This rant from stalwart campaigner Don Adamson.
This week’s comments: “Johnson seems set to make the House of Lords worse … has been described as ‘absurd’ … ‘anachronism’ … the best day care centre for the elderly in London … 4th Earl of Russell said … ‘Britain was governed by spiritless Papal bum boys’ … Johnson intends to ennoble 30 of his chums … Thatcher only ennobled 7 in her leaving list … MacMillan a minimalist 1 … others expressed alarm at the quality … Nadine Dorries, culture secretary, cabinet toady and author of soupy historical sagas … in the 1920s Lloyd George flogged honours openly … tariff … £10,000 for a knighthood … £50,000 for a peerage … Johnson’s appointments are likely to be worse … he has created peerages at a faster rate than any PM in the last 50 years … the House of Lords is odd. That does not mean it is worthless… deep seated problems … dangerous short term grandstanding … Thick Lizzie blithely ignores the fact that her government signed the NI protocol she now deems unworkable … scale of industrial unrest is massive … transport workers, nurses, doctors, lawyers … frequent assurances were flimsy ambitions … Tories still see no evil in Brexit even though it is the driver of problems … Thick Lizzie would have us believe that tax cuts would provide the loot … as likely as her assertion that barking dogs would deter drones from flying drugs into prisons … that calls for adult conversation far removed from unedifying Tory debate … Johnson was the worst PM in our history … Tories bought the Thatcher tribute act guff … quite soon we will have to acknowledge that Johnson only had the second worst cabinet of all time … Thick Lizzie does not take diplomacy and Foreign policy seriously … Braverman has defended law breaking … odd to put her in charge of law and order … as for absolute absurdity can anything match putting Rees Mogg in charge of “levelling up” ? … failed Ian Duncan Snot … failed John Deadwood … failed David Frost … a political culture gone badly wrong … a cabinet of misfits, failures, ideologues, third raters … we used to look to Britain as a role model … with respect and admiration …. not now … post truth virus that gave us Brexit and Johnson has got worse … 60% of voters think Johnson got Brexit wrong … can of worms … a growing buyer’s remorse towards Brexit … Britain is no longer a pro Brexit country … mounting disillusion towards Brexit … Labour’s ultra-cautious stance on EU is not working … Labour’s manifest weakness on the subject may cost it dear … the public mood has shifted… Johnson’s absurd narrative … betrayal of greatness … potential ministers refused to serve under him … subservient mediocrities, willing to accept humiliation after humiliation … could continue no longer … historians across the political spectrum will judge Johnson’s premiership to have been a calamity … the worst PM in UK’s history … least suited for office … persistent casual frivolity … David Cameron runs him close … UK at its most dysfunctional and economically weak since 1945 … Johnson’s conduct is mind boggling … Johnson had no idea how the Customs Union worked … weird courtier David Frost … calamitous negotiations … no evidence that he had thought through the implications … companies creak under the burden of extra red tape … queues at Dover are insanely long … all was wacky under Johnson … officials at No 10 doubt if Johnson read the deal negotiated by the hopeless Frost … historic economy wrecking deal … was almost certainly not scrutinised by Johnson … frivolity combined with instinctive mendacity … adolescent thought process that killed many in lockdown … not bothering to attend vital COBR meetings … lying …. honours to friends, party donors and powerful editors … promising much … not bothering to deliver … as UK economy teeters he enjoys two holidays and parties at Chequers …there is no evidence that Johnson had any sense of what was required to revive a divided, battered country … his successor might prove to be even worse … Johnson may have ripped apart the soul and credibility of the Tory Party … willingness not to be too picky about accepting money has been great for tory funding … octogenarian multi millionaire is the BBC’s go to person when awkward accusations are made … if anything Maitlis played down Tory bias at the BBC … Sir Harry Evans was not impressed when he met Paul Dacre … Evans fearlessly took on governments and big business … Dacre is the surly baron of Middle England … one last Johnson scandal … resignation honours list … a disgraced PM being able to fill the House of Lords with cronies is drawing widespread outrage … Johnson’s inability to tell the truth … so many lies you could not fit them into one edition of a newspaper … Johnson was known to be a liar before he became PM … the damage he has done is immense … Johnson has proved that lying wins elections and large majorities … there is no need to cover fields with solar panels; just stick them on every roof … the dimmest, meanest, most gullible and blindly tribalistic 0.3% of the population choose the PM … most economists agree that imposing tax cuts as the country heads to economic meltdown would be at best ineffectual and at worst suicidal …It is fitting that one of Johnson’s final acts as PM was to appoint his own Deputy Chief of Staff to the committee on standards … co-owner of consultancy that specialises in expensive advice to Gulf despots … weak procedures … conflicts of interest … ‘baleful consequences of family breakdown’ … thank Heaven the Daily Mail has not spent the past year hysterically supporting a politician who walked out on his first wife .. Divorced his second wife … fathered an unknown number of children … how did rationing succeed in WW2? … mostly fair … hence broad support … UK inexplicably ignoring electricity generators’ windfalls … passing most of the costs to the consumer … Keir Starmer is talking out of his hat … at least he has a plan … Thick Lizzie ignored the implosion of the NHS and social care under 12 years of Tory government … two pandemic excdrcises woefully concluded that we were woefully ill prepared … leadership candidates played to the crowds … scientists, economists and epidemiologists agonised … the biggest mistake was leaving lockdown so late … more Covid deaths occurred … South Africa banned sale of alcohol during lockdowns … greatly reduced hospital admissions (many are alcohol related) … with such a high alcohol dependency in Westminster this was never a viable option in UK … we did not have the palliative care teams, PPE protection and testing capacity to cope … if public services are poorly resourced the harm is greatly magnified … increase in deaths 21% … Covid 19 deaths this summer double seen last summer … Covid boosted private hospital chains while the NHS was in crisis … a PM equally blonde, boosterish and untethered to reality … Times acting as mouthpiece for one of the most repugnant and incompetent Home Secretaries in recent history … ‘like reading the Express’ … can get away with printing any old rubbish … Guided by a right wing Brexiter with outdated economic views Thick Lizzie is setting the UK on a disastrous course … relentless demand for tax cuts … has made a rod for her own back … she believes her own flawed rhetoric and advice from right wing pro Brexit economists … the stakes could not be higher .. Thick Lizzie could wreck the economy and do egregious damage to social fabric … Tories want to reduce debt but have increased it from 74% of GDP in 2010 to 103% in 2021 … Trussonomics are expected to blow a £60B hole in the Budget … debt to GDP ratio on an inexorable upward trend … exporters already face strong post Brexit headwinds … 12 years of inconsistent and poorly framed leadership … Minford’s economic advocacy is not appropriate to 21st century Britain … None of Thatcher’s ideas have any significance today … Thick Lizzie needs to listen to other economists … hollowing out of the Tory Party … defenestration of its brightest MPs … leaves a talent pool so shallow it is no surprise we have a duck in Downing St … some kind of Thatcher tribute act … Thick Lizzie’s cabinet cannot match the intellect, critical thinking and political skills in Thatcher’s cabinet … there has never been a period when the challenges we face and the quality of people facing them have been so vast … Johnson’s shameful and wasteful time in office … nothing even remotely resembling strategy … ‘Levelling Up in the Bullshit slogans category is a gold medal winner … Thick Lizzie plays to the crowd rather than take her responsibilities seriously … xenophobic paranoid gammons picked our PM … a Little Englander who plays to the crowd … they do not have the sense to see themselves as others see them … the reality of Britain’s position will come as a shock to her … The US Foreign Service is not stupid … the President takes a deep interest in Ireland … the people of Northern Ireland and business do not want this .. it is because of the zealots and swivel eyed loons in her party … Thick Lizzie wants a fight with the EU … patently cynical attempt to destroy the NI protocol and to break International Law … Consequences will be dire … legal and reputational damage to Britain is huge and getting worse … obeying the law and honouring commitments matter … pity the poor Brexiter … the brilliant Brexit they imagined has been stymied …May’s deal delivered everything Brexiters said they wanted so they rejected it … they are no more coherent this time than they were before … economist in name only Patrick Minford …such nonsense would be funny if those people were not so close to power and if the people in power did not seem to desperate to appease these political toddlers … what they want is impossible … beyond all reason and beyond all sanity … in the hope it will deliver the Brexit Nirvana … there is little hope the new crew will steer any better than the last … “Can Thick Lizzie fix Britain (Comment: of course; just as soon as Johnson builds his proposed bridge to Mars) … Trust must eschew pantomime radicalism if she is to succeed … an enormous job in front of her … Britain’s predicament is worse than many other places … 1,000 patients a day wait more than 12 hours in accident and emergency departments … sceptics have many reasons to be dubious … made promises she cannot keep to a tiny electorate … she maintains the fiction that Brexit is unallowyed good … Jacob Rees Mogg should be put in a museum not in charge of anything … Boris Johnson … shambolic and unlamented … cartoonish mixture of tax cuts, deregulation and Brussels bashing … commitments would keep the Brexit head bangers happy but would do little to help business … she will be remembered as a reactionary, not a radical … in 2025 or earlier she will face a deeply dissatisfied public in a general election … Suella Braverman will make Priti Patel look like a bleeding heart liberal … judges were horrified … NHS woes will be a major battleground in the next election … Truss is the fourth roll of the dice for a party squinting hard … the country may be looking for something else entirely … a repeat is about to unfold … expensive promises … economy has been bludgeoned … alarming for investors …