Boris Johnson

[magicrat]

Operation save Big Dog has a job on its hands 

 

[Skidfingers McGonical]

Who has it eaten? Priti Patel?

[Bruce Spanner]

Great editorial in The Observer tomorrow...

 

'A little over a month ago, the prime minister told the House of Commons that he shared the anger of a nation at seeing a video of his Number 10 staff making light of lockdown measures and joking about Christmas parties. We were supposed to believe that a culture of impunity and disregard for rules at the heart of government had absolutely nothing to do with Boris Johnson; that he was as shocked by the hypocrisy as the rest of us. It was always a ludicrous contention that the prime minister had no idea what was going on in his own office, part of the same complex as his own residence. And in the last week the full extent of the sheer gall of a leader prepared to throw his staff under a bus to evade accountability for the worst sort of political hypocrisy has been exposed. 

 

Revelation after revelation has emerged since the start of the year – as Johnson must have known they inevitably would – that rubbishes that statement he made to MPs last month. We now know that in May 2020, Johnson was giving a speech at a social gathering, with drink and food, in the Downing Street garden the very same evening ministers were warning the public at a press conference that they could only meet one other person outside. That his staff were throwing not one, but two, raucous parties that reportedly left items in the garden damaged the night before Prince Philip’s funeral. And that Downing Street staff regularly held drinks parties on Fridays that Johnson would often drop into, giving them the prime ministerial seal of approval.

 

Contempt for parliament and public

 

The Observer has long believed Johnson to be a man of little integrity, but even so, it is hard not to be shocked at the level of contempt in which he so clearly holds parliament and the public. Imagine the consequences if he had misled a court under oath in this way. But to him, it is just the Commons, just the way he approaches politics and every other aspect of his professional life.

 

It is clear that the view of the Covid rules as optional rather than mandatory, as they were for everyone else in the country, did not stop at the doors of No 10. There were parties and leaving drinks at other government departments. But there is no doubt where this culture emanated from: it started from the very top, with the prime minister. It is extraordinary that those who wrote the law and the guidance flouted it, as almost everyone else, including the Queen, observed it for the sake of public health, even while mourning. For those who did not, there were hefty fines, even for people with far more sympathetic stories than those working in No 10. One teenager was fined hundreds of pounds for organising an outdoor balloon release for his friend who had died and had to go to court to contest a further £10,000 fine issued in error by Durham constabulary.

 

It is extraordinary that those who wrote the law and the guidance flouted it

 

Two weeks into the new year, Johnson’s authority has been comprehensively shredded. He cannot stay in post. But the Conservative party cannot wipe the slate clean by electing a new leader. Everything about Johnson’s dreadful premiership has been entirely predictable, a reflection of the man he so clearly was long before he became prime minister. He was sacked from a job in journalism in the 1980s for fabricating quotes for a newspaper story and from the Conservative shadow frontbench in the early 2000s for lying about an affair. As chair of the Leave campaign, he was complicit in its false claims that leaving the EU would free up £350m a week for the NHS – later ruled a misuse of official statistics by the UK Statistics Authority – and that a vote to remain in the EU was a vote to share a border with Iraq and Syria. As mayor of London, he failed to declare his personal interests, including his relationship with Jennifer Arcuri, whose company received thousands of pounds of public money.

 

It was patently obvious what sort of prime minister he would be; no one could credibly argue that there was a senior Tory less well suited to govern Britain. Yet Conservative MPs still crowned him leader in 2019. Enough of them thought he cared too little about the union, allowing him to ruthlessly pursue a hard Brexit and that his loose-with-the-truth style of campaigning could win them a general election in the same way it did the EU referendum. An incompetent, corrupt and rotten prime minister was the bargain they were prepared to make, the cost they were all too willing to impose on the whole country.

 

Thousands of avoidable deaths

 

What a heavy price Britain has paid. On Covid, the government is trying to use the success of the vaccine programme to detract from the growing political crisis in which it finds itself. It is true that the UK has had a more successful vaccine rollout than many other countries, and that the government, particularly Kate Bingham, who chaired the taskforce, deserves credit for the early investment in vaccine technology. But the government’s overall record on Covid is grim: time and again, during the first 15 months of the pandemic, Johnson failed to learn from previous mistakes and acted to introduce restrictions too slowly, undoubtedly resulting in thousands of avoidable deaths and more economic pain.

 

First, the government’s hapless approach to education during a pandemic means that far too little has been done to mitigate its impact on children. The effects of this will be felt long into the future.

 

Second, on Brexit, Johnson achieved the hard Brexit the ideological crusaders from his party’s right flank wanted. But it has come at a huge cost: a long-term economic cost, which will depress Britain’s growth prospects for many years to come, but also a perilous risk to the integrity of the union that cannot be measured in pounds and pence and which may mean that within a couple of decades the United Kingdom may no longer even exist. Who cares if the hardest of Brexits offers succour to the cause of Scottish independence? And faced with the irresolvable conundrum of Brexit – that there can be no clean break from the EU while avoiding the need for a customs border either on the island of Ireland or down the Irish Sea – Johnson has chosen simply to pretend this problem does not exist, rather than confront the fact that he or his successor will have to choose between rejecting regulatory alignment between the EU and parts of the UK or stability in Northern Ireland. The disregard for the union permeates everything this government does, extending to ministers such as Jacob Rees-Mogg insulting Scottish Conservatives in a way that only plays into the independence campaign’s hands. Who cares if the hardest of Brexits offers succour to the cause of Scottish independence?

 

Third, all over Britain, families are suffering as a result of this government’s policies. Johnson won his majority by promising not only to get Brexit done, but to “level up” the country. That was just empty rhetoric: his chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has continued the approach of his predecessors since 2010, introducing the biggest ever one-off benefit cut, on top of the last decade’s tax credit cuts that have seen some low-income parents lose thousands of pounds a year even as more affluent families have had their tax bills reduced. Refugees fleeing war zones and human rights abuses have found themselves at the sharp end of a culture war with Priti Patel’s Home Office.

 

Finally, the last few weeks of revelations about Johnson’s hypocrisy on Covid do not just damage the Conservative party. Like the expenses scandal more than a decade ago, it undermines public trust in all politicians and the legitimacy of our democratic institutions. It makes a mockery of the rule of law when ordinary citizens are punished for breaking the law, but senior politicians, political aides and civil servants appear to neatly sidestep the consequences.

 

From electoral asset to liability

 

Every day Johnson continues as prime minister, the damage he does grows. As his evolution from electoral asset to electoral liability dawns on his party, it is looking increasingly likely that they will not allow him to continue in office for much longer. But Britain’s political crisis will not be over. The choice of the next prime minister would fall to Conservative MPs and party members. Johnson’s likely successors are all complicit in the government’s dreadful track record.

 

The only hope lies in a renewed Labour party winning the next general election. Keir Starmer has emerged from recent weeks as a man of competence, integrity and values. Labour still has a long way to go in addressing the reasons why it lost voters in 2019 and communicating what a Starmer premiership would achieve for Britain, but they are advancing from the terrible defeat Jeremy Corbyn led them to then.

 

Prime minister Boris Johnson is a creation of the modern Conservative party. Tory MPs propelled this charlatan to No 10 entirely because it suited their narrow interests, with no regard for the consequences for the country. It is extraordinary how little contrition many of those who backed him have shown. Johnson’s resignation is not enough: the Conservative party itself must be held accountable for his disastrous premiership.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/15/the-observer-view-on-boris-johnson-contempt-for-the-truth

[Harry's Lad]

49 minutes ago, Skidfingers McGonical said:

Who has it eaten? Priti Patel?

Therese Coffey as well by the look of it.

If only.....

[Bjornebye]

#backboris is trending. Many are taking the piss but people like this are why tbis country is in the shit state it is

 

 

 

 

[Gnasher]

1 hour ago, Bruce Spanner said:

Great editorial in The Observer tomorrow...

 

'A little over a month ago, the prime minister told the House of Commons that he shared the anger of a nation at seeing a video of his Number 10 staff making light of lockdown measures and joking about Christmas parties. We were supposed to believe that a culture of impunity and disregard for rules at the heart of government had absolutely nothing to do with Boris Johnson; that he was as shocked by the hypocrisy as the rest of us. It was always a ludicrous contention that the prime minister had no idea what was going on in his own office, part of the same complex as his own residence. And in the last week the full extent of the sheer gall of a leader prepared to throw his staff under a bus to evade accountability for the worst sort of political hypocrisy has been exposed. 

 

Revelation after revelation has emerged since the start of the year – as Johnson must have known they inevitably would – that rubbishes that statement he made to MPs last month. We now know that in May 2020, Johnson was giving a speech at a social gathering, with drink and food, in the Downing Street garden the very same evening ministers were warning the public at a press conference that they could only meet one other person outside. That his staff were throwing not one, but two, raucous parties that reportedly left items in the garden damaged the night before Prince Philip’s funeral. And that Downing Street staff regularly held drinks parties on Fridays that Johnson would often drop into, giving them the prime ministerial seal of approval.

 

Contempt for parliament and public

 

The Observer has long believed Johnson to be a man of little integrity, but even so, it is hard not to be shocked at the level of contempt in which he so clearly holds parliament and the public. Imagine the consequences if he had misled a court under oath in this way. But to him, it is just the Commons, just the way he approaches politics and every other aspect of his professional life.

 

It is clear that the view of the Covid rules as optional rather than mandatory, as they were for everyone else in the country, did not stop at the doors of No 10. There were parties and leaving drinks at other government departments. But there is no doubt where this culture emanated from: it started from the very top, with the prime minister. It is extraordinary that those who wrote the law and the guidance flouted it, as almost everyone else, including the Queen, observed it for the sake of public health, even while mourning. For those who did not, there were hefty fines, even for people with far more sympathetic stories than those working in No 10. One teenager was fined hundreds of pounds for organising an outdoor balloon release for his friend who had died and had to go to court to contest a further £10,000 fine issued in error by Durham constabulary.

 

It is extraordinary that those who wrote the law and the guidance flouted it

 

Two weeks into the new year, Johnson’s authority has been comprehensively shredded. He cannot stay in post. But the Conservative party cannot wipe the slate clean by electing a new leader. Everything about Johnson’s dreadful premiership has been entirely predictable, a reflection of the man he so clearly was long before he became prime minister. He was sacked from a job in journalism in the 1980s for fabricating quotes for a newspaper story and from the Conservative shadow frontbench in the early 2000s for lying about an affair. As chair of the Leave campaign, he was complicit in its false claims that leaving the EU would free up £350m a week for the NHS – later ruled a misuse of official statistics by the UK Statistics Authority – and that a vote to remain in the EU was a vote to share a border with Iraq and Syria. As mayor of London, he failed to declare his personal interests, including his relationship with Jennifer Arcuri, whose company received thousands of pounds of public money.

 

It was patently obvious what sort of prime minister he would be; no one could credibly argue that there was a senior Tory less well suited to govern Britain. Yet Conservative MPs still crowned him leader in 2019. Enough of them thought he cared too little about the union, allowing him to ruthlessly pursue a hard Brexit and that his loose-with-the-truth style of campaigning could win them a general election in the same way it did the EU referendum. An incompetent, corrupt and rotten prime minister was the bargain they were prepared to make, the cost they were all too willing to impose on the whole country.

 

Thousands of avoidable deaths

 

What a heavy price Britain has paid. On Covid, the government is trying to use the success of the vaccine programme to detract from the growing political crisis in which it finds itself. It is true that the UK has had a more successful vaccine rollout than many other countries, and that the government, particularly Kate Bingham, who chaired the taskforce, deserves credit for the early investment in vaccine technology. But the government’s overall record on Covid is grim: time and again, during the first 15 months of the pandemic, Johnson failed to learn from previous mistakes and acted to introduce restrictions too slowly, undoubtedly resulting in thousands of avoidable deaths and more economic pain.

 

First, the government’s hapless approach to education during a pandemic means that far too little has been done to mitigate its impact on children. The effects of this will be felt long into the future.

 

Second, on Brexit, Johnson achieved the hard Brexit the ideological crusaders from his party’s right flank wanted. But it has come at a huge cost: a long-term economic cost, which will depress Britain’s growth prospects for many years to come, but also a perilous risk to the integrity of the union that cannot be measured in pounds and pence and which may mean that within a couple of decades the United Kingdom may no longer even exist. Who cares if the hardest of Brexits offers succour to the cause of Scottish independence? And faced with the irresolvable conundrum of Brexit – that there can be no clean break from the EU while avoiding the need for a customs border either on the island of Ireland or down the Irish Sea – Johnson has chosen simply to pretend this problem does not exist, rather than confront the fact that he or his successor will have to choose between rejecting regulatory alignment between the EU and parts of the UK or stability in Northern Ireland. The disregard for the union permeates everything this government does, extending to ministers such as Jacob Rees-Mogg insulting Scottish Conservatives in a way that only plays into the independence campaign’s hands. Who cares if the hardest of Brexits offers succour to the cause of Scottish independence?

 

Third, all over Britain, families are suffering as a result of this government’s policies. Johnson won his majority by promising not only to get Brexit done, but to “level up” the country. That was just empty rhetoric: his chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has continued the approach of his predecessors since 2010, introducing the biggest ever one-off benefit cut, on top of the last decade’s tax credit cuts that have seen some low-income parents lose thousands of pounds a year even as more affluent families have had their tax bills reduced. Refugees fleeing war zones and human rights abuses have found themselves at the sharp end of a culture war with Priti Patel’s Home Office.

 

Finally, the last few weeks of revelations about Johnson’s hypocrisy on Covid do not just damage the Conservative party. Like the expenses scandal more than a decade ago, it undermines public trust in all politicians and the legitimacy of our democratic institutions. It makes a mockery of the rule of law when ordinary citizens are punished for breaking the law, but senior politicians, political aides and civil servants appear to neatly sidestep the consequences.

 

From electoral asset to liability

 

Every day Johnson continues as prime minister, the damage he does grows. As his evolution from electoral asset to electoral liability dawns on his party, it is looking increasingly likely that they will not allow him to continue in office for much longer. But Britain’s political crisis will not be over. The choice of the next prime minister would fall to Conservative MPs and party members. Johnson’s likely successors are all complicit in the government’s dreadful track record.

 

The only hope lies in a renewed Labour party winning the next general election. Keir Starmer has emerged from recent weeks as a man of competence, integrity and values. Labour still has a long way to go in addressing the reasons why it lost voters in 2019 and communicating what a Starmer premiership would achieve for Britain, but they are advancing from the terrible defeat Jeremy Corbyn led them to then.

 

Prime minister Boris Johnson is a creation of the modern Conservative party. Tory MPs propelled this charlatan to No 10 entirely because it suited their narrow interests, with no regard for the consequences for the country. It is extraordinary how little contrition many of those who backed him have shown. Johnson’s resignation is not enough: the Conservative party itself must be held accountable for his disastrous premiership.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/15/the-observer-view-on-boris-johnson-contempt-for-the-truth

 

Would come across as more authentic if the same paper hadn't spent the past few years enabling a smear campaign against the man who could have stopped Johnson and the Tory Party gaining a whopping majority.

[Gnasher]

Johnson paying the price for sacking Mary Wakefields hubby Dom Cummings on Carrie's orders, and to think he used to be the Telegraph's star political writer.

 

 

 

[Bobby Hundreds]

9 hours ago, Bjornebye said:

#backboris is trending. Many are taking the piss but people like this are why tbis country is in the shit state it is

 

 

 

 

Exactly why this country is fucked, people have no standards as long as their side is winning. After all Boris has done not to mention the billions of pounds they've syphoned off and fuck all complaints from them yet Diane Abbot drinks a mojito on a train and it's meltdown time. A nation of dickheads. 

[Anubis]

11 hours ago, Bjornebye said:

#backboris is trending. Many are taking the piss but people like this are why tbis country is in the shit state it is

 

 

 

 

This country is doffer central. We need a cull.

[Anubis]

Is Carrie’s mate fingering herself in that picture?

[Jack the Sipper]

12 hours ago, Gnasher said:

 

Would come across as more authentic if the same paper hadn't spent the past few years enabling a smear campaign against the man who could have stopped Johnson and the Tory Party gaining a whopping majority.

 

Would you same the same about any prominent leftist pundit (on Twitter, Owen Jones etc) who criticises Johnson while also campaigning against Keir Starmer?

[Gnasher]

4 minutes ago, Jack the Sipper said:

 

Would you same the same about any prominent leftist pundit (on Twitter, Owen Jones etc) who criticises Johnson while also campaigning against Keir Starmer?

 

I try not to read Owen Jones tbh, he hurts my eyes. I'm sure lesbian/gay/trans/cats/ issues are an important and worthy cause to a lot people but I really couldn't care less.

[Jack the Sipper]

5 minutes ago, Gnasher said:

 

I try not to read Owen Jones tbh, he hurts my eyes. I'm sure lesbian/gay/trans/cats/ issues are an important and worthy cause to a lot people but I really couldn't care less.

 

Then forget Owen Jones, I asking about any leftist commentator who criticises both Johnson and  his main opponent, in this case Starmer. Do they lack authenticity/credibility because they apparently don't want either in office?

[stringvest]

12 hours ago, Gnasher said:

 

Would come across as more authentic if the same paper hadn't spent the past few years enabling a smear campaign against the man who could have stopped Johnson and the Tory Party gaining a whopping majority.

Corbyn was unelectable.  As much as I'd like to have seen him in number 10, it was never possible for him to get in.  Fanatical support from the far left would be massively counterbalanced by the huge majority of centrists and right wingers in the country.  It's more likely that a unicorn would have become prime minister.

[sir roger]

Can't see how a supposedly Labour-supporting newspaper's whole output spending four years lying and exaggerating about the leader , and the biggest Labour newspaper employing a columnist telling people to vote Lib Dem is balanced by a 'once a fortnight' journalist who also turned against Corbyn giving his analysis on the present leader , but it is convenient 'whataboutery' for the centre/right of the party. Mentions of Kerrie Mendoza ( whoever he is ) incoming.

[Bobby Hundreds]

17 minutes ago, stringvest said:

Corbyn was unelectable.  As much as I'd like to have seen him in number 10, it was never possible for him to get in.  Fanatical support from the far left would be massively counterbalanced by the huge majority of centrists and right wingers in the country.  It's more likely that a unicorn would have become prime minister.

Thats true but he was also made more unelectable by an aggressive partisan media plus him being weak as fuck in his own defence, he took a rubber ducky to a knife fight. The same with Boris there s a cult following too where the failures are ignored.

[stringvest]

1 minute ago, Bobby Hundreds said:

Thats true but he was also made more unelectable by an aggressive partisan media plus him being weak as fuck in his own defence, he took a rubber ducky to a knife fight. The same with Boris there s a cult following too where the failures are ignored.

completely agree.  

[Jack the Sipper]

30 minutes ago, sir roger said:

Can't see how a supposedly Labour-supporting newspaper's whole output spending four years lying and exaggerating about the leader , and the biggest Labour newspaper employing a columnist telling people to vote Lib Dem is balanced by a 'once a fortnight' journalist who also turned against Corbyn giving his analysis on the present leader , but it is convenient 'whataboutery' for the centre/right of the party. Mentions of Kerrie Mendoza ( whoever he is ) incoming.

 

Are they beholden to the Labour Party in some way, to support blindly whoever the leader is and what they say and do, and whatever beliefs they hold? 

 

This isn't really the right thread for this, but seeing how @Gnasher raised the issue, I'm just curious to see why he thinks a paper/pundit/columnist lacks authenticity if they criticise both Johnson and his main Labour opponent for office, and whether this extends to the many pundits who, today, criticise both Johnson and Starmer. 

 

For my own part, as someone who would quite like to see the Tories kicked out and be replaced with a Labour party of whatever shade of red the public will accept, I backed Corbyn right up to his departure even though I had reservations about him. Likewise, I'm backing Starmer's Labour to succeed, even though, as I've said on this forum before, I don't agree with some of what he's standing  for. I take this approach because I think either are infinitely preferable to a Tory government.

 

If others on the (centre) left disagree, whether that's centrist pundits like Andrew Rawnsley writing for the Observer or leftist pundits like Owen Jones writing for the Guardian, then fair enough. It's a fucking shame from my POV as someone who would like to see left-leaning anti-Tory forces align once in a while for what I see as the greater cause, but everyone's entitled to their view. But people expecting the 'Labour' papers/pundits to get behind Corbyn whilst happy to see commentators in those papers and elsewhere slating Starmer with the same ferocity as they do for Johnson? Nah.

 

 

[Arniepie]

13 hours ago, Bjornebye said:

#backboris is trending. Many are taking the piss but people like this are why tbis country is in the shit state it is

 

 

 

 

Karen obviously ignoring the role the msn(I hate that term)played in getting the buffoon elected in.tye 1st place

And who are they collaborating with exactly?

[Arniepie]

30 minutes ago, stringvest said:

Corbyn was unelectable.  As much as I'd like to have seen him in number 10, it was never possible for him to get in.  Fanatical support from the far left would be massively counterbalanced by the huge majority of centrists and right wingers in the country.  It's more likely that a unicorn would have become prime minister.

It shows how fucked up this country that a decent human being and a supporter of social democratic policies was unelectable,yet a lying,racist, sexist, inept,corrupt callous buffoon was a shoe in.

[stringvest]

1 minute ago, Arniepie said:

It shows how fucked up this country that a decent human being and a supporter of social democratic policies was unelectable,yet a lying,racist, sexist, inept,corrupt callous buffoon was a shoe in.

yes.

[Arniepie]

14 minutes ago, Bobby Hundreds said:

Thats true but he was also made more unelectable by an aggressive partisan media plus him being weak as fuck in his own defence, he took a rubber ducky to a knife fight. The same with Boris there s a cult following too where the failures are ignored.

Corbyn had plenty of failures and probally wouldnt have made a great pm.

But it would be remiss to disregard the smear campaign which he had to endure which was without the doubt,the most vitriolic, I've ever seen against a politician. 

[stringvest]

3 minutes ago, Arniepie said:

Corbyn had plenty of failures and probally wouldnt have made a great pm.

But it would be remiss to disregard the smear campaign which he had to endure which was without the doubt,the most vitriolic, I've ever seen against a politician. 

you have to regard the smear campaign as a given against any non-right wing party of any stripe (even Tory).  What you need is a principled leader who knows how to get the 'single issue' supporters, the centrists, the 'soft leftists' and the more conservative social democrat public onside.  To do that, you're going to need someone with more bite than Starmer, less beardy and easily caricatured than Corbyn, and with the sharps to go toe to toe in the commons and run rings round what must be collectively the thickest cabinet in a century.  

[s(k)aturation]

 

Starmer has the oratory skills of, erm, your average knight these days.

 

 

[Arniepie]

7 minutes ago, stringvest said:

you have to regard the smear campaign as a given against any non-right wing party of any stripe (even Tory).  What you need is a principled leader who knows how to get the 'single issue' supporters, the centrists, the 'soft leftists' and the more conservative social democrat public onside.  To do that, you're going to need someone with more bite than Starmer, less beardy and easily caricatured than Corbyn, and with the sharps to go toe to toe in the commons and run rings round what must be collectively the thickest cabinet in a century.  

Dont disagree.

Corbyn was flawed ,I always thought the plan was to drag the party back to the left and get someone younger in to take over.

However he had more decency in his little finger than this cunt has got in his own body and didnt deserve the vitriol and bullshit which came him way(a pacifist racist terrorist sympathiser?)

As for the media turning on johnson,they have spent the last 2 years making excuses for his consistent car crashes and gaffes.