex behind the black door of number 10 which Starmer recently rightly called a representation of our democracy. Integrity was not just respected, expected- it was required.
Thatcher never recovered from the lies she told as PM, nor did Blair- and rightly so. Their legacy is written against the lies they told- but Johnson? His legacy IS the lies he has told, for it is all he has done- from the moment he was placed in office he has plied the public with so much dishonesty, rhetoric, obfuscation and technicality that we can no longer discern- or rather, we don’t know where to focus on to find the truth for everywhere you turn is a lie.

The issue with fighting this level of political dishonesty is simple to explain, and can be applied to everything from brexit to election promises to the daily besmirching of the people’s office.
The truth is a stubborn thing, as unchangeable as bedrock because it is, and it exists only as itself- it cannot change; you can put a coat of paint on the truth but it will always still be the truth.
A lie can be anything you want: if you can lie with an air of plausibility you can sell almost anything- let us take brexit as an example- take a peoples who have suffered under austerity for several years and use media to repeatedly push the idea that you are poor, your mortgage is expensive, your roads bad quality, your food expensive because of your EU membership (see the stupidity of straight bananas) and suddenly you have people desperate for a brexit that doesn’t benefit them- but of course, many will see through this, so then you bring in the rear guard on a different line of attack- anyone who still wants to stay in the EU is a traitor, doesn’t believe in the UK. Not only do you forment the blaming of the EU for people’s poorer lives but the very idea of questioning that makes you a traitor. Add to this a deepening sense of the nationalism that tells you two contradictions: Britain first, British people are better and Britain is the best it can get- and people who want better for Britain through any means other than waving its flag and declaring its wonders are traitors.

The problem we face is thus: all we ever had to fight back against governmental malice was the hope that they were the best of us: now we know better than ever that this is not the case- but what will we do about it? Starmer continues to try to assail Johnson using the rules he has already gleefully destroyed, so how could this ever work? We must change tactic- but here, my thoughts run out of steam. I am simply not smart enough to articulate the next move, and I don’t know it. Starmer’s advisors are old guard labour members, active since the 70s, 80s, 90s and they too cling to the idea that the archaic modus operandi can hold Johnson et al to scrutiny. They will fail -so we must shift attack. But how? What do we do? Let us not forget that shame, contrition and genuine remorse were the weapons we wielded in the past against governmental malfeasance. This government does not, can not- will not, feel the sting of these weapons. So what weapons will penetrate their hide: how do we re-arm ourselves and win the battle they have dragged us into?

Currently, a worrying proportion of the American further and far right are floating the idea that they will provoke a civil war against the left- and as they are the side who wholeheartedly back a lack of gun control, they truly believe it is a war they will win.
Guns are weapons- and so is knowledge, and both can be wielded to wreak havoc, but only one can truly be wielded for good. So how do we harness the capability of knowledge, weaponise it to turn the tide of this war we find ourselves in?
Only those in charge may tell- but tell they must, and soon or dire consequence will befall us- not may, but will. Knowledge cannot deflect gunfire, so we must start our deployment now, and fight back against the ignorance that will lead to it: not just in the US, but in the UK- in all the countries who claim democracy, yet only hold their leaders to the standards they can be bothered to uphold. The deepening storyline that the left want to take away freedoms even as the right does so, that the left want to force you into a body you don’t want as the right force you to carry pregnancies you don’t want, that the left want to censor speech as the right ban books about LGBT+ people or flatly refuse to report on governmental failure, that the left want to come after your children as prominent right wing politicians both here and in the US are jailed or investigated for child sex offences- somehow we must break through this cloud of hypocritical disinformation and expose the depths of right wing political corrosion to people willing to prop up governments who hurt them all to fight back against an enemy who doesn’t exist- of course, amongst right wing supporters are those who know the truth and don’t care, or know the truth but want it to be this way, but amongst them are those whose eyes can be opened to the simple fact that this polemical politics poisons them against those who want honestly what is best for all of us.

If we can reach those on the right who have been consumed by this saturation of us vs them narrative, I have hope that the real enemies of truth, those who must rely on diversion over talent will become clear to them, and we can add them to our side.

At least once a week, I write that we deserve better in the UK: we deserve better from all of our governments- but we don’t just deserve better, we need better and without it we face a dark and uncertain future, where the meeting of the lowest standards is not only acceptable- it is applauded. This is Johnson’s legacy- the 8 feet under lowering of societal standards, integrity, honesty, freedom, and on the tombstone shall be carved “here lies the UK- we could have done better- but we didn’t”.

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 time to move on Prime Minister- for the good of the country, go

By Daviemoo

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.

Evil Triumphs as the Good Do Nothing

By Jack Meredith @PoliticalWelshy

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.

Partygate: From Democracy to Mockery

By Daviemoo

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.

Until Johnson is gone the UK has no hope of democracy

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. 

But the rot which corrodes the front of the house extends further, sinuous tendrils working its way through tories who accuse their constituents of “selling school meal vouchers to brothels and crack dens” or who blithely accuse doctors, nurses and teachers of flouting lockdown rules like Johnson so confidently has done. 

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.

I mourned my mother’s death in total isolation as Boris Johnson and his cronies partied – they must go.

By Daviemoo

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.

Tainted forever is the trust of a party that calls itself the party of law and order, a party who cannot even undertake the rules which it implements. Let no tory ever again call themselves the party of law and order as they defend convicted sex offenders or as they brazenly write off the suffering of the families of the covid dead or others.

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.

The urgent need for accessibility in political discourse- and the case for change

By Daviemoo

The politics of England in particular are facing fracture at an alarming rate. As Scotland gears up for another indyref, as Wales looks at shearing away and as Ireland could reunite to solve Brexit quandries, we must ask ourselves how we break down the multiple walls that brick away political knowledge from tens of millions of people- and make them see that votes without knowledge lead to corruption, failure- and fascism.

I was arguing with a commenter on my tiktok yesterday. I’d made a video stating -factually- that labour is the most credible opposition to the tories at present. The commenter replied incredulously, “Starmer? Credible?” and then gave me some very irate examples of the things that Starmer does that she doesn’t like. I, agreeing with what she was saying but also having the gift of realism, replied with “okay, what would you do then…”

She then went on to rant about how my politics are the problem and that neoliberalism doesn’t work- and both of these points annoyed me- my politics have a central, white hot core which is simply “make people’s lives better”. Please, regale me with how that’s a problematic chain of thought. But the main bugbear I had is that the exact issue I’ve found as I’ve forayed further and further into discourse around politics, society, media and the surrounding issues is that people talk in academic or overly complex terms which immediately put off or cut out the common person from the conversation. I know what neoliberalism is, what nationalism is, because I’ve spent a lot of time specifically researching them. I talk about them constantly because they’re important. But I also try my best to explain to those who may have interest, but have never heard the terms before, exactly what they mean.
In this aspect, I feel like all too many people are keen to have discussions that are important, and by their very nature – exclude people.

This extends beyond simple politics into abstract politics. I keep mentioning the word fascism in my blog posts because I am petrified of our approach towards it- but all the scholars into neofascism are discussing this problem with each other at the most academic level using complex parlance, who then hand it to experts in political theory who discuss it to a lesser extent with fellow experts, then a few keen parties pick it up- and it doesn’t reach the people who most need to hear it as they’re at risk of the radicalisation we fear. People most at risk of radicalisation, of falling victim to disinformation and of voting for parties who will hurt instead of help them are almost always cut from the conversation through various different ways, which i’ll explore below.

The limitations of our current education style

I’ve talked a lot recently about how the archaic system of education still deployed to this day does not help a vast proportion of the population. Education as it stands is designed to churn out people who can either do physical, menial or office jobs with the fewer amongst us going on to do other roles.

Many people would be capable of doing these other, “more important” jobs or reaching a further potential which allowed them to achieve more of their goals, or just live a better, more fulfilling life- but they are barred by the ancient style of education still used to this day, you can and will never progress.

Education styles have been widely talked about over the last 25 years- another of my posts on this blog is directly about this topic.

Additionally, a firmer understanding of topics is then off limits based on the progression to further education- which is now extremely expensive. Which brings us to the next issue.

The paywall of higher education

Locking away knowledge behind further knowledge is unfortunately a by-product of human intellect- you have to develop layers of understanding. So if we solved the first problem by enacting change in the educational sphere and more people were able to digest and learn from differing styles of education, we next have the problem to solve of the simple cost of deepening knowledge- university was expensive when I went. The fees then rose precipitously a few years after I graduated, and I was disgusted to watch the country entomb knowledge behind tens of thousands of pounds of debt. Some people simply do not have the capitol behind them to study because money is a blocker.

Whilst we live in a deeply capitalist society we can always expect that further education will come at a premium, simply to price people out who will then be trapped in the layer of workforce who don’t need a degree or more to progress. But this is a gatekeeping of knowledge so fundamental that it not only prevents people from accessing this knowledge. The other problem is that, as I stated, a lot of the political or socio-ecological knowledge is kept behind this paywall because it also alters those (if they are lucky enough to get there), who get there to be distant from their roots, and therefore make them less likely to be the people so sorely in need of the knowledge, as an irony. Furthering yourself in education often uplifts you automatically from your starting point, but the whole notion I’m driving at is that those AT the starting point are the ones who need the knowledge without the alteration.

The daily disinformation of the media

I’m confident that any person who reads the daily mail, the independent etc automatically thinks they are “politically engaged”. But it’s all too quickly forgotten that UK news sources in particular are written with a deeply political slant in mind, and almost all of the big selling newspapers lean right to varying degrees. With this in mind, those papers even by simply omitting the factual problems of a government like the one so installed now, are keeping people ignorant of key, vital knowledge.

One must truly search to find real political commentary and discourse, and as someone whose entire life has now begun to revolve around untangling the media’s insidious reporting of the Johnson administration, it takes real effort, nuance, camaraderie and time to decode the true meanings of the stories so published, and to find information that the media is all too keen to alter or cover up to protect a government who continues to lean on their necks (lest we forget that Johnson is looking at further curtailing press freedoms by banning stories which “embarrass MPs”.

We’re also bloated to bursting with insipid media which is created for vapid enjoyment and contains absolutely no intellectual merit at all- this goes beyond social media which can be carefully crafted into a tool of mass information dissemination or the antidote to right wing disinformation, but onto lengthy runs of shows with no actual lesson behind them being put at the forefront of viewing rather than those which would allow people to understand the society we’re in.

The final, and biggest problem, though…

Apathy, apathy and more apathy

Actual statistics I was shown recently show that a dramatic proportion of tory voters from 2019 have slipped into political apathy, uncaring of events because they simply do not believe that they can have a tangible effect on it.

The uncaring nature of so many citizens of the UK has lent strength to a party who know that many people will roll their eyes and say “they’re all the same”. When it comes to a reluctance to approach politics radically, any party who wants to win will toe the line of compliance simply to ensure that the fear of radical change will not obscure their potentially excellent political machinations. But this insistence of continuing to apply “the usual business” rules to politics lends itself poorly to an excitement in upholding honesty in politics to those who feel disillusioned- for if the system is broken, continuing to work within those bounds will not excite people for change- and will also allow those who think all politicians are corrupt, to believe that indulgence in that system is complicity.

Politics is for everyone

Ultimately, every single person in the UK is absolutely entitled to be involved in political discourse- as political commentator Supertanskiii said on the podcast recently, “politics is everywhere, it’s there when you go to the shop to buy a pint of milk”. It’s fine to have distaste for the system in which we are enmired- but the only way to clean up that system is engagement, from the widest spread of people in this country. And to do so, to borrow a thought from Orwell’s 1984- the proles must realise that the power is entirely ours, and our lack of assent, our denial of compliance, can and will make this government crumble before us.