Storm meets teacup.

by Pseud O'Nym

Huzzah!

Proof, if any further proof were needed, that democracy is in its final stages in Britain, was provided by the constant hounding, political point-scoring and opportunism that ultimately led to Boris’s Johnson removal from office. His offence, well the official one anyway, was that he lied to parliament. Not about something which has required other M.P’s, in other era’s, with different morals, to resign. Not like John Profumo, for my money someone who set the bar very high for political scandals, one involving sex workers, secrets and Soviets. Or John Stonehouse, who gave him a run for his money by faking his own death to avoid a scandal.

What did Johnson lie about? Some parties, either attending them, hosting them or being in the same postcode where they were happening, its all the same to me, its a manufactured hysteria dressed up as something it so isn’t. He broke lockdown rules. And?

I mean, we all did. Not at first, not for the first few months when we thought everyone was obeying them, but as the weather got nicer, and the rules became more onerous, there began to be a more flexible interpretation of the rules. And the more flexible one interpreted those rules depended on ones own immediate needs and wants. So limited social contact with those in your bubble became more fluid, who was your bubble expanded at the same time that distance required to meet social distancing requirements reduced. When it was people you knew and liked doing it, it was perfectly fine, but when it was someone you didn’t like, it wasn’t. Our landlady would sometimes travel across London just to sit in our garden, and that was fine. But Cummings driving to Durham wasn’t, was totally different. And don’t forget that because of Brexit, because of wanting to commit the unspeakable and actually ensure the result of the EU referendum was carried out, Boris’s Johnson was already public enemy number one.

Even though the pandemic was a rapidly changing, constantly evolving situation on an unprecedented scale, with conflicting scientific advice, some in the media thought it was really helping matters to critcize his handling of the pandemic as a way to express their profound disgust that Brexit had happened. It was rabid, and I’m someone who voted to Remain. But then again, during the pandemic, I was living in a house where Radio 4 was always on, and where ‘The Guardian’ was read, so….

I suppose the thing that bothers me most about all of this is the fact that people who will be shortly asking us to trust them enough to vote them into government, have somehow conflated an inconsequential matter into something serious to warrant a parliamentary resignation. I fervently hope that some of the properly guilty in all of this, the unelected unrepresentive’s of a small minority of the disenchanted, will suffer the same ignominious fate that they have suffered on him.

Because parties? Really?