Papering Over The Cracks? The Beginning of the End for Boris Johnson

Britain. A nation that shrugs it shoulders towards the heartbreaking sight of mass unavoidable deaths but utterly loses it shit over a few rolls of wallpaper. 

Here’s the thing. The local elections on Thursday could end up being both Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer’s last electoral test. Of course, it will also be Starmer’s first electoral test, some thirteen months after taking over from Jeremy Corbyn. 

If you was to take the last year into account, and all of the tragedy and heartbreak, and then add it to the fact we have lived under more than a decade of Tory-rule, and finally throw in a bit of mid-term dissatisfaction with the government for good measure, you would expect Keir Starmer to have a barnstormer of a night, picking up huge gains from local authorities across England, and comfortably holding on to Hartlepool, where the only realistic option for left-leaning voters is Thelma Walker, the independent socialist candidate that is supported by the Northern Independence Party (NIP). 

A couple of recent polls with fairly low sample sizes has seem a small boost for the Labour Party, nationally, but another poll carried out in the constituency of Hartlepool has given the Tories a staggering seventeen point lead over Saudi Paul and the Labour Party. 

Starmer cannot afford to lose Hartlepool, in the same way Jeremy Corbyn couldn’t afford to lose his first big electoral test in the constituency of Oldham. Corbyn didn’t lose, of course, and went on to do considerably better than most of the political commentators suggested was possible. 

He had a habit of doing that. 

I think I’ve already dedicated plenty of blog space to Keir Starmer over these last few months. My feelings towards him, and his diabolical attempt at leadership are well known. In April alone, more than 100,000 people were kind enough to read my jumbled up rantings, and I take pride in asking the questions that Starmer’s sycophantic media chums wouldn’t even dream of asking. 

It’s lovely not being owned by other people. I enjoy being able to express my own opinions without some suit telling me what principles I can and can’t have. Eat your heart out, British press journalists. 

So, what could it take to get rid of two of establishments' torchbearers in one foul swoop? How can it be possible to ‘kill’ two polished turds with one stone? And what creatures from the bowel of Satan might replace them? 

Despite leading in all of the polls, and being comfortably ahead of Keir Starmer’s own dire personal approval ratings, Johnson finds himself in the deepest of shits. 

This is wonderful news, of course. The lying racist breadbin was only ever elected to ‘Get Brexit done’ anyway. Nobody in 2019 elected Boris Johnson because of his radical agenda for a better, fairer, cleaner, greener Britain, did they? 

But the thing that’s made be feel somewhat horrified is the fact the British people have happily supported Johnson, despite the astronomical £37 billion handed over to private firms like Serco an Deloitte for a test and trace system that was so fucking inadequate you would’ve seen better results with a set of Tandy walkie talkies with the batteries not included. 

And what about the abject failure to supply PPE to frontline healthcare workers? Why didn’t that boil the collective piss of a nation that calls its National Health Service “our national treasure”? Nurses sent to fight a war against an invisible enemy, dressed up in Poundshop bin liners and disposable face masks purchased from eBay. 

Not all wars involve bullets and bombs as it goes.

More than 1,000 healthcare professionals have died fighting the invisible enemy. If they were soldiers their coffins would be draped in a flag and solemnly driven through Royal Wootton Bassett, live on BBC and Sky News, for a nation to pay their respects. I have stood on the streets of ‘Bassett’ and lowered my head before. It’s less than ten minutes from me. 

You know my feelings about war and conflict. But this was someone’s child being returned home in a coffin.

And what about the most blatant government corruption we’ve witnessed on these shores for as long as I can remember? Why didn’t this disgust and anger the British people? We are talking about billions and billions of Pounds being handed over to companies with no staff, registered in tax havens, companies owned by Conservative Party donors, companies that boast Tory MPs on their list of directors, companies owned by the Health Secretary’s neighbours cleaners sisters first pet rat, or just companies the Health Secretary financially benefits from personally. 

While hundreds of thousands of people were losing their jobs and coming to grips with the pitiful reality of Universal Credit, or ESA, anyone ‘lucky’ enough to know a high-ranking Tory had their own public purse cash point card. They were refusing to feed hungry school children while emptying your wallets and purses for every single penny that they could extort. 

Why, for the love of god, didn’t this infuriate every single right-minded person to the point of where nothing less than a colonoscopy - performed with an old Sony Camcorder attached to the end of a hose, firmly shoved up Johnson’s rear end, without an anaesthetic - was deemed a suitable punishment? Live stream it on GB News for all I care. 

And of course, we have tragically lost more than 150,000 mums and dads, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, grans and granddad, our friends, our colleagues. 

ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND.

Why hasn’t this infuriated the British people? I cannot say that all of these deaths were avoidable, because that would simply be untrue, but I can say that tens of thousands of these deaths could’ve been avoided had the British government acted sooner, and with a higher degree of competence. But they didn’t. You saw it unfold, you watched the death toll go through the roof, you grieved and cried, maybe not for yourselves, but for others, because you are human driven by compassion and decency. 

There are no words that a tinpot-tweeter like me can write that will ever do justice to the unrivalled and unprecedented awfulness of this rotten government and the shitshow they unleashed upon an unsuspecting island.

Throughout everything I have mentioned above the government has had astonishingly high polling ratings, as well as the unequivocal support of the lickspittle Red Tories. 

Death, corruption and unimaginable carnage? Not a problem. 

If only we knew back in 2019 that all we needed to do was roll a few rolls of extortionately-priced gold wallpaper at the electorate and Johnson would begin to crumble, because it seems to be the wallpaper that his triggered the sheeple, or about 4% of them anyway. 

Who are you people? Why have you got so angry about a few rolls of wallpaper, but just sat back while the government allowed your friends and family to perish? While they’ve tried to smash through your rights with a sledgehammer? Why wallpaper?

I get angry at your lack of anger. Your apathy. Your refusal to demand a better future for everyone’s children, not just your children. I get angry at the lack of accountability, the non-existent opposition. I get angry at the inequality and injustices, because if you refuse to get angry about the state of the state, you become part of the problem, and the fact it’s the wallpaper that’s triggered you, and not the performance of the worst government in living memory during the last 12 months. 

So Johnson is in trouble, and Gove is waiting in the wings, and Keith is in trouble, with some Blairite relics poised to jump in and drag the Labour Party even further to the right. 

Johnson looks and sounds beaten, Starmer looks and sounds insincere, wooden, slow on his feet, and I generally cringe when I hear or see him speak. 

These election results are critical to both Johnson and Starmer. 

Both of them have their expectations and both of them will have their excuses in place, but over on the left we get to watch a centrist Labour Party and a hard-right Conservative government attempt to out-Tory each other, so we can call out all of them for what they are. 

Grotesquely over-promoted establishment millionaires pretending to be ‘of the people’, shamelessly wandering around with a pint of beer in their hand - because that’s what us commoners do - and pretending to be ‘for the people’, but this is a fallacy, they are for themselves and their class exclusively, and let’s not pretend otherwise. 

Just out of curiosity, how many people named “Keir” or “Boris” did you go to school with? 

I’ll be voting for a socialist on Thursday, but their rosette will be neither red or blue. 

Thanks for reading as always. 

Rachael x

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