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| The democracy demo in Liverpool on 2 September 2019 |
- Has no real convictions and changes his mind to suit what is to his advantage at any given moment.
- Has a record of incompetence, such as when as Foreign Secretary his words ensured Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe's prison sentence in Iran was increased.
- Squanders public money on pet schemes that get nowhere.
- Is openly jingoistic, misogynistic and racist.
- Is a womaniser. Womanisers claim to love women, but womanising is exploitation, i.e. abuse.
Here is a telling comparison:
When I was a union rep in the civil service, I represented a member who was facing dismissal having been accused of deliberately misspending public money; the amount involved was a couple of hundred pounds. I managed to save his job only at the final level of appeal when it was eventually accepted that it was a genuine error. The first two decision makers had rejected that argument and had recommended dismissal.
Johnson, on the other hand, squandered £53 million of public money for a bridge that was never even begun. He also misspent more than £300,000 on illegal water cannons which were never used and were eventually scrapped at a huge loss. Despite all of that, he was rewarded with the keys to Number 10. I cannot understand why he has not faced prosecution for massive misuse of public funds. If not prosecuted, then at least barred from holding public office. My member would have lost his job for misspending a tiny percentage of the fortune that Johnson “spaffed against a wall”, to use his own unsavoury phrase.
As prime minister, he is misusing the power to prorogue Parliament, normally just a suspension during which the government prepares its programme for the next Parliamentary session, to prevent MPs holding him to account for his actions over leaving the EU. This is contrary to the Bill of Rights 1689, the foundation stone of our modern constitutional system, which clearly asserts the sovereignty of Parliament over monarch and government. However you voted on leaving the EU, you should be worried by this cavalier approach to our constitution. Furthermore, he has threatened any Tory MPs who vote to block a no-deal exit from the EU with, in effect, the sack.
These two actions demonstrate Johnson's despotic tendencies. He is not a natural democrat, and is prepared to resort to extreme measures to achieve his own aims. Those who voted Leave so that we can “take back control” could not have foreseen that the control would be handed, not to our elected Parliament as we were told, but to just one man, unelected and extremely unscupulous. Proof of the latter is his dismissal of genuine concerns in Ireland that a no-deal exit from the EU could jeopardise the peace process there.
His 'election' was little more than a coup d'état and his reckless misspending of public money has been shrugged off. He has a privileged immunity that ensures his incompetence and arrogant profligacy avoids any kind of scrutiny or investigation. His succession has denied the people any say in who leads the country, which is especially galling because he denounced Brown for succeeding Blair as PM without calling an election.
Stage magicians use a technique called misdirection in which the performers draw the attention of the audience to one thing to distract it from another. Johnson's buffoonery has amused and even endeared him to many people who have failed to see that behind the hesitant waffle, outrageous statements and clownish antics there is a thoroughly cold-hearted, egotistical and unprincipled right-winger who stands only for his own and his cronies' advancement in terms of both status and wealth. Many of us thought we had reached a political nadir with Theresa May, but in a reverse of the New Labour anthem, things can only get worse.
This article follows on from the post immediately before it by Geoff Parry, who kindly asked me to post this on his blog.
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