Boris Johnson’s Position Is Untenable. Where Is The Accountability?

Boris Johnson’s position as Prime Minister is untenable. It has been for a long time now, but the media are still trying their utmost to wrap up their golden boy in the softest cotton wool that money can buy. 

Where do you even begin to start with Boris Johnson? The man that spent five long decades preparing for the top job, only to get the job and not have a bloody clue what to do with it. 

I ask you, in what other profession could you perform *this* badly, without losing your job? 

I understand that holding the highest office in the land isn’t a normal job. It’s not a 9-5, 6-2, 2-10 kind of job. There is no rota. And let me be clear, the arrival of Covid-19 cannot be blamed on Johnson and his government - it’s the handling of it that matters, or should I say, mattered. 

The British government underestimated the impact of Coronavirus reaching these shores. We weren’t prepared, we didn’t have a plan, despite Hancock boasting that we did. The liar. 

The evidence is there for all to see. Little Britain has the highest 7-day rolling average death rate in the world. This has not happened by accident.

This has happened because of a lack of clarity from the very top, and that’s down to Johnson and his Cabinet of inadequate horrors. 

This has happened because of a complete abandonment of leadership. Take a look at the countries with strong leaders, New Zealand being the most obvious example. They put their people first. 

While Arden told the world.. 

"There were some countries who initially talked about herd immunity as strategy. In New Zealand we never ever considered that as a possibility, ever.

"Herd immunity would've meant tens of thousands of New Zealanders dying and I simply would not tolerate that and I don't think any New Zealander would.

"I do think the world will face a situation where we will have to collectively manage a new normal until we have vaccinations available because ultimately the borders present a risk for the whole world." 

Boris Johnson said.. 

“Perhaps you could take it on the chin; take it all in one go and allow the disease as it were to move through the population.”

“I must level with you, level with the British public. Many families, many more families, are going to lose loved ones before their time.” 

You do not need to be a member of SAGE, or even a rocket scientist to realise the clear difference between the two strategies. 

Why was Johnson even thinking like this when he knew full well that we didn’t have the capability to even supply our NHS staff with adequate PPE? Seriously, you had nurses wearing fucking bin liners as aprons and buying their own face masks off eBay. 

They’ll be wanting hospital staff to pay over £1,000 a year to park at work at this rate… 

At the early stages of pandemic, the ideology was clear to most of us. It was the do-nothing spirit behind Boris Johnson’s take it on the chin approach. The decision to allow events such as the Cheltenham Festival and at Liverpool FC to go ahead, and ludicrously holding a fucking competition to see who can come up with the most suitable ventilatory technology - *this* is what dumped us head-first into this catastrophe, and that should haunt any politician with just an ounce of integrity. 

But Johnson and integrity aren’t words commonly associated with one another. 

We are on the threshold of the biggest depression for three hundred years because of the flawed decisions of the British government. More than 100,000 of our loved ones have lost their lives to this dreadful disease. 

We are at a time when we need a universal welfare state, providing everything from health and social care to food and housing, but the government are working out the best way to cut £20 a week from the pittance that is Universal Credit and keeping you entertained with stories of happy haddock and chirpy cod. 

And all of the time this is happening, we are close to registering 2,000 deaths a day. 

When did we get to the point of where we allowed a tragedy of this magnitude to become normalised? Was it around the same time that we decided that Foodbanks were a solution, rather than the problem itself? 

The lack of accountability is staggering. And it isn’t just do-nothing Johnson. 

You’ve had 400,000 police records magically disappear. Why is Priti Patel still in a job? 

What about the shambolic attempts to get children back to schools? Or the GCSE and A-level exams debacle? Why is Gavin Williamson still the Secretary of State for Education? 

How is Baroness Dido Harding doing? £12 billion for a test and trace system that could’ve been put together by my boys Year 10 Business Studies class for a tiny fraction of the cost. It wasn’t long ago they were telling people to do a 500 mile round trip to get a Covid test, remember? Why is Dido Harding still on the public payroll? 

Have we ever been through a time when such abject failure is rewarded so handsomely by those in power? No.

Patel, Williamson and Harding are just a few examples of the mediocrity. I didn’t even mention Cummings, or the Minister for Dodgy Housing, Robert Jenrick, or eat-out-to-spread-death Sunak, or the guy that freely dishes out multi-million Pound supply contracts to his friends, donors, and neighbours, Matt Hancock. 

Just take a look at the shambles for yourself. You can get away with murder if you work for Boris Johnson, providing you don’t mind turning a blind eye to his racism, philandering, and ongoing battle with the contents of his nearest Bargain Booze. 

All of these public office fuck-up’s report to Johnson. The buck stops with him. 

But when you have a subservient media, and an opposition party that looks weaker than an inebriated slug carrying an ex-Israeli spy on its back - an opposition more determined to purge left-leaning Labour Party members, than purging Boris Johnson from Number 10 - you’ve got a free pass. 

Starmer’s attempt at playing responsible opposition has been utterly lamentable. His leadership is mired in racism, more so than anything that was ever falsely attached to Jeremy Corbyn, but you wouldn’t ever know that if you only watch the BBC, or if you’re still keeping the wretched Guardian in business. 

What a time to live, hopefully. 

Despite Johnson’s position being utterly untenable, Starmer is still a mile behind Johnson’s own personal approval ratings, and I think I’ve seen Labour lead just one poll in the last six. 

If Starmer cannot get past the racist pile of mince now, given the disastrous mess we find ourselves in, when exactly will he be twenty points clear, like we were assured by his faithful band of centrist cling-ons? (Spoiler: He won’t.) 

So where do we go from here? 

We must keep calling for the removal of Boris Johnson. We have a public duty to do so if we want to find ourselves on the right side of history. I totally understand the argument about his replacement being equally unpalatable. To be honest, I’m not sure that is entirely possible. Johnson is a one-off. 

But even so, should we stop demanding accountability from the government, because the alternatives are about as desirable as the deadly virus itself? Of course not. 

The loss of one life is a tragedy, be in no doubt. But can you find the words for the loss of more than 100,000 lives? I can, but they’re not very ladylike I’m afraid. 

Do you remember when they told us the devastating loss of 20,000 lives would be a “good result”? Multiply that by five, because that’s where we are right now. We lost more than 1,800 lives just yesterday. 

My prediction? Johnson will go, and his replacement will benefit from a mostly vaccinated population, a taste of the new normal, and a recovering economy, leading to Starmer losing the next General Election, whenever that may be. 

With a radical proposition for change, this defeat is avoidable, but that’s not going to happen under a leader guided by private donors and focus groups, obviously. 

The left must organise, perhaps under the progressive umbrella of the Peace and Justice Project, and keep pushing our agenda, because we can be so much better than this, we can offer the answers to some incredibly complex questions and we can only achieve this by working together. 

Take care folks, we’ll talk very soon. 

Rachael x

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