BoJo & His Chums: EXPECT THE WORST

Whoops there's strong language here from the very proper British Press:

Their colleagues circle the wagons to defend the miscreants.

 . . ."there ever been a leader whose actions and personality have said more clearly to his party that pretty much anything goes as long as we stay in power?

Johnson’s disregard for rules and his readiness to cast convention aside are spectacular. But they have become the tip of an iceberg of entitlement that is not just disgraceful, but is threatening public life in Britain more widely. . ."

Lie, deny and move on – how much longer will the Johnson mantra plague British politics?

(Image Credit: Illustration: Ben Jennings/The Guardian)

 

Martin Kettle

the Guardian |

Partygate, bullying ministers, groping MPs and insider lobbying: the Tories have polluted our entire system of government

Boris Johnson was never going to resign if he didn’t have to. This is all about the Tory party’s view of him now. The party knows as well as you or I that Johnson lied about the lockdown parties. It knows that the lies hit middle Britain, conscientiously obeying the lockdown laws, in the gut. It knows the Tories will take a hit for it in the local elections and eventually the general election too. Yet, remarkably, when it weighs all this up, the Tory party thinks this does not matter all that much.

The ostensible reason now being offered is that a prime minister is too important to be dumped during a war. Britain’s own history shows how specious this claim is. Margaret Thatcher was ousted during the build-up to the Gulf war in 1990; Neville Chamberlain during the second world war in 1940; and Herbert Asquith was pushed aside during the first in 1916. Actually, you could argue that a war is a good time to ditch a failing prime minister, not a bad one.

And besides, who says we, Britain, are at war? There has been no declaration of war of the kind that Asquith and Chamberlain made. Nobody appears to have told the House of Commons either. Johnson is doing many good things in support of Ukraine and in helping to isolate Russia, but he has not sent a single British soldier, flyer or sailor into harm’s way. There absolutely is a war going on, but a large part of Johnson’s war is a pantomime version performed by a pantomime prime minister.

The facts are more prosaic. The party knows that Johnson is mortally wounded. But, since the complacent self-destruction of Rishi Sunak, it isn’t sure who would now win an election that Johnson would lose. How extraordinary it is that, among the 358 other Tory MPs, not one of them thinks they could do better. Instead, the party sits on its hands, making the craven calculation that there is more gravy to be made out of being in government, knowing full well that if a Labour prime minister had done this the indignation on the right would now be at ramming speed.

But the Tory party isn’t sitting on its hands about Johnson’s rule breaking alone. It is also complicit in the breaking of the rules – in the sense of the moral code of public life – itself. By saying it is better that Johnson should stay – better for the Tory party, better for the MPs, that is – the party is, in effect, asserting that this prime minister, uniquely, can lie to parliament without consequence, and break the law without paying a political price. That’s not merely shocking, but stupid . . ."

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