SO Boris Johnson is a “dead man walking”. This is to attribute far too much dignity to a man facing the political gallows. He more resembles a drunk on a Saturday night out, intoxicated on self-delusion and arrogance, staggering under the Tory party bus.
But surely this can’t be a surprise? Johnson’s failings as a human being and unsuitability for high office have been in plain sight for years. Love him or hate him, he’s political Marmite. The conjurer, the Etonian everyman who can pull a rabbit out the hat and deliver a whopping election victory in Red Wall seats.
However, the Tories’ fatal addiction to “winner” Bojo is now their undoing. As Neil Young once sang: “The same thing that makes you live can kill you in the end.”
Opportunism and self-interest are hot-wired into Johnson’s DNA, while “pragmatism over principle” runs through the Tories like a stick of rock. What was the antidote has become the poison.
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Johnson’s not blameless, but in a way he’s only being true to his ignoble nature. It would be naive to think otherwise. You can’t throw a fox into a chicken coop and expect it to wear feathers and start eating seeds – it’s still a fox.
But the problem runs far deeper than one flawed “personality”. The only answer lies in completely overhauling the political system, to save us from future Borises. A rotten system produces rotten politicians. For the leadership of the UK to be backed by only 211 Tory MPs is a democratic outrage.
Such a flagrant shift toward authoritarianism (ie proroguing parliament, Covid rule-breaking and rewriting ministerial codes) can only be countered by creating constitutional checks and balances strong enough to withstand the onslaught of a demagogue hell-bent on power.
For Scottish Nationalists it’s simple. Just lance the malignant Westminster boil. Independence wipes the slate clean in one fell swoop. For Unionists, it’s time to acknowledge the problem head on. “Let’s fix Westminster” would be a more meaningful slogan than the vacuous “better together”.
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The adversarial system, by way of the first-past-the-post, should be replaced with a more proportionate and hence co-operative alternative. Wafer-thin conventions need shored up by a written constitution.
For too long Westminster has been entrenched in a winner-takes-all mindset, based on the false assumption it creates “strong” government. It doesn’t – government has now become even more reactionary and direction-less, led by a lame duck PM.
Besides, you wouldn’t run a company with two sets of rivals shouting and booing at one another across the boardroom table. Yet we run UK plc like that.
No democracy is perfect, and, yes, politics is a blood sport. But if anything positive is to come out of the latest Johnson fiasco, it is to highlight Westminster’s frailties.
The days of gentlemen (or women) politicians dutifully falling on their sword and doing the honourable thing are over. Johnson’s shameless actions have exposed that. Democracy, that is the people, needs protection.
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