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| Matt Hancock |
As I
have now revealed to everyone including myself that I will return to
live in Britain some time in the New Year, I think I will share my
feelings about the current state of this Promised Land. The view from
here is not good! Inexorably, the country, my country, is moving to
the right and doing so on a tide of Boris lies, half-truths and
dishonesty worthy of …. let’s not mince words …. Trump or
Orban or Bolsonaro. Obviously Boris is more adorable than most
wannabe dictators with his ruffled hair, disregard for suitable
diplomatic language, impressive classical allusions and apparently unwise, off-the-cuff remarks demonstrating his devil-may-care attitude so admired by white males. Meanwhile he attacks popular targets like the
judicial system and the BBC plus other non-compliant media with a bumbling insouciance.
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| Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro |
He
ignores inconvenient behaviour by Cabinet ministers loyal to him and
Brexit, ensuring that it is almost unheard-of for a minister to
resign over charges of inappropriate behaviour such as bullying for
instance, or for labelling lawyers “human rights activists”
[Priti Patel] The recent resignation [a newly-minted move] of Matt
Hancock came only after Boris refused to sack him and after the
public clamour grew so loud, especially from older Conservatives in
the South-East whose votes Boris needs.
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| Priti Patel |
Astonishingly
to yours truly, there seems to be comparatively little criticism of the
ill effects of Brexit which continue to grow in the economic damage
being done to the country. The only cris de coeur I hear on the BBC
are from desperate exporters of a wide range of goods who have lost
huge swathes of business because of punitive tariff procedures and
bureaucracy, plus the difficulties over, for instance, a real
shortage of lorry drivers. There just does not seem to have been a
plan, like a National Plan for post-Brexit Britain to formalise a
productive path through the minefield left after the contentious end
of a forty year period as part of a union of 28 countries.
Post-Brexit trade deals merely replicate chiefly what the country
already had within the E.U. despite the latest agreements being sold
by the preternaturally perky Liz Truss as new and better. They
aren’t, and Boris’s non-existent Northern Ireland border running
through the North Sea, is predictably stirring up worrying signs in
Northern Ireland such as delays at Customs and supermarket shortages
plus ominous rumbles of nationalistic tensions. So much for Boris’s
“no border whatsoever” and his airy advice to Northern Irish
businessmen to bin anycustoms forms. Now the predictable problems
rearing their ugly, potentially dangerous, heads are attributed by
Boris to the E.U. as the cause. This
is as if the agreement signed by the U.K. and the E.U. a few months
before, never happened. Predictably, the message from this
dishonourable, deplorable dishonesty for the rest of the world is,
“
Don’t make treaties/agreements/arrangements with the Brits
because they cannot be trusted to keep their word.”
Peter
Oborne, the journalist who wrote, The Assault on Truth describes his
co-Conservative and former friend, Johnson, as having a pathological
relationship with the truth. Oborne makes an important point
illustrating what really drives Boris and the Brexiteers. He sees,
behind the amoral and dishonest Boris behaviour, a sustained and
growing attack on the judiciary, and the rule of law, the Civil
Service and Parliament and the gradual, insidious move to
authoritarian rule in which an unassailable Government makes
un-monitored executive decisions. In a splendid article by Annette
Dittert in the New Statesman, 23-29 July 2021, she attacks the media, in particular, the Murdoch Press and increasingly, the BBC
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| Peter Oborne |
for the
their unwillingness to hold the Government to account. Press empire
owners like Murdoch and the Barclay brothers, universally support and
applaud Johnson’s lies and subterfuges as the perfect vehicle for a
huge ideological project involving a systematic effort to dismantle
oversight of the executive. Without a written constitution, just
centuries of fudge and nudge and reliance on the ultimate integrity
of governmental leaders, Britain seems almost defenceless in the face
of an extreme right-wing government which is also integrity-free. An
indication of Boris’s direction of travel is in public body
appointments. Charles Moore, a professed ‘chief opponent’ of a
public broadcasting system’ was first proposed by Boris as new
Chairman of the BBC, and on his eventual disappearance from the
field, Richard Sharp, a member of the
right wing Centre for Policy Studies and a considerable Government
friend and Tory donor, was appointed, Hardly the independent chair of
the British public broadcasting service. Similar to the lack of a
written British constitution, there is no written document
guaranteeing the independence of the BBC, preventing centralised
access to the BBC by politicians of any stripe.
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| Richard Sharp |
I have
always admired the Scots and their communal ability to sniff out a
phony. Scotland has quickly judged Boris for his lies; unethical,
often illegal, behaviour; his deeply dishonest Brexit campaign with
Dominic Cummings; his vow to get back the British sovereignty which
was never lost; his obfuscation as he hides behind the
carefully-cultivated, lovably incompetent public persona to make
empty gestures of governing when, for instance, there is no trade
policy, post-Brexit [referendum, five years ago], and living
standards in the Red Wall can never equal those in the rich South
East for a variety of reasons such as the lack of the sorely-needed
educational reforms in the North not being seriously funded. Small
wonder that the Scottish independence movement is surging. Oh dear!
The times I have sneered at the Posh Boys’Club as Little Englanders
but I hadn’t expected to be taken this seriously!
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| Boris-as-naughty boy P.M. |
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| Annette Dittert |
