Back to Top

Category: Boris Johnson

Brexit bunker

Brexit breakdown

Don Adamson reports the news that the papers refuse to print. Don writes from his Brexit bunker in Barnsley.

When a child is born

This week’s homework: Discuss the following statements:

1. Johnson fanzine has announced that Princess Nut Nuts is expecting again. This is (says the Daily Mail) Johnson’s 8th child. There are probably more that we do not know of. Johnson objects to contraception for ecological reasons. He is against single use plastic. Gammons and flagshaggers will tell you that genetics count for more than experience or learning. That being Johnson and his ilk should be forcibly vasectomised.

2. Johnson is the diarrhoea that keeps on giving.

3. Discuss the following statement: ‘Gentlemen in England now abed will hold their manhood cheap and think themselves accursed they were not here.’ Shakespeare reckoned without Johnson, Nigel Garbage and other Brexit war heroes who brag about their superlative gallantry in wars that ended before they were born. Did Shakespeare get it wrong or is it more a case of Johnson, Nigel Garbage and other Brexit war heroes may be a lot of things but they are not gentlemen? 

Coincidence or cock up?

Have Patience

This week’s quotes: “Lady Patience Wheatcroft is not in favour with the Tories after shifting from the Tory benches to the cross benches and, while once reliably Conservative, has made her opposition to Brexit clear … after voting for Brexit Bournemouth is in deep remorse, with the Lib Dems establishing themselves as the dominant force on  the local council … Dorset Chamber of Commerce complained that Brexit was having ‘serious detrimental impact on exports’… not delivering the positives that were promised … Scotland may yet prove a steep uphill climb for Labour while it continues to be pro Brexit … don’t write off the SNP … Labour’s position on the EU and the Lib Dem’s ambivalence … will be an open door for The SNP at the next election … ‘Voter ID’ did not help the Tories … next they will stipulate that the only valid proof of ID will be a Tory Party membership card … inaugural conference of the Conservative Democratic organisation, convened by those Tories horrified by the sudden leftward lurch into outright Communism that the party has taken under Richy Scumbag (stop laughing) … Jacob Grease Bogg … perhaps still stung by the fact that during his tenure as Secretary of State for Brexit Opportunities he never found any …. started plucking Brexit benefits from his limited imagination … spectacular Bulwarks even by Grease Bogg standards …

Have Patience.

Anger is an energy

Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle is incensed … If Lindsay Hoyle is angry with Tories then they really are running out of friends … Johnson leans on rich friends for freebies … on 25 separate occasions since August he has passed through Heathrow airports palatial Windsor Suite. At £1,800 a pop the suite is part of Heathrow’s VIP experience. He has received almost £50,000 in lounge hospitality alone …£250,000: Johnson’s legal fees funded by the taxpayer…. £2.5M advance Johnson received from speaking agency in January … 

Surrey Heath council covers Gove’s constituency was won by the Lib Dems … Reigate and Banstead is now the only council in Surrey where Tories have a majority . Right across the stockbroker belt Tory ministers and ex ministers saw control of councils go to the Lib Dems’… another example of this government’s neglect and mismanagement…

Abandon ship

NHS is now so overloaded that delays and human errors are inevitable and increasing … subject to aggressive litigation … as if doctors needed another reason to abandon the NHS …  a recent survey by the Medical Protection society of doctors who had been reported to the GMC in the past five years … nearly a third had experienced suicidal thoughts … NHS has always been reliant on overseas trained doctors, even more so now that many UK trained doctors are leaving …

GMC has adopted 23 recommendations to stamp out bias against ethnic minority doctors. A greater problem is that GMC expects impossibly high standards of performance in a crumbling health service with more complaining patients … workload is higher than the service can competently manage … Regime’s ineptitude. Hobbled by Cronyism and graft … economy is creating fewer opportunities … less direct foreign investment …  danger of accelerating, perhaps violent, decline …

Nowhere man

We have no clue what Starmer really believes in … will not tell us what our post Brexit relationship with EU should be … Britain’s Public Order Act goes too far … UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said it imposed ‘serious and undue restriction’ … fears of erosion of civil liberties in Britain … Further indication of Home Office authoritarian tendencies …. a law does not need to put people in prison to do damage … further eroding trust in the police following a series of dreadful scandals at the Met … badly written law … hard to justify a move to Britain … Britain’s car industry is another pressure point ….

Under pressure

Steelmaking is also under strain …  too many unanswered questions … Brexit upheavals add to uncertainty. …  Over 2M British homes suffer from disrepair that pose a risk to public health … costs to NHS estimated at £290M a year …Tories and Britain would like to forget about Thick Lizzie … on tour … to chide the enemies of freedom and stand up to China … given her record it is surprising people listen to her … calls for an ‘economic NATO to stand up to China … (COMMENT: There is one: the EU) … Thick Lizzie may be the least successful PM in British history … emblematic of deeper problems in government … complains about having no control (COMMENT: Surely that is the whole point of Brexit?) … 

Private Eyelines
Extract from Private Eyelines – click to view.

Migration observatory

Braverman complains about 1M immigrants to UK this year without mentioning that she is responsible …  Thick Lizzie is a problem for the Tories not because she is the exception but because she is the rule … her ideas live on … Johnson intervenes only if he thinks it will enhance his slim chances of a return to power … loony economic policies … Fox News fired *ucker Carlson … viewership fell from 3M during his final week to 1.5 the following week … biggest beneficiary has been Newsmax, even further right than Fox … viewership rose from 150,000 to nearly 500,000 ..

Praise the Lords

Loss of Carlson’s divisive populism has led 1.15M people to abandon conservative cable news in prime time…  Performance in the House of Lords by Lord Johnson of Lainston … caused despair even on Tory benches … decline in car manufacturing is an especially depressing example of Brexit affecting industry … Johnson saw it as an opportunity to take puerile swipes at the EU … disturbing comments by Cur James Dyson (COMMENT: notorious Brexiter) that the government was not on the side of industry …

Lord Fox (Lib Dems) said industry was at a watershed … car manufacturers would simply go to France or Germany … one Tory peer said waves of political appointees have made Tory benches a laughing stock … worst fears for the Lords realised … gift for the abolitionists ….

Gammon corner

All Perspectives is still pumping money into GB News despite £33M losses … takes funds injected by investors to  £120M … Who can explain what Labour’s economic policy is? … numbers raising their hands to answer alarmingly low … at Derby …’Is Brexit going well or badly? Result Well 0% Badly 100% … Same in Edinburgh and Glasgow … populists love to inflame their fellow believers with slogans, myths for a past that never was … recent National Conservative conference  highlighted the threat of the far right … most mainstream Tories wisely stayed away.

Why Michael Gove chose to appear is baffling (COMMENT: Not baffling to me – Gove is a Murdoch lackey of the worst description) … strange and unsettling London conference … home to an evangelical Christian church … Johnson was hardly more popular than Scumbag…. inward looking, illiberal, censorious conservatism … nostalgia for a rose tinted past … fuelled by anger, pessimism, paranoia and disdain for any who disagree …  portray opponents as sinister and evil. Object furiously when the same accusations are levelled at them … demonisation of anybody to the left of them; which is probably 95% of the British population….

Nat-C Party

NATcees assertion of moral superiority … no acknowledgement that they have won four successive elections and might themselves be responsible for the dire state of the nation … Braverman distanced herself from an immigration which she has been in charge of for 7 months … Johnson was the embodiment of selfish reckless individualism that they now decry … Rees Mogg did admit that requiring ID cards to votes was a failed attempt at gerrymandering … hailed Brexit … none thought fit to mention the calamitous consequences of Brexit … has actually boosted immigration …

Braverman castigated the ‘prognosticators of doom’ who said Brexit would be a catastrophe … Tory Party beginning to fragment into warring factions as it faces an electoral drubbing … an ugly search for scapegoats … sensible Conservatives stayed away … 

Don Adamson Pip Pip             Medway Delta (Retired)           Brexorcist and Saboteur First Class    

Read more : Brexit under the microscope 

From the vault : Five years of Brexit

Alphonse Karr

Plus ça change

Here are some simple comparisons between what politicians said in 2022 versus just a few months on in 2023, for busy people who can detect liars and cheats. Plus ça change.

Boris Johnson - Plus ça change
‘If you’ve nothing to hide, you’ve nothing to fear sir” – The Police.

Boris Johnson’s diary is the political equivalent of Tom Riddle’s blank notebook which hid many secrets in ‘Harry Potter’. Johnson’s diary keeps delivering its dirty secrets. Accordingly, I imagine he also wished it had been written in invisible ink. Johnson had insisted that no rules were broken all through 2021 and 2022. It turns out that these were lies. Now in 2023, it turns out that Johnson’s official diaries have been handed over to the Police and he has refused to provide details of comments made about Sarah Everard, the woman murdered by the Metropolitan Police. Johnson insists that there is nothing to see here. His track record suggests otherwise. Never forget that Johnson’s decisions led to the unnecessary deaths of 30 000 vulnerable people.

Rishi Sunak - Plus ça change
Sunakered – Click image to listen to our radio interview on the matter.

No sooner than making a big policy statement on stopping the boats, Rishi Sunak rowed back on the proposal, now that official figures show that more that net migration exceeded 600 000 in 2022. Brexit was supposed to ‘take back control of our borders’. It didn’t. See Brexit has failed.

Join us to plan for change : Wed 7 June 8pm UK time via ZOOM

Jeremy Hunt - Plus ça change
Brexit Broke Britain.

Jeremy Hunt is now willing to allow UK to slide into recession in order to cut inflation whereas he previously was not. Of course, all these things are a delicate balance and Britain is exposed to global factors. That said, Brexit destroyed Britain’s resilience to face global headwinds and, unlike these effects, Brexit is a self-inflicted choice which we did not need to make. By comparison, the EU demonstrated resilience in the face of Brexit as this book demonstrates. Brexit Broke Britain.

Brexit Broke Britain.
Kemi Badenoch - Plus ça change
Flip flop Bad Enoch Powell.

Kemi Badenoch flip flops literally on a daily basis. She is a climate denier and a Brexiteer. These things are often correlated in Venn diagrams. Now the Nigerian fraudster U-turned on the bonfire of Brexit laws, angering her ERG handlers. Accordingly, just like Liz Truss, Kemi Badenoch demonstrates the toxic cocktail of confidence and incompetence.

She attacked her own department for reporting the abysmal trade figures from the much trumpeted CPTPP trade deal that she signed in desperation. The deal contributes 0.08% over TEN years. We will need some 50 such deals JUST to stand still to match the 4% GDP LOSS from Brexit. There are not 50 trading blocs to make deals with … Plus ça change.

From The Telegraph of all places!
Suella Braverman - Plus ça change
Suella Braverman, a former Attorney General, thinks that the law is for others to keep.

Suella Braverman is yet another enigma. An economic migrant who hates migrants. Also, Braverman is a Brexiteer who benefited more than most from EU freedoms through her ERASMUS backed studies in France. A racist who is married to a Jewish man. Furthermore, a former Attorney General who believes she is above the law. Here’s a few hard facts about the lies put forward on immigration by Lord Callanan et al. on BBC Any Questions yesterday in a Twitter thread for sharing:

Read the full Twitter thread. I nearly got on BBC Any answers to say this, but the programme was fully occupied by the current outrage on social care. Plus ça change!

Rishi Sunak supports Braverman, mainly because he is weak. Sunak also feels he must support her illegal, immoral and indecent approaches to asylum seekers, because he is frightened of her and the people who hide in the shadows behind her. Watch our two minute film on fixing immigration below and listen to our latest interview with James O’Brien on LBC.

Sunak does not want to stop the boats even though answers are available.

Plus ça change : Brexit Chaos

Plus ça change : Farage’s death

Scot Bylines : Brexit STEM impacts

Downing Street

Car crash special

Don Adamson reports on the Tory car crash special : the news that Rupert Murdoch dares not publish. It is indeed strange that a car trundles into a gate at 2 mph, causing no damage to the car or the gate and, all of a sudden, Rishi Sunak has to be evacuated. One is left wondering if this is a stunt dreamt up in Tufton Street to garner sympathy for Sunakered? Or, to insist on greater police powers to arrest children riding Playmobil cars in Britain, on suspicion of crimes against the state?

Talking cock

This week’s quotes: “Nigel Garbage sees himself as cock of the walk at Gammonite Balderdash News … sense of resentment that GB News does not remunerate him more handsomely … little or no logic on how people are paid … sniping about pay and grievances … Garbage paid £480 536 … Last year Labour raised £300,000 more from donors than Tories … Johnson’s earnings (sic) down from £766,000 to £216,000 from speeches in London, Pennsylvania and Lagos … not persuaded Johnson to give up the free accommodation that JCB heir, Lord Bamford, provides … not all joy in Johnson land. …

Wipeout

Tory wipe out in local elections … eccentric fan club Conservative Democratic Organisation champion his return to office …. Johnson fanzine Mail On Sunday decided to focus on Prince Harry bashing … support for Brexit drastically falling … 63% want UK to Rejoin … I cannot see the Tories coming back from this one … no disguising catastrophic results … a range of exhausted volcanoes … seven years of Brexit have been an unqualified disaster … terrible reckoning lies ahead of the Tories … the party is over. Brexit has reduced Tories to a populist campaigning movement … crude culture wars … nativist vilification…. Tories have to answer to the questions … nothing of substance to say … The sun is finally setting on a political empire born 44 years ago (Thatcherism) …

Starmer or Stammer?

It is high time the 21st century began in earnest . Is Starmer’s Labour Party up for the challenge? … Might the Mail and other right wing propaganda rags have been part of the reason for the Tories dire performance in recent elections … the difference between their version of politics and what is actually happening is now so vast it just makes people angrier … Tory tone deaf response to shellacking underlines how out of touch they are … ‘if they focussed less on stopping boatloads of refugees and more on stopping our teeth from falling out we might not be so desperate to kick out the Tories’ … I doubt Richy Scumbag will see that … What can Labour promise? … It is easier to be principled and uncompromising when you do not collide with reality … Any idiot can promise the world. There is nothing impressive about extravagant promises that can never become real … very few voters think the country is on the right track and even fewer want an opposition party to deliver more of the same only more competently …

Nuts

I thought Brexit was, frankly, nuts, … the private equity sector think that Cruella de Ville is some kind of woke do-gooder ,,, financier Guy Hands has emerged as an intriguing and informed critic of the whole Brexit mess …a Brexit that was designed to tear up the accepted order, risk the country’s future and benefit the ultra rich … libertarian right wing – callous and uncaring assumed they would always survive decided to press ahead, setting their own needs ahead of the country … people dismissed Thick Lizzie as being incredibly stupid, whereas what she was saying was that the only way Brexit would work was basically to tear up the rule book … within a few weeks it was clear that could not happen and the country would go bankrupt … she was ideologically correct … that was the only way Brexit could work … ironic that Tory ministers try to blame the Civil Service or Remainers for the failure of Brexit … will not take responsibility for the fact that what they tried to do was delusional … the reality is that Brexit could never have worked … we have the worst of both worlds … the issue is how much damage will have been done to Europe as a whole … while it is bad for the UK it is bad for Europe as a whole …”

Car Crash
It is indeed strange that a car trundles into a gate at 2 mph, causing no damage to the car or the gate and, all of a sudden, Rishi Sunak has to be evacuated. One is left wondering if this is a stunt dreamt up in Tufton Street to garner sympathy for Sunakered? Or, to insist on greater police powers to arrest children riding Playmobil cars in Britain, on suspicion of crimes against the state? And what was Ann Widdecombe doing in the boot?

Winners and Losers

(COMMENT: I said this all along).  “The only people really benefitting are the Chinese … the damage from Brexit continues … we are losing our advantage. UK is being torn apart … death by a thousand cuts … They think the French are going to love us because we divorced them … UK is in decline … Britain has become rather nasty. Whether it is sending people to Rwanda or attacking people who disagree with the government…. we need politicians who admit they got it wrong … It is a mess … asking for such politicians nowadays is asking for pigs to fly … steady creep of Tory attacks on our freedom  … Britain feels less like a third country and more like a third world country …Brexit has done good job of making EU countries glad they are in it – they look at us and shudder … If voter ID cannot stop the anti Tory vote we should raise the voting age to 70 … we should add ‘expectation management’ to the ever growing list of things the Tories cannot do …  

Who are EU?

“World Health Organisation declared Covid 19 is no longer a ‘public health emergency … 7M deaths have been reported … WHO thinks the true toll is 20M …Fox Corporation swung to a quarterly loss because of costs associated with $787.5M settlement in a defamation case …Britain plays catch up in a global scramble for essential commodities …lacks the heft of USA, China or EU … it is a big hole to dig out of … Ramsgate Harbour once held a big fishing fleet … only sign of life is four cutters of the Border Force … in 2015 UKIP took control of Ramsgate council, first and last it would run…. shambolic … the issue of Brexit has faded … lives are dominated by the cost of living and the health service … UKIP lost all its councillors … the towns where the Brexit revolution started are showing signs it may be at an end … Mid Suffolk district council… first to be controlled by the Green Party …  decades of cuts to the British Army have called into question its ability in a conflict … at its smallest since the Napoleonic era …

From Russia with hate

Putain’s generals are useless, Putain himself is a ‘a complete asshole’ and the war is going to be lost … Russia’s willingness to go on fighting is approaching tipping point … what can break that arrogance, along with the propensity to rape, torture, murder and mutilate that Russian troops have become infamous for? … what, if anything might persuade Sue Ellen Braverman that her rhetoric and strategy might have gone too far … morally unacceptable … denounced by the UN Refugees Association, Council of Europe, UNICEF and former PM Theresa May … Braverman has been referred to the Bar Standards Board for breaching its code of conduct … what we in the trade call ‘ a lie’ … the majority of child exploitation groups are made up of white men under the age of 30 .., downright sinister shift in her rhetoric … even on its own terms the government is failing …

Bankrolled by Putin … now totally discredited … Nigel Farage

Truth bombs

Starmer promised that his government would be transformative … a good start would be to present himself as a leader with courage to speak the truth … rank hypocrisy … encouraging signs that this wave of popular illiberalism encouraged by irresponsible politicians is receding … Lincoln, Churchill and Kennedy demonstrated that nations can be inspired by confrontation with reality …. Richy Scumbag has worked out that an economy battered by Brexit cannot take much more of financial, legal, commercial and environmental chaos … Brexit being both symptom and cause of our decline … running the new line ‘if only we did Brexit the way we want it everything would be tickety boo … some of the many things about Brexit that were damaging the country … Brextremists never accepted responsibility for Brexit’s failure, and none of them ever had a credible plan …

Brexit Broadcasting Corporation

BBC has for years provided platforms to the Brexiters and they are never properly challenged nor scrutinised …  the right seem to defend their anti-woke diatribes as being rooted in free speech … in practice try to shut down any criticism of the populist, polarising, post truth approach … Brexit morass into which we are sinking more each day … more bad news about the impact of Brexit … “ Everything in the country seems broken … disappearing Tory voters and disaffected Brexiters … classic Tory tactic … arriving at fantasy uncosted figures … there is a real black hole … created by 13 years of bad government, austerity, slow productivity growth, and the disaster of Brexit … failing state with weak defence and a deteriorating health service … Brexit is costing the government some £40B to £50B per year in tax revenue …

Sharp cuts

RAF does not have enough pilots, the navy does not have enough ships and shrunken army cannot put an armoured division in the field … a host of other areas where massive cuts have sneaked through and the consequences are being felt … the police and the courts are groaning. The civil service’s ability to deal with crises has been affected by cuts … the atavistic Thatcherite belief that you can provide a good NHS, strong defence and everything else people and business need while keeping taxes low has been exposed as a lie … Brexit costing £100B a year in lost output … the chatter among the media classes is who will replace Sharp?  …

Pip Pip            Don Adamson Medway Delta (Retired)           Brexorcist and Saboteur First Class 

Coffey anyone?
The Son

Fun Loving Criminals

In this roundup of what could be euphemistically called fun loving criminals, I make some unemotional comparisons of people who should be in jail for crimes against humanity with Rolf Harris. Without excusing Harris for his crimes, it is fair to say that Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Priti Patel, Kwasi Kwarteng, Suella Braverman, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Nigel Farage, Matt Hancock, Dominic Cummings et al. have done more damage to young people’s lives, through their decisions on Brexit, Brexonomics, immigration and COVID. Why then are they not in prison?

Brexit is a crime scene

The impact of Brexit is already evident across all the STEEPLE factors: Sociological, Technological, Economic, Environmental, Political, Legal and Ethical. See our articles on the impacts at Scottish Bylines and Biz Catalyst 360. The costs of all of these STEEPLE factors are one thing, but if they were to be offset greatly by Brexit benefits which outweigh the costs, then Brexit will have been worth it. However, no Brexit benefits have accrued so far, nor are any on the horizon, apart from some flaky notions of ‘freedom’. See our article on Brexit freedoms for a full list of these so-called freedoms.

Economic, environmental and social damage from Brexit ultimately impact people’s lives and livelihoods. Accordingly, the perpetrators of these crimes must therefore be locked up as a bare minimum. Their crimes are more significant than Harris’ heinous crimes, however hard that might be to hear. And the impacts will become even more pronounced as Brexit reveals its full horrors. Sure, Boris Johnson seems like a loveable rogue, but he is not a fun loving criminal, just a pound shop thief.

Trussonomics

Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng put young people’s hopes of home ownership into the deep freeze with their cocaine fuelled experiment on the nation called ‘Trussonomics‘. In just one weekend, Truss and Kwarteng took £70 BILLION off the UK balance sheet. OK, it’s only money, but such things have significant impacts on lives and livelihoods. I pay my taxes so that our politicians can make careful decisions about macro-economics. I don’t expect them to behave like gamblers in a casino on smack, crackle and pop. Accordingly, Kemi Badenoch, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Penny Morduant are also key players in destroying the value of Britain through their bungled Brexit decisions.

Wreckers of lives and livelihoods

Child killers

Suella Braverman and Priti Patel’s time as Home Secretaries have made Theresa May’s hostile environment look like a trip to a Butlins’ holiday camp. It is not something to be proud of to dream of children being deported to Rwanda. And better alternatives are available. See our two minute answer to immigration below.

Immigration sorted in just two minutes

Immigration has failed over 13 years. Brexit did not deliver

and Rishi Sunackered is simply too weak to sack Braverman, as our micro film in this tweet shows:

Sunakered – Feat James O’Brien

COVID killers

Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock’s decision to put infected COVID patients into care homes had an estimated impact of 30 000 unnecessary deaths. In case you are wondering, this was a political CHOICE and not a necessity. Their decision was based on Dominic Cummings’ obsession with the idea of herd immunity. This again is a crime for which no punishment has been administered to date.

Instead, Matt Hancock got £400 000 on ‘I’m a Celebrity’. Michelle Mone and Dido Harding disappeared with hundreds of thousands of pounds from dodgy PPE contracts. Boris Johnson escaped to go on the conference circuit and Cummings scarpered from the crime scene having driven to Barnard Castle to check his eyesight.

Dying for Boris – find the album at https://academy-of-rock.bandcamp.com/

Partygate is one thing, but 30 000 avoidable deaths another thing altogether. Here’s today’s edition of ‘The Son’ – Populist Political Papers Parodied:

The Son - Click the image to read Private Eyelines on Amazon.
The Son – Click the image to read Private Eyelines on Amazon.

These are not fun loving criminals, they are professional crooks. In the words of Donald Trump:

LOCK THEM UP

Daily Excess

What the papers say

I’ve briefly restarted our parody newspaper format. In these editions of the Daily Excess and the Daily Maul (Maul credit Aidan Grooville), we cover what the papers say … and what they do not …. To read more of these please check out Private Eyelines. The book makes an excellent gift for Brexiteers in regret and provides a sense of uplift for people who are sick to death of fascist Nat-C Brexit Britain. These days I have to include a fact and fiction decoder as few can tell the difference between fantasy and real life.

Click the dead cat to read Private Eyelines.
Daily Hate Mail
Click the Cruella children’s doll to read Private Eyelines.

FACT and FICTION analysis

FACT : Nigel Farage has declared that Brexit has failed. Yes, Brexit has failed !!! However, of course, it’s not his fault. Evidently, it’s never Nigel’s fault !!

Brexit has failed. Own it Nigel.

FICTION : Liz Truss has not declared war on the Japanese with cheese or in real life.

FACT : However, three years after the Brexit deal, the fiendishly clever Japanese are still copying Cornish Pasties and other British Brexit favourites as this report shows. Liz pretended that Welsh lamb, Whitstable oysters, Thurrock gammon etc. could now be protected names after Brexit, but it turns out she was wrong (again). Also, Liz managed to waste £70 billion on her ‘Brexonomics’ experiment on the nation with her boyfriend Kwasi Kwarteng. Kwasi refuses to apologise for ruining young people’s lives as this interview on Channel 4 News shows.

Not sorry, not sorry


FACT : Boris Johnson has sired another child. The news coincides with the verdict on Johnson’s conduct in office from the select committee this week. Seems convenient. Accordingly, this follows a long list of lies from the Johnson stable. Perhaps you remember when Johnson went into hospital with COVID on Good Friday. Subsequently he was deemed as being at serious risk and needing a ventilator. However, on the third day, he rose, just like Jesus and was deemed to be as fit as a butcher’s dog. Strange. Even stranger, the nurses who cared for him disappeared without trace!

FICTION : Bojo is not making 10 000 doses of his sperm available for a EUgenics experiment on the mass production of Johnson’s. Nadine Dorries is not acting as an incubator for the Johnson seed.

Thanks to David Lawton

Dancing on thin ice


FICTION : The BBC are not changing the formula for Dancing on Ice to include a sewage dance floor as a contribution to environmental stewardship. Nor is the programme to be renamed Dancing on Shite.

FACT : Therese Coffey has claimed that there is less sewage in our rivers although this is clearly untrue. Moreover, Coffey also dodged questions about Suella Braverman’s interference regarding her convictions including having no knowledge of her phone number. Significantly, Rishi Sunackered seemed unable to make any meaningful comment about Suella Braverman when pressed on the matter in Japan.

Sheer lies.

FACT : Suella Braverman and Priti Patel are fighting like cats in a sack over the prize on who is the best fascist after her denouncement of Braverman at the Alt Right Conservative Party Conference last week. This follows our recent revelation that Conservative MP Rehman Chishti also criticised Braveman in order to prop up the Pakistani vote in the local elections. Accordingly, Suella wins our award for fascist of the year, along with Jacob Rees-Mogg:

What the papers say.

Click to read Private Eyelines – Have I got fake Brexit news for EU.

Private Eyelines
Click to read inside on Amazon.

Private Eyelines
Read Private Eyelines on Amazon by clicking the extract.
Private Eyelines
Private Eyelines – Brexit satire – Click to read on.
Science

Brexit under the microscope : Science, tech and climate impacts

Watch our latest film on Brexit impacts in terms of science, technological and environmental damage to Britain. The film took days to make and it’s well worth 12 minutes of your time on a lazy Sunday instead of shouting at Laura Kuenssberg on the telly box. Brexit is far from done, as Johnson, Sunak, Truss and Starmer would have you believe, with 63% of people now believing that it was a mistake and 86% of young people wishing to rejoin the EU.  There was a deliberate intent to ensure that we had a ‘boiled frog’ Brexit. This was so that people would not notice our slow motion sleepwalk into Brexit oblivion.  Our frog is probably only at 50 degrees Celsius as there’s plenty more Brexit carnage to come.  People on both sides of the Brexit chasm tell me there’s nothing we can do about it.  They are wrong. 

Our film covers the 4th industrial age and Brexit, science, farming and Brexit. Also environmental standards and the bonfire of EU laws made by British politicians and how Brexit impacts climate disaster in the short, medium and long term. And much more. Check it out.

Boris Johnson promised that the Brexit ‘sunlit uplands’ would make Britain a country where innovation, competition and growth would all thrive thanks to reduced red tape and costs.  These have not materialised.  All the indicators suggest that this will be the case going forward.

In the 4th industrial age, we need to support STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) in order to innovate, reach sustainability goals and profit from the age of AI responsibly.  All the indicators suggest that instead of this, we will plunder science and technology as Brexit cash cows, until we drive innovation out of Britain’s DNA.

Financial support for science looks set to dwindle in the post-Brexit world.  Since science is a team sport, we can expect our reputation to decline in the coming decades.

All of this impacts climate change.  We entered the EU as the sick man of Europe and we are leaving as the dirty man of Europe.  All so that a few politicians can pray at the altar of the false God of Brexit.

Brexitania

Brexitania

By Don Adamson, Brexocist in Chief from Barnsley. This week’s homework in Brexitania aka Broken Brexit Britain: Discuss the following statement: The strongest possible argument against abolishing the monarchy and replacing it with a Presidency is that we have politicians who would dismiss King Charles III and appoint somebody like Johnson as President. 

Trumptown to Truss

This week’s quotes: “Trump had little interest and no gift in foreign policy … his lavish state visit produced nothing …. If that is the kind of friends the right wingers want they are simply not serious people  … They do not exchange Mickey Mouse currencies … I was given a smile of incredulity when I tried to offload my last £50 note  … It is hard to remember but once there were decent Tories able to negotiate significant agreements properly … a succession of increasingly wealthy PMs, with arrogant privately educated ethic that they are better than the rest of us … in truth they don’t have a fig of understanding … Sajid Javid seems compelled to demonstrate that all political careers end in failure … a disgusting exercise in naked populism … Current behaviour of Suella Cowardlywoman, James Stupidly and Richy Scumbag needs to be called out … knee jerk response to entirely foreseeable problems that were bound to arise with their beloved bloody Brexit … Political chaos of recent years … Brexit … Johnson … Thick Lizzie … the question of competence … Momentum, a far left campaign group, would be better named Inertia …

I have had more than enough … of Liz Truss and Richy Scumbag

State of Britain

The British state is simply ineffective … Britain’s sluggish economy is undermining the welfare state … economic growth is the foundation stone for everything … a decade of political turmoil … is a disaster … British tax burden is due to hit a post war high of 37.7% of GCP … Brexit means there are fewer institutional constraints on distortionary state aid … Britain will struggle to compete with USA to attract investment … Britain has neither the industrial base nor the ability to offer larger subsidies … Tory Cabinet Ministers write honeyed histories of the past … such books tell you little about the best and much about the Tories …

CBI – Complete Brexit Idiots

Confederation of British Industry … conduct that fell short of that expected … reported allegations by more than a dozen women of sexual misconduct and misuse of drugs. This included a rape … failed to filter out the toxic people … Israel’s per person GDP is higher than Britain’s … Dominic Raas displayed unreasonable and persistently aggressive conduct … intimidating and insulting … made physically threatening gestures … number and consistency of complaints about Raas … evidence that something was genuinely wrong … the complainants acted in good faith … cutting people off in meetings would have mattered less if was not the sort of person to describe work as ‘utterly useless and woeful’ … it is hard to overlook another problem – his effectiveness as a manager. If enough people think you are a bad boss then you are a bad boss. If employees avoid you the pool of talent available to you shrinks … Raas’s approach … ‘absolutist’ … that sounds like lawyerspeak for ‘complete nightmare’…  Humpty Dumpty replied … when I use a word it means what I choose it mean … 

Bravo President Boris

Braverman describes sending refugees to Rwanda as ‘compassionate’ …  claimed to ‘refute’  the idea that her plans were  not humane … (I think she means ‘repudiate’) … can you make words mean so many different things? … punishes people who have fled war, hunger and fear … how is that ‘compassionate’ …we are truly in an Alice through the looking glass world … there is little attempt to disguise the cosy relationship between Infosys and Downing St … Infosys regards the UK as a wholly owned subsidiary… bagged a seat on the UK Trade Minister’s Technology and Telecoms Trade advisory Group … Richy Scumbag’s wife will bag nearly £6.7M from her shares in the family firm … Last March a High Court Judge found that Tory MP Andrew Bridgen had ‘lied’, ‘given dishonest answers,’ ‘evasive and argumentative’ … Polls always show that the public wants governments to keep their hands off the BBC … Chairmanship of Ofcom needs to be taken out of the PM’s hands … after Johnson’s risible attempts to appoint Paul Dacre … If you want a Republican UK are you ready for Boris Johnson … over the next ten years the politics of post Brexit Britain will grow increasingly volatile … trust in democracy and the  rule of law will plummet to nanoscopic levels … do not much fancy measures that inconvenience Westminster or dislodge snouts from troughs … the political class grows weary of the King’s passion for action on climate change … his concern for the welfare of refugees … … his pesky insistence that a generation of youngsters  is denied opportunity … step forward Boris Johnson … for the truly deranged there is always the option of President Johnson …

Fox on the run

Look at the mess Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News has made of its legal case, costing them almost a billion dollars … Sharp’s piece to the camera announcing his resignation as BBC chairman had the feel and authenticity of a North Korean News Bulletin … how ludicrous that he was even there in the first place … other players in this tawdry drama … Johnson, Richy Scumbag … will be hoping the resignation will be the end of the matter. If there is any decent journalism in this country they will be wrong …

Supermarket sweep

As food shopping gets more expensive across Europe, new checks will makes things even worse here … Food inflation in Brexitania is running at 19.1% a year, highest in 45 years … Britain has Europe’s worst inflation rate … Brexit has added to the burden … Brexit has another gift for the hard pressed and desperate because Brexit is not finished … government has stopped checking quality and safety of food that enters UK … delayed these tests four times … expect massive hikes in food prices … the checks will have to be introduced some time … UK is playing Russian roulette … repeat of the horse meat scandal, another foot & mouth outbreak increasingly likely … farming industry is terrified … food safety and standards under threat … UK is go to destination for every dodgy dealer trying to offload rotten meat, infected eggs, counterfeit cheese, adulterated olive oil and stinking fish … astounding that the government is taking such an unacceptable approach to critical checks … industry is at a huge disadvantage … undercut by rivals who sail through the border … reeks of desperation … the whole food sector is threatened … new rules will add billions to food imports … serious shortages will start very quickly if the system collapses … somebody is going to have to pay for this mess and it will be you every time to you go to the shops …

Bollocks to Brexit
Click image to Flush Brexit.

Not the Nine O’ Clock News

*ucker Carlson, Andrew Bridgen, GB News … populists have lost their grip … GB News has five Tory MPs presenting its shows but is burning £30M a year in cash … racking up complaints … Talk TV … similar outgoings that have yet to be met by ratings …  … for Fox News the problems are still bigger … Carlson peddled conspiracy theories … pulling in around 3 million viewers … his replacement got 1.3 million … Infowars was for viewers who thought Fox too fair and balanced … emerged unscathed till the courts caught up Jones … ordered to pay £1.2B to Sandy Hook families … politicisation of BBC has resulted in a series of sandals … attacks on the Civil Service back lashed onto Cabinet Ministers … Brexit boosterism has left the DUP blocking the government’s efforts to bring normality to Northern Ireland … Every victory in culture wars seems to be a defeat … Influence of Brexit on behaviour of Dominic Raas … has not been examined enough … Civil Servants unable to carry out his orders because of the difficulties of implementing Brexit … We always knew that leaving the EU would suck the machinery of government into the mire … no tangible benefits … undermining the government’s ability to govern …

Hard Labour

Labour’s refusal to mention the failures of Brexit …. missing one open goal after another … looks increasingly pig headed as a clear and growing majority recognise Brexit was a mistake … it is extremely offensive but so is everything about Boris … I wonder if the people of Kent who voted for Brexit would have done so if this absurd anomaly had been written on a bus … Two Parliamentary reports highlight the scale of fraud in the UK and the lack of effort to stop it … £2.2B lost from the Covid business grant … just £10M recovered … £4.5B loss from fraud and error in the furlough and self employed Covid support schemes … fraud accounts for 41% of all crime …. costs individuals £4.7B a year at an average of £1,290 per crime … less than 1% leads to prosecutions … fraud policing is next to non existent …

Don Adamson
Don Adamson – former coastguard, Brexorcist First Class.

Sudan Sunackered

British inaction on evacuating Brits from Sudan is a ‘shitshow’ … Brexitania’s flagship Freeport Tees Valley … industrial scale corruption … NHS have seen their pay fall since 2010 … 18,000 UK trained doctors currently practice overseas, one in seven of the total trained and a 50% increase since 2008 … more than half ‘unwilling’ to return’ … more than 6 million patients on waiting lists … shortfall in England of 1.932 midwives and 496 consultant obstetricians … we need five times as many obstetricians to have a safe maternity service … collapse of safety culture … if UK had the same mortality rates as Sweden nearly 1,000 more babies would live every year … massive midwife shortfall has persisted for well over a decade … we spend £3B a year on maternity services and £8.25B on negligence claims arising from them … one GP for 2,286 patients as opposed to 1,800 ten years ago … tried to subcontract to the private sector but this did not work either …

Woke up Britain

Prof Goodwin’s book ‘Values, voice and virtue; the new British politics.’ … A new elite has taken over Britain … a disaster … woke ideology … graduates are brimming with dangerous, liberal ideals … for a Professor at the University of Kent this is a pretty odd argument…. an unfortunately plausible argument for this sour, paranoid book could be that Professor Goodwin’s grievance stems not from the ‘elite’ but from snotty nosed students who answer him back in seminars and take the Mick out of his crusty political views… Around the world budgets are in a mess … governments are stuck in a fiscal fantasyland … the picture is forbidding … 

Don Adamson Pip Pip             Medway Delta (Retired)          Brexorcist and Saboteur First Class

Sunakered

Brexit Chaos

In the wake of the first Labour local council victory in Medway since 1998, I draw some post-election consequences for the Lib Dems, Greens, SNP, Labour and Conservatives. Undoubtedly, this was a disaster for the Tories and Brexit in terms of what was predicted. The Tories lost 1061 local council seats. The question is, is this enough to get the Tories done and Brexit undone?

My part in the Tories’ decline

At a personal level, I was delighted to play my part in the Tories’ decline in Medway, through long term campaigning, mass Brexorcisms in pubs, cafes, supermarkets, bus stops etc., and doorstepping in Tory voting areas over the last few weeks. My family loaned 8 votes from my family to Labour last week and some to the Lib Dems and Greens. However, we shall not repeat this performance in a General Election, unless Labour turn on Brexit and Europe. I have put their Councillors on notice to this effect.

My Tory MP Rehman Chishti became so desperate about the decline in his party’s fortunes that he decided to attack Suella Braverman about her recent demonisation of Pakistani Muslims in The Observer. This is significant, in so far as Mr Chishti has an impeccable record in voting with the prevailing cabinet. His unbridled attacks appear to have sprung from sheer desperation and a desire to pick up the Pakistani vote in my area rather than any serious conviction that Braverman is an evil spirit who was herself an immigrant. He failed. Given that the Tories have a stronghold in my area, I plan to stand an independent candidate in Gillingham and Rainham and need your help to do this NOW. Please click on the link below and back us.

Get the Tories out in 2024

Lib Dem renaissance

Perhaps the story less covered in the mainstream media is that of the Lib Dems renaissance in last week’s elections. The Conservatives losses were fairly evenly distributed between Labour and the Lib Dems, with the Greens taking a very good proportion of votes as well. If this were to continue, the Lib Dems could find themselves as Kingmakers in a General Election along with the SNP. The Tories and Labour like the binary system which both believe they profit from. But we could find ourselves in a rainbow coalition in 2024. A lot can happen between now and then. Coalitions mean that politicians have to do things they really don’t like doing : listening to opposing views ; coming up with better decisions ; occasional compromises and so on. It’s all good with me. The people may just be the net winners in such a system … ?

The big winners here were the Lib Dems and Greens, with the losers being the far right (Tories) and the far right parties.

Green revolt

The Green party cleaned up, gaining a very respectable 241 seats in England and taking control of one Council in Brexity Mid Suffolk completely. Increasing awareness of sewage, climate catastrophe and possibly a protest vote against the far right parties aka Tories and UKIP may all have contributed to this. Let’s hope this continues into a General Election. Check our film out, based on our music composition ‘How do we want to be remembered‘.

Climate Crisis is the number one issue facing our planet.

How do we want to be remembered?

Rishi Sunakered

Sunak is under pressure from the ERG to go further right with his policies. As a holding statement on The BBC on Friday, Sunakered simply repeated his five priorities. He claims that people who cannot afford to eat were more interested in stopping the boats. Even James O’Brien is not sure what Sunak means by lurching to the far right. O’Brien frivolously suggested on LBC that it might involve bringing back the birch. I’d add bear bating, the rack and the drowning of witches, to take us back fully to Jacob Rees-Mogg’s 18th Century Brexit idyll.

An 18th Century Tory Synthpop Trance Floor dance groove we composed.

I called James to discuss Sunak’s options. Paradoxically, I suggested that Sunak would be better advised to move towards the centre ground of politics to pull the Swordaunt from the stone. James and I riffed away to my catchphrase ‘Sunackered’, which I coined in the summer of 2022. James said that Sunackered (or Sunakered) is worthy of a Daily Mail headline ‘if some guy wasn’t going to wear his mum’s hat and sit on a chair on Saturday’. Listen into to our riotous dialogue at LBC James O’Brien. #Sunackered is trending on Twitter as I write this.

Sunakered
I coined the phrase at the end of Summer 2022. Sunakered is free to use by the populist press. Please download the album to support our continuing work to banish Brexit bullshit.

Early indications suggest that Rishi Sunakered listened to my advice on LBC. Yesterday, Kemi Bad Enoch Powell announced that the Government has rowed back on its promise to have a bonfire of EU laws, 98% of which British politicians helped to make! Unusually, Jacob Rees-Mogg has called Sunak out as a traitor. Bad Enoch was sanctioned by TWFKASLH (The worm formerly known as Sir Lyndsay Hoyle) yesterday. Hoyle is a man who has allowed all sorts of bad behaviour to pass in the House of Commons but decided that enough was enough with the Nigerian Brexit fraudster. Mogg never calls the Government out. He even backs rapists. His outburst on the bonfire of EU law is clearly a smokescreen to get more than 20 Tory signatures on a letter to shaft Rich Tea Sunakered. I confidently predict that the approx 600 laws to be incinerated will be the ones with no large scale impact or connectivity to the main body of EU law. In other words, it will look as if we have taken back control of our laws, but, in reality, nothing will have changed, unless you indulge in some arcane Brexity manufacturing processes. For example, making car engines from English oak, impact-destructing cricket bats or pepper grinders without holes. Otto English sums up one of the many contradictions:

Arse Nicked by Brexit

And, once again, the ERG are fighting like cats in a sack. Andrew Bridgen has split the fascist parties by joining Lozza Fox’s Reshame party instead of Ricardo Tice’s Rebjorn Again party. It’s all good. Rishi is doing exactly what I predicted in order to save the Tory party from Brexit oblivion. Next he will steal Keir Starmer’s clothes, see Hard Labour. Perhaps Rishi is not Sunakered after all?

Sunackered or Sunakered – The theme tune – we were the first to convert the catchphrase into an EDM dance groove in 2022!!

Go now

In his weakened state, Sunak now needs some scapegoats. Given that the Select Committee has not yet reported on Boris Johnson’s multiple illegal, immoral and indecent behaviours, a convenient distraction would be for this committee to make a strong verdict against Johnson soon, such as full suspension from parliament. Accordingly, this would allow Sunak to blame the current malaise in the Conservative party on Johnson and Truss’ catastrophic mishandling of the country. It would also allow him to exorcise Johnson’s ghost without having to do anything himself. This is the way that Sunak likes to handle his HR decisions, through outsourcing to other agencies.

If Johnson is suspended for more than 10 days, The Rejoin Party have a plan to issue a recall petition to remove him from office and break the spaffer’s spell for good. Please join them in readiness.

Voter Suppression

The other big news about the election was voter id and voter suppression. For more on this read our full article on the subject. Early indications suggest that this will have disadvantaged specific demographic areas, such as ethnic minorities, the disabled and young people. The Government now runs the Electoral Commission and they decided not to record any data from polling stations. Correspondingly, it is quite likely that there is serious under-reporting on the extent of voter suppression in these elections. Edwin Hayward reports on over 70 case studies of voter suppression. They are almost certainly the very small tip of a very large electoral fraud iceberg.

These elections have demonstrated that the voter id system is totally unfit for purpose. I made my own small protest to the Electoral Commission. Above all else, please make your voice heard. Add your name to the call for action at electoral reform.

Say no to voter suppression

The Scottish position

Although the local elections are a hammer blow for the Tories, they are not catastrophic. Labour needed to reach the magic number of 40% vote share in these elections to win a General Election outright. They won approximately 35%. This explains why Labour want to take 30 seats in Scotland. I predict an informal coalition of aggression between Labour and Conservative to viciously attack the SNP on any agenda and exploit the change of leadership. Admittedly, the SNP’s transition could have been smoother. However, I believe we will see some very bad behaviour from both Labour and Conservatives in the coming weeks and months. They must be dealt with accordingly.

That said, the SNP’s problems are temporary. The essence of SNP support and the values underpinning them will be largely unchanged by a few sensational tabloid headlines in the longer term. For comparison, I note that Boris Johnson’s many breaches of the law did not attract police tents in his garden and officers in fancy dress Hazmat suits. Added to this, Brexit delivers a daily stream of bad news, both in the short, medium and long term. Robert Peston reported that 86% of young people wish to rejoin the EU. In consequence, Starmer’s position on Brexit is ultimately untenable. I reported on Labour’s position on Brexit in the previous article “Hard Labour“. If Labour’s results are not good enough to win a General Election outright, a hung parliament still seems a likely outcome of the current optimism about the local elections.

Read our page on Scotland

Learned Helplessness

Learned helplessness

I recently published an article on Labour’s position (or lack of it) on Brexit. You can find the article at Bylines Scotland. It provoked an angry visceral reaction from Labour ideologues on social media. Louis told me the article was incorrect and badly written. When I asked him to point out the inaccuracies and poor writing, he couldn’t. Eventually he told me that we must all keep quiet about Brexit, deliver a crushing defeat to the Tories in the local elections and then Rishi Sunak would call a General Election. I asked him to explain his logic. He refused and drifted off into the notion that the UK will be ended if a General Election does not happen in 2023.

Sadly Louis refused to justify his appraisal of the article. And he claims to be a scientist.

Louis’ logic from the exchange can be summarised here:

The Tories suffer a crushing defeat on May 4th.

Sunak must then call a General Election.

He does this so that he can suffer another …. crushing defeat.

Can anyone help me figure out how this works? Call me cynical, but politicians do not call elections that they intend to lose. I agree it’s not impossible but it would require significant public and political pressure. With the nurses having caved in on a pay deal yesterday, I sense that the Tories are now over the hump of public unrest, due to the passivity of the British people. We’ll have to see …

Another chap called John simply called me a silly infant. I asked him to justify his statement. He could not. I don’t mind being called an idiot, but I do mind it when the people doing it cannot justify their insults. Several people have apologised privately on behalf of John, telling me that (a) he’s a bit old (so am I) (b) he’s a bit nutty (do I have to put up with that?) and (c) he is horrible to lots of people so that’s OK (does that make it right?). Here are some of John’s tweets:

No explanation, no apology – the same behaviours as used by Brexiteers

A clear demonstration of learned helplessness

I was also schooled online by Supertanskiii that ‘now is not the time to mention Brexit’. I beg to differ Tan. Airbrushing the word Brexit out of the lexicon is a one way journey, sponsored by the Tories and Labour alike. Brexit is the single most important socio-economic, political, legal and environmental disaster of our age. Denial is not a river in Egypt.

Supertanskiii is a potent online campaigner, but I fear she is emotionally addicted to Labour

John’s views are symptomatic of what is called in the trade ‘learned helplessness’. Remainers lost two elections and a referendum through setting low expectations, accepting rules on democracy which Brexiteers ignored them, believing that we don’t deserve any better and so on. This extract from the book Reboot Britain summarises the ‘condition’:

Learned Helplessness
Learned Helplessness – Click the graphic to read more

So, it seems that we are back into the binary political trap that delivered Brexit. Tony Blair was right when he said that the Labour party often suffers from the triumph of ideology over pragmatism, a disease which caused the Tory party to cannabalise itself with Brexit. Have a look at the Scottish Bylines article and let me know what is inaccurate or stupid about it in the comments or via Twitter. To my Labour chums, I repeat my usual challenging unemotional questions:

What are the differences between a red or blue Brexit? No one will explain them and I have asked many times.

There is a clear business case to support the argument that Brexit has failed. Why won’t Keir Starmer move to this position?

Why will the right-wing media eat Starmer for breakfast if he states that Brexit isn’t working? Read the point on sunk costs in the article to understand this point better.

What makes people believe that Labour will reform the FPTP electoral system in a binary prisoner’s dilemma, all the while they believe that it benefits them? By the way, all the research evidence from UKICE points to the fact that Labour would benefit from electoral reform, in terms of votes, seats and number of terms in power.

If 70% of Labour members wanted to Remain, why are they so docile? What does this say about Labour’s approach to democracy?

Why do people believe that Keir Starmer will rejoin the Customs Union and Single Market when he has flatly refused to do so on many occasion? Surely this makes him a liar? The right wing media will certainly be all over this if he were to gain power.

Hard Labour
Hard Labour – Click to read the article. Image by P Paton

To understand the various options for joining anew, please see London 4 Europe’s article on this.

Join us at our next Reboot Britain meeting on Wed May 10th May at 8 pm via Zoom. Find the link at Reboot Britain.

Musings of a former Conservative Councillor

Many years ago, the Conservative grandee Lord Hailsham observed that, constitutionally, Britain is an “elective dictatorship”. Boris Johnson’s regime is demonstrating the truth of his warning, particularly when power falls into the wrong hands.  Dominic Cummings, until recently Johnson’s over-powerful senior adviser and the driving force behind his policies, was autocratic by nature. Cummings treated MPs, including Johnson’s Brexiteer supporters, with contempt. During his period in power, he created a centralised and unaccountable  power base at the heart of Government with key functions such as appointments, vetting and control of data in his own hands. Parliament was increasingly sidelined. The hallmark of  the regime became the advancement, employment and enrichment of persons noted only for their loyalty to himself and the Brexit cause, with no consideration given to their merit, experience, suitability or capability to carry out their duties. A stench of corruption and cronyism began to emanate from No 10. 

Conservatives have a long track record in crime.

Johnson’s regime is also unconservative. Conservatives instinctively want to conserve, as the name implies, but his is an administration of destroyers.  Cummings was never a member of the Conservative party and his appointees in No 10 reject traditional Tory respect for continuity and compromise, in favour of creative destruction. Their current targets are the BBC, the impartial civil service, and the judiciary. Our planning system and, indeed, our whole structure of local government are due to follow. Under Cummings, the Conservative tradition of managerial capability and economic credibility has been discarded, as demonstrated, inter alia, by the extraordinary failure to report  and then trace the contacts of almost 16,000 COVID-19 cases, a major blunder to which the Government reacted with barely a shrug.  Cummings’ departure opens the door to a new start where realism replaces dogma, honesty and transparency replaces lies, corruption and cronyism, and where respect for our institutions and constitutional conventions and, in particular, the rule of law is restored. 

What must be done?

  1. Radical U-turns by the Conservative party are required to expunge Cummings’ legacy.  The largest and most immediate is the withdrawal of  the Internal Market Bill and, in particular, the removal of the clauses which break international law and curtail Parliament’s powers. 
  2. There should be no further talk of lowering our food and environmental standards at the behest of the United States, nor of downgrading worker protection. 
  3. The Culture Secretary’s plan to abolish the BBC and replace it with American-style radio and TV must be shelved.
  4. Hancock’s questionable appointment of an old university girlfriend to a post in his department should be this administration’s last vestige of cronyism.
  5. The Cabinet Office’s involvement in hospital and medical procurement should be terminated and all further government contracts undergo transparent and competitive tendering processes as the law requires.
  6. There should be a general review of appointments made under the Cummings regime in No 10 and the public service, with a view to removing those who are patently unsuitable or incompetent. The Prime Minister would do well to carry out the same exercise amongst his second and third-rate ministers once Brexit is over and blind obedience to that objective can cease to be the sole qualification for advancement.
  7. This should be accompanied by an end to lying and xenophobic propaganda, if Conservatives still wish to regain any trace of being a one-nation party.

Only if a programme of this nature is followed can we hope to regain a Government worthy of respect, both at home and abroad. Its present state was well summed up in the words of a Tory former cabinet minister: “ This is a bad English nationalist government with no idea of where it’s going.” Unless Johnson shows himself capable of changing this judgement in the near future, it is in the interests of his party as well as of his country that he be replaced as soon as possible.

The writer resigned from the Conservative party in protest against its SE branch’s policy to force Remain members to vote for extreme Brexiteers in the choice of candidates for the 2014 European elections.