Good Riddance Boris Johnson
JVL Introduction
We can rejoice for one day, with no illusions that Boris Johnson’s fall heralds better times ahead.
The Tory party is unreconstructed and Labour under Starmer’s leadership has shown itself as inward-looking, bitterly anti-left, lacking any vision or imagination.
AS Zarah Sultana says “Britain desperately needs the Left to shape the agenda”. We can expect active sabotage from the present Labour leadership.
This article was originally published by Tribune on Thu 7 Jul 2022. Read the original here.
Good Riddance Boris Johnson
Boris Johnson has been a prime minister who exemplified Britain’s self-serving ruling class – but unless we organise for a real alternative, his replacement won’t be any better.
His time is finally up. The lies, the lawbreaking, and the arrogance have caught up with him. Praised by pundits for his ‘teflon-like’ ability to dodge accountability, Boris Johnson’s luck has finally run out.
Except, of course, Johnson doesn’t possess some innate ‘teflon’ quality, nor has he been blessed with particular luck (beyond being born to very wealthy parents).
So how did such a nasty, selfish liar get so far? It’s not as if his character was a secret. This is the man who mocked Muslim women wearing the niqab as ‘bankrobbers’ and ‘letterboxes’ (sparking a 375 percent rise in Islamophobic incidents), who called gay men ‘tank-topped bum boys’, and black people ‘picaninnies’ with ‘watermelon smiles’.
Responsibility for Johnson’s ability to rise as far as he has lies not with some personal quality, but with a political class that allowed him to get away with it. The Conservative MPs that now denounce him—claiming their ‘honour’ demands they resign from his Cabinet—knew what he was like when they campaigned to make him Prime Minister. What has changed is that now he is a busted flush, an electoral liability for the Conservatives and a threat to their political careers.
The same goes for many of the journalists who now express shock at Johnson’s reluctance to bow to convention and leave Downing Street in a timely fashion. Anyone paying attention knew he was a self-interested megalomanic, but many of these courtiers were happy to turn a blind eye so long as they got their inside scoops, while of course subjecting the last alternative to Johnson—Jeremy Corbyn—to unremitting hostility and smears.
This is no accident. Johnson’s premiership served a purpose for the political establishment, expressed clearly by Sajid Javid in his resignation letter, in which he wrote that Johnson ‘will forever be credited with seeing off the threat of Corbynism’.
With Johnson on his way out, Conservative MPs will now battle to be his successor. And while Johnson is a particularly unpleasant representative of the ruling class, whoever comes next will barely differ—and from a material perspective, probably not at all.
The Conservative government will still whip up hate and fear, targeting everyone from refugees to trans people to distract from their own failings; they will still wage class war, cutting tax for the super-rich while slashing support for the rest. This is in the nature of the Conservative Party, integral to it fulfilling its purpose as the party of the super-rich.
But while this is fixed, how the Left responds is up to us. And Britain desperately needs the Left to shape the agenda: we are experiencing the biggest squeeze on living standards on record, with wages falling at the fastest rate in decades and inflation soaring. At the same time, big business is enjoying record profits and the wealth of the top one percent is rocketing. If we don’t have answers to this crisis, our enemies will fill the void.
The Conservatives will opt to satisfy the greed of the few rather than meet the needs of the many. That will be true whoever takes over from Johnson. They don’t equivocate on whose side they’re on, and neither should we. That’s why we need to take the lead from the likes of the RMT and stand up for our communities, demanding everyone has a decent standard of living—from a real pay rise and energy bills slashed to good housing and an end to food poverty.
It might be the end for Boris Johnson, but our enemy remains standing. The Left’s responsibility is to give voice to the embattled majority, saying enough is enough: put our need before their greed.
One “Boris” goes but , fear not, many more “Borises” stand ready to replace him.
Trouble is that we have an established enemy within, the establishment clique of our Labour Party, as self-interested and untruthful in its own way. And we have the top-down opression of the controlling hierarchy of our own Tories.
This is all very true – but the result of getting rid of one piece of “vermin” may well be to get another who’s even worse. Johnson is a populist with no real ideology other than doing what he thinks is best for himself, but several of the front runners to replace him are rabid ideologues who will pursue their chosen path no matter what.
By the time we get to the next election (and who are we going to vote for then?) the country might be in ruins. We on the left need to oppose the whole of this dreadful mob and actively support the wave of strikes that look to be on the way later this year. And if Labour won’t accept our right to fight back in any way we can, we’ll just have to leave them in the gutter and carry on.
He has not ‘gone’. He is resigning as Tory party leader. And will be replaced. But he is staying as PM. I expect he will avoid resigning when the new leader is chosen. And then there is a constitutional impasse. He was appointed by the Queen and can only ‘go’ if he resigns or she dismisses him. She’s 97. Could die any day. Does she care anymore about the commoners?
He has no respect for rules or ‘proper ways of doing things’. He considers himself above such matters and believes he has a personal mandate from the voters regardless of plotters, traitors and other such insects in the Tory party.
This is getting very interesting. Fortunately I dont think there is much possibility of MPs backing a martial law declaration (the usual way a narcissist becomes a fascist dictator).
I agree wholeheartedly and would like to act that it also means making short thrift of politicians who want to keep the status quo which keeps the many under the cosh, in poverty and unable to meet their needs. We need politicians to be accountable, transparent , honest working to implement policies we need such as the green New Deal, nationalising core services like transport, energy, proper funding of the nhs and stopping its privatisation. Most importantly we need to finally learn to live in peace with each other, take care of each other and most importantly stop wrecking our planet for profit
In his resignation letter Zahawi praised Johnson for keeping ‘a dangerous antisemite’ out of No. 10. He was doubtless encouraged to pen this disgraceful smear by the fact that the media and a host of their followers have said or written similar things with impunity. These libels must surely be actionable.
Corbyn has responded to Zahawi’s libel with his customary mildness. https://twitter.com/jeremycorbyn/status/1545098385878913025?s=20&t=EBH0EEGg8Ob415Cq2IR_pQ
To show restraint may be his right as an individual, but the many hundreds of thousands of his supporters are also smeared by Zahawi’s libel – labelled by implication the gullible followers of an antisemite. On Twitter today a number have gone on record pleading with Corbyn to take legal action and offering to contribute to any crowdfunder.
By inspiring so many, Corbyn has founded a movement. It is a serious handicap always having to defend ourselves against this lie.
Had it not been for the behaviour of 2 MPs, representing two very different constituencies and thus creating a ‘pincer movement’ in the subsequent by elections, then Johnson would not be resigning. That is quite a sobering thought.
If you look at the national opinion polls, then Labour is not that far ahead. And so, Johnson’s confidence that Starmer would save him was probably not unreasonable.
‘Mr Kinnock, in all his years as Opposition leader, never let me down’. This is what Margaret Thatcher wrote and the analogy with Starmer is striking.
Well reported and so true. Can anyone explain to me why ordinary people were and still are taken in by this man and his cronies by expressing that he did some ‘good things’. He got Brexit done..unfortunately, through lies and badley. He got us through Covid….No he didn’t, numerous mistakes resulting in the worst death rate in Europe and 1 in 25 having covid in the last week and 50 deaths per day. This is not to mention the gaffes as the Mayor London and foreign minister . A Good Chap? I dont think so.
”The Left’s responsibility is to give voice to the embattled majority, saying enough is enough: put our need before their greed.’
THAT is precisely what Jeremy tried to do, and just look what they did to him. And ditto Ken Livingstone when he and his left-wing colleagues were running the GLC.
Internal report tells us how far they went to prevent a progressive Socialist government under JC
JC proved the electorate were screaming out for clear Red Water
What is beyond belief is the complete lack of opposition to Red Tories and their destruction of the Labour party
How can that be allowed to happen, where is the power in the movement to say Enough
Our opponents – and they are many – have all the power Doug. I mean how do you think it was that JC went from almost winning a GE in 2017 to being demolished 2.5 years later!
No Kuhnberg, they are not actionable, and it’s precisely for that reason that people can call Jeremy an anti-semite with impunity, just as Tom Bower did a couple of days ago when he phoned in on the Jeremy Vine program, and referred to Jeremy as ‘that nasty antisemitic Marxist’.
Allan Howard, they are actionable. The resignation letter isn’t covered by parliamentary privilege. The barrier, as always, is the one described by Tony Benn – libel is a rich man’s game, requiring the putting up of a large amount of money to even start proceedings and risking the expenditure of even more if faced with a determined defence.
Excellent video just posted by DDN:
Peter Oborne Absolutely DESTROYS Boris Johnson & Everything That Made Him Possible
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWsa_sqdYzM
Alan Howard
Zahawi’s statement is clearly defamatory. CAA vs Greenstein is not a definitive judgement. Expensive to sue, yes – around a million pounds needed, but that could be crowdfunded. The fact is we are all tainted by these disgraceful smears and have a duty to stand up against them, whatever the risk. I’d like to see the case heard by a jury.
Allan Howard,
Yes, Oborne leads the way again, but, to me, there is something surreal about all this. He always has been a Tory and Daily Mail columnist. Did he vote for Corbyn? Has he converted to Corbynism or similar? Worst of all, he tries to sell the myth of some benign golden age Toryism. Is he harking back to Disraeli or what? These are questions I would like to ask Peter Oborne.
I know that he enabled Johnson more than I ever did – (likewise Dominic Grieve, John Major, Rory Stewart et al)
Yes, Oborne is an important critic, but it all seems a bit incestuous to me.
I’m surprisedthat Sir Keir Starmer hasn’t declared himself as a contender in the Tory Leadership Election, he has the right qualifications……….another lying snake in the grass.