‘I’M as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this any more!’ Never did Peter Finch’s Oscar-winning performance as news anchorman Howard Beale in the 1976 film Network feel more apposite.
I became interested in politics in 1975 during the referendum on the UK’s continued membership of what was then known as the Common Market. Compare and contrast Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson at the time of that referendum with Sir ‘Kneel’ Starmer following the 2016 EU referendum. Wilson said: ‘I ask you to use your vote. For it is your vote that will now decide. The Government will accept your verdict.’ Starmer spent four years trying to overturn the result of the largest-ever plebiscite in the country’s history. This is the man, barring bolts of lightning, who will be our next Prime Minister when we are finally given the opportunity to put the current government out of our misery.
Since the fall of Margaret Thatcher, the calibre of our elected politicians has declined with every successive government. We have now reached a nadir from which it is surely impossible for the integrity of Parliament to sink lower.
First, we had John Major, who signed the Maastricht Treaty without any democratic mandate. His ‘Back to Basics’ campaign in support of traditional family values came unstuck when it turned out he was partial to a Currie.
Then came Tony Blair, who signed the Lisbon Treaty, also without a mandate, and became known as Tony B Liar for his monstrous lies about weapons of mass destruction which led directly to the invasion of Iraq and the end of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives. Strangely, Blair wasn’t forced out of Parliament for his lies, and his sidekick, Comical Ali, is still regularly given airtime by the BBC to peddle his delusional nonsense.
Gordon Brown saved the global economy, apparently, with his programme of quantitative easing, or printing money as it is known in the real world. If only someone had reminded him of the root cause of hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic, we would not still be suffering the consequences of his deranged policy – eagerly followed, let us not forget, by David Cameron’s Chancellor Boy George.
Ah yes, David Cameron. The man who honourably resigned after losing the 2016 referendum, but popped up four years later trying (and thankfully failing) to persuade Rishi Sunak to allow Greensill Capital to join the Covid Corporate Financing Facility. The fact that he apparently stood to make millions from Greensill is just a happy coincidence. Cameron once called Boris Johnson a greased piglet. I bow to his superior knowledge of all things porcine.
Theresa May was the worst shadow Home Secretary in history. She went on to become the worst Home Secretary in history, slashing the number of police officers and then wondering why crime rates had gone up. Like the current incumbent, May became Prime Minister without a democratic mandate. Little wonder that she set a record for the heaviest parliamentary defeat of any British prime minister during the last century. She even managed to turn a Conservative majority government into a minority, despite Labour being led at the time by an imbecile who made Michael Foot look like a moderate.
Please do not adjust your set. I will return to Boris Johnson momentarily.
I have previously written for TCW about Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak (or Rashid Sanook as Sleepy ‘God Save The Queen’ Joe once called him). History is a funny thing. It turns out that Truss was mostly right after all. She was vilified and hounded out of office by unelected snivel serpents and the puppet-masters of the WEF, outraged at the temerity of Conservative Party members in not voting for the Remainiac Establishment’s preferred candidate.
So, finally, Boris. Possibly the only British Prime Minister in history known worldwide by a single name. I think it fair to say that I couldn’t give a rat’s bottom if he lied to Parliament about Partygate, intentionally or inadvertently. It is true that, as a general rule, law makers should not be law breakers, but let’s keep a sense of perspective. He didn’t tell a lie that led to the invasion of a sovereign country.
Johnson’s supporters say that he is a libertarian. Poppycock! He is guilty of the imposition of lockdown on the citizens of a supposedly free and democratic country and the establishment of the Counter Disinformation Unit, something that has never happened before in peacetime. People were denied the opportunity of visiting their loved ones, even when they were dying. Children were kept out of school without any evidence to support such draconian action. An entire generation’s education has been damaged, possibly irreparably. Anyone who dared to suggest that Pantsdown Ferguson was peddling his usual alarmist nonsense was denounced by the state as a crank. Well, guess what? The cranks were right.
The country now faces a mental health crisis caused by repeated lockdowns. More people are dying of cancer, strokes and heart disease through an inability to get treatment than were saved by Covid restrictions. If you don’t believe this, study the figures for excess deaths which, unsurprisingly, jumped in the first year of Covid but fell to below average the following year, suggesting that most of the people who died in the first year would have died by the second year anyway through other causes. Excess non-Covid deaths are now rising again, due in no small measure of Johnson’s decision to turn the NHS into a Covid-only service for far too long. The health service simply cannot cope. This is due not to supposed underinvestment but to gross mismanagement, for which the government is ultimately responsible.
By attacking Johnson for breaking his own rules on socialising, people overlook the more pertinent question as to why he flouted those rules. The answer is quite simple. Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, Matt Hancock and other senior ministers all knew that the lockdown regulations were ineffective and unnecessary but continued to enforce them on the British public. That, and their reckless obsession with Net Zero, is the real scandal of this government, not whether the former Prime Minister had some cake at a party and then fibbed about it.
There is much talk of a new political party of the right sweeping up the votes of disenfranchised Conservative (and conservative) voters. I can’t see this happening any time soon. As the American journalist and philosopher Kin Hubbard once wrote, ‘We’d all like to vote for the best man, but he’s never a candidate.’
