UK General Discussion:The Rt. Hon Alex Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, Populist Hero

[YL]

So far in the Cummings deposition Hancock is coming out very bad it seems. He really incarnates the careerist pipsqueak type of Tory I actually despise more than someone like Johnson who just assumes who he is and doesn't try to hide it.

Both barrels have been unloaded on Hancock but certain other people (most notably a certain North Yorkshire MP) seem to be getting away remarkably lightly.

[CumbrianLefty]

Yes, the total reluctance of Dom to criticise Sunak in any way at all is striking.

[Zinneke]

Isn't Cummings mostly in league with Gove?

[Conservatopia]

Rob Roberts, who wants to be this parliament's Jared O'Mara, has finally had the Tory whip withdrawn.  Roberts has been covered very extensively by Guido fwiw.

Perhaps there is a lottery at the beginning of each Parliament on who can be the biggest tosser. Don't know why it took so long but pleased to see.

Unfortunately it looks like the Tories will give him only a short suspension and will use a loophole to avoid a recall election.

Don't forget Damian Green and Keith Vaz for processes taking ages or going nowhere.  You would have thought that Parliament would have got the message that things need to change.

Now talk that said (it seems inadvertent not deliberate, another case of hasty ill-scrutinised legislation perhaps?) loophole may be closed - and retrospectively so that it would apply to Roberts.

To their credit some in the party do genuinely want to be rid of him - and take any possible byelection loss on the chin - but fellow Tory MPs were only yesterday falling over themselves to say what a great person he was. Genuinely unedifying.

Roberts made some friends amongst the 2019 intake early on I think.  As you say it's unedifying and he should really be resigning in disgrace.

The recall process overall definitely needs work.  Hopefully the Goldsmith plan to allow any MP to be recalled is revived.

Isn't Cummings mostly in league with Gove?

Yes but Gove has long been in league with Boris.  I wonder what the right-wing version of Kremlinology is called?  Tuftonology perhaps?

[CumbrianLefty]

Isn't Cummings mostly in league with Gove?

Yes, but he would evidently accept either Sunak or Raab as Johnson's successor.

(until he turns on them, naturally)

[Geoffrey Howe]

Dominic Cummings showed that at heart he is a ruthless totalitarian
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/05/26/dominic-cummings-showed-heart-ruthless-totalitarian/

The scientific advice was that lockdowns reduce deaths in the short term, but only by postponing them. Unless they were kept in place permanently (or at least until there is a vaccine), the epidemic would simply come back in a second wave that would probably be worse than the first, because it would coincide with the winter peak of pressure on the NHS.
Taking the data over a whole year, there is no correlation between lockdown policies and deaths.
[...]
There is a moral dimension to all of this, to which Cummings turns a tin ear. He criticises ministers for not following the Chinese example. He forgets that there were moral and not just pragmatic reasons for that. China is one of the most oppressive totalitarian states in the world. It treats people as mere instruments of state policy. We should have higher values.
[...]
The Cummings problem is his contempt for democracy and liberal values. He is at heart a ruthless totalitarian. What we needed, he told us, was a 'kind of dictator with kingly power,' who would 'push out the boundaries of legality.' 'This is war,' he said. 'Any rules - forget it.'

[CumbrianLefty]

Ah, good old Lord Sumption.

[YL]

Rob Roberts, who wants to be this parliament's Jared O'Mara, has finally had the Tory whip withdrawn.  Roberts has been covered very extensively by Guido fwiw.

Perhaps there is a lottery at the beginning of each Parliament on who can be the biggest tosser. Don't know why it took so long but pleased to see.

Unfortunately it looks like the Tories will give him only a short suspension and will use a loophole to avoid a recall election.

Don't forget Damian Green and Keith Vaz for processes taking ages or going nowhere.  You would have thought that Parliament would have got the message that things need to change.

Now talk that said (it seems inadvertent not deliberate, another case of hasty ill-scrutinised legislation perhaps?) loophole may be closed - and retrospectively so that it would apply to Roberts.

To their credit some in the party do genuinely want to be rid of him - and take any possible byelection loss on the chin - but fellow Tory MPs were only yesterday falling over themselves to say what a great person he was. Genuinely unedifying.

Roberts made some friends amongst the 2019 intake early on I think.  As you say it's unedifying and he should really be resigning in disgrace.

The recall process overall definitely needs work.  Hopefully the Goldsmith plan to allow any MP to be recalled is revived.

It appears that the loophole is going to be closed and that it may be done retrospectively.  (I'm a little uneasy about that TBH, though I guess as in theory the Commons would just be able to expel him it probably doesn't matter very much.)  Rees-Mogg was suggesting that Roberts should resign.

[CumbrianLefty]

Yeah its good to be wary of retrospective legislation in general. But there can be exceptions.

[Geoffrey Howe]

It is good to be wary of ex post facto legislation, though I hardly expect he had the details of the Recall of MPs Act 2015 in his mind when sending the text messages. Apparently the loophole exists in order to protect the confidentiality of the complainant during the recall process. (I don't know why this only applies to the IEP and not the Standards Committee.)

Btw, the prohibition on ex post facto laws in America only applies to criminal cases.

[YL]

Marina Hyde on the Johnson cult:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/28/cult-britain-boris-johnson-prime-minister

[GenerationTerrorist]

Matt Hancock committed a "minor" breach of Ministerial Code when the company his ing Sister run got awarded a £32m PPE Contract.

Minor 

[NewYorkExpress]

Congratulations go out to Boris Johnson for getting married earlier today.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has married his fiancee Carrie Symonds in a secret ceremony at Westminster Cathedral, it has been reported.

The wedding was held in front of close friends and family on Saturday, according to several newspapers.

[Geoffrey Howe]

Is he Catholic? I heard on the radio that he was married at Westminster Cathedral.

[NewYorkExpress]

Is he Catholic? I heard on the radio that he was married at Westminster Cathedral.

According to Wikipedia, Boris Johnson was baptized a Catholic, confirmed into the Church of England, and may have returned to being a Catholic as of 2020.

He's also said his faith "comes and goes" so take that as you will.

[Geoffrey Howe]

Is he Catholic? I heard on the radio that he was married at Westminster Cathedral.

According to Wikipedia, Boris Johnson was baptized a Catholic, confirmed into the Church of England, and may have returned to being a Catholic as of 2020.

He's also said his faith "comes and goes" so take that as you will.

Carrie Symonds is a practising Catholic, and apparently Wilf has been baptised as a Catholic.

[NewYorkExpress]

Is he Catholic? I heard on the radio that he was married at Westminster Cathedral.

According to Wikipedia, Boris Johnson was baptized a Catholic, confirmed into the Church of England, and may have returned to being a Catholic as of 2020.

He's also said his faith "comes and goes" so take that as you will.

Carrie Symonds is a practising Catholic, and apparently Wilf has been baptised as a Catholic.

According to Wikipedia, Carrie Symonds is indeed Catholic.

[CumbrianLefty]

Is he Catholic? I heard on the radio that he was married at Westminster Cathedral.

According to Wikipedia, Boris Johnson was baptized a Catholic, confirmed into the Church of England, and may have returned to being a Catholic as of 2020.

He's also said his faith "comes and goes" so take that as you will.

What I take from that, is that it is extremely Johnsonian.

[beesley]

I have no objection to Boris getting married and wish them well as a couple, for the sake of this child, but I fully sympathise with the Catholic priests who have felt left behind by the whole saga.

[The Dowager Mod]

Will there be a national lottery to find his new mistress?

[CumbrianLefty]

Marina Hyde on the Johnson cult:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/28/cult-britain-boris-johnson-prime-minister

Not everything she writes is good, but that penultimate paragraph ranks amongst the most cutting and coruscating that any member of the pundit class has dared to utter about (some of) their fellows.

[afleitch]

Boris is our Orban. It's going to be brutal.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

On the Martin Bashir/Diana thing, I do think that much of the coverage of it is slightly unfair (although entirely predictable from the Tory side). Yes, the BBC clearly failed here, but let’s not pretend that it is anywhere near this country’s biggest problem as far as dishonest journalism is concerned. It is quite possible that the Beeb will end up suffering greater consequences for this than the Murdoch press and tabloids ever did for phone-hacking.

It is partly about double standards regarding the BBC and the Murdoch press, but in this case the Diana Factor is pretty significant, too. Decades on, a pretty large chunk of the population and the press have a bizarre fixation on her.

[Cassius]

The shining prophet of moral clarity that is the Guardian’s ex-gossip columnist Marina Dudley-Williams.

In any case, Johnson is much too soft, lazy and incompetent to ever be ‘Britain’s Orban’ (quite apart from the obvious fact that Britain today is not the same as Hungary in 2010).

[Blair]

Marina Hyde on the Johnson cult:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/28/cult-britain-boris-johnson-prime-minister

Not everything she writes is good, but that penultimate paragraph ranks amongst the most cutting and coruscating that any member of the pundit class has dared to utter about (some of) their fellows.

Even more so considering we've had two elections in the last decade where polling arguably shaped the outcome of said election...

And the rather tongue in cheek line about the cult of Bojo is quite interesting; it really hasn't been spoken enough about in our politics. He is extremely polarising in a way that Cameron & May weren't- which lead people like me to become convinced he's hated by the whole country (he isn't)