This blog will be one of my shorter ones. I haven't really written anything about this bring-your-own-booze garden party that Boris Johnson is supposed to have hosted in the middle of lockdown. I haven't done a great deal of research into it either, although I have seen this rather wonderful video by Peter Stefanovic explaining why Sue Gray isn't as independent as people think she is.
Truthfully, the reason for this is that I don't really care very much if Government ministers had a party during lockdown. Doing such a thing was wrong, yes - but no more wrong than the constant breaches of human rights, the staggering numbers of excess deaths due to mishandling COVID, the moves to destroy peaceful protest, the deliberate weakening of the NHS just when we need it most or many of the other things this Government has presided over. It shows that they think it's one rule for them and another for us - well, I'd say that we already knew that, and have done for some time. They're extremely wealthy human beings, mostly born into grotesque levels of privilege and recipients of a form of education that reinforces that notion that 'we are born to rule, they are born to serve'. This notion is a vital part of British society; in most echelons of it, it's seen as fairly outdated now, but it's still nearly as prevalent as ever in our Governments, our media and our legal services.
Nevertheless, it has to be said that this revelation has caused a great deal of anger amongst the population, and thus I'm drawn to acknowledging it on this blog. I think the reason is basically just the unfairness of it all - that people missed birthdays, funerals, anniversaries and did everything they could to take one for the team, and the Government couldn't even be bothered to do that much. Unfairness is a social motivator much of the time. There's been a lot of talk in the media about whether this could be the straw that breaks our Prime Minister's back. It could be, but I'm sceptical. It seems that since Boris Johnson came to power, he's presided over scandal after scandal, and it never seems to come to anything (remember Dominic Cummings and his trip to Barnard Castle? You probably do now I mention it, but I haven't heard anything about that, or him, for a long time, and that had pretty much the same as this).
But perhaps I'm wrong. Sometimes you can't predict in advance exactly which scandal will be the one to take out a Prime Minister - in fact, in most cases you probably can't. A more important question is, why should we care? If Boris Johnson goes, it will be for one reason and one reason only - that the party has finally decided that his liability level outweighs his usefulness (a Prime Minister who can withstand scandal after scandal is INCREDIBLY useful for a Government, which is why this decision hasn't already been made).
And if he goes, who will replace him? Most likely, someone who was at this party. Someone who will continue with all the policies people object to about Boris Johnson. The removal of a leader and the process of bringing in of a new one is very rarely anything in the way of an attempt to resolve the problems caused by the previous leader, and to prove that one needs to look no further than the Labour Party. In the 2017 General Election, Labour's manifesto caused it to receive its highest share of the vote since 2001 and receive a net gain of seats for the first time since 1997. Only two years later, on an extremely similar manifesto, Labour had the most polar opposite result you could imagine, losing sixty seats. At the time I wrote about the various things that caused such a different result - but the only major difference between the manifestos was Labour's position on Brexit. In 2017, Labour pledged to respect the result of the referendum. In 2019, the then Shadow Brexit Secretary, backed by other political forces, championed another sore loser referendum, and then this was voted on at conference, forcing Labour to officially adopt this policy or else face quite reasonable accusations of being undemocratic. Who was this Shadow Brexit Secretary? Keir Starmer. Who succeeded Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader? Keir Starmer, and he immediately put the party into debt by agreeing financial settlements on cases the party had been advised it would win, conducted a purge of left-wing members and is so dull to listen to that under him the party struggles to stay afloat against the worst Government in history. Yes, things went wrong for Labour in 2019 - but if the party was even slightly interested in objectively analysing what went wrong and rectifying it, this man would not have come even close to the leadership.
In my humble opinion, Boris Johnson leaving over this is highly unlikely to happen. But if it does, it won't cause life to improve for anyone really. Nothing will change until we fundamentally alter the make-up of our society and our leadership, and that can only be achieved through campaigns and protest.
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