Tory MPs filed through the lobbies last night to vote confidence in the Government. MPs cancelled foreign trips, left their poorly relatives, and one MP was reportedly dragged into Parliament on the day that their mother died, just to keep this lame duck administration staggering on.
The motion of no confidence last night was never just about our law-breaking, Parliament-proroguing, office-abusing Prime Minister. It was always about this tawdry, toxic Government as a whole.
Every single MP on the Government benches who has stood by Boris Johnson, whilst he’s dissembled and denigrated his way through his term in office, is complicit in his offences – partying in Downing Street; rules changed to protect their mates; sexual harassment brushed under the carpet.
Did those who finally resigned really only just realise that the Prime Minister was serially incapable of honesty, integrity, and decency? Of course not – it was priced in at the start for self-serving, career-advancing reasons.
This Government has no respect for standards in public life, no respect for the rule of law, and no respect for the British public.
The reasons for my lack of confidence are myriad – but here I will focus on two.
The country faces an unprecedented extreme heatwave – the kind of deadly weather event that will only get worse in future.
Yet as Ministers scurry to emergency COBRA meetings (or some do, while others continue to party at Chequers) they are pouring yet more fuel on the flames they claim to want to extinguish.
Plans to greenlight even more new oil and gas extraction from the North Sea will make no difference to consumer bills, and no difference to energy security, but a world of difference to our already overheating planet.
That approach is not just immoral, but criminally negligent.
And that brings me onto democracy.
It would be easy to dismiss this Government simply as the incompetents they are. But this would be wrong – the populist style of politics they have inflicted on this country is deeply dangerous.
They risk presiding over a frightening descent into what Mhairi Black MP bravely and correctly called out in May – fascism.
As she said back then, fascism doesn’t always arrive wearing leather jackboots – it can come knocking more subtly than that.
So students of fascism have helpfully suggested some of its signs with which to familiarise ourselves.
Disinformation, misogyny, disdain for intellectuals, social conformity, suppression of trade unions, threats to human rights, the creation and abuse of hate groups, the rise of militarisation and, at its heart, racism.
This is a Government that has been pursuing overtly racist policies, with the latest manifestation being plans to deport refugees to Rwanda.
They have deliberately sought to turn our friends, family, neighbours, colleagues into wedge issues. To demonise people, divide our communities and breed hatred.
Attacks on judges as ‘enemies of the people’; attacks on public service broadcasters; attacks on Parliament itself via unlawful prorogation; attacks on democracy with an Elections Bill making it harder to vote. All show the deliberate erosion of the foundations of our democratic systems.
There is a pattern here, if only we are prepared to see it.
We tell ourselves that we live in a mature democracy, yet this populist Government has deliberately set out to weaken the very institutions that define it – helping them cling to power whether they enjoy the confidence of the electorate or not.
So no, I do not have confidence in this Government. I have confidence only that if we fail to shine a light on what’s happening on their watch, things will only grow darker. I can only hope that people are right when they say it’s always darkest just before the dawn.
