The Mirror yesterday published an article on just 50 of the most notable lies, scandals and failures of the 1,000 days of Boris Johnson’s grotesque Premiership. You should consider a follow-up … the 50 worst things about his handling of the Number 10 parties.
At, or close to, the top is the way he has sought to use the war in Ukraine as some kind of shield against him doing the right thing, which would be to resign for having broken the law, and having lied to Parliament and public.
He should not have been allowed to combine the two issues in a single statement, Ukraine and his breach of his own Covid laws, passed amid warnings that such breaches were a matter of life and death. It was him showing yet again that whatever the rules, whatever ‘normality’ may be, he will do something different.
His defenders argue that for him to go would be destabilising to the government, and celebrated by Vladimir Putin. Putin has celebrated every day that Johnson is there. He celebrated Brexit. He wants a weakened Britain, and Johnson is delivering it.
The war in Ukraine, and Britain’s response to it, would be largely unchanged by his departure. Britain’s global reputation, and the standing of our Parliament in our national life, are both changed for the worse by his staying.
Our Parliamentary democracy, whatever the faults of MPs past and present, has been a big part of our strength in the eyes of the world. That ministers had to resign if they misled Parliament was a big part of that. It made debate robust, but founded in fact. Johnson has destroyed all that and every day he survives, it will get worse.
That system has depended on a basic assumption that ultimately, all MPs are honourable. ‘Good chaps.’ They will do the right thing. Put the national interest ahead of their own. And by and large, that has worked. Until now. Until the arrival of a rogue PM for whom rules are for others, truth is whatever he believes it to be at the time, and politics is about the rise and survival of the politicians, not the lives and living standards of those who elect them.
We have a liar and a law-breaker as Prime Minister. That that can be said in any newspaper without any lawyer worrying about libel is extraordinary. It is a fact. And it would seem Tory MPs are happy to live with that fact. Happy to live with the Chancellor – “I did not attend any parties”- being a liar and lawbreaker too. Happy to see the rule of law undermined, the ministerial code trashed, the very notion of responsibility and accountability rendered meaningless.
And for what? What has Johnson’s government actually done in those thousand days that has made this a better, stronger, more prosperous country, set against all it has done to make it poorer, weaker, less united, less respected in the world?
We are still in an Alice in Wonderland world where MPs who accuse Johnson of being a liar are breaking the rules of the House, as we saw again after his fake contrition statement. I for one would like a succession of MPs to tell the truth, day after day till he has gone. ‘The Prime Minister is a liar and a crook, and this House of Commons cannot function as the centre of our democratic debate while he remains in place.’
If he survives, then democracy as we know it will not.
