The adults are back in charge: the final phase of Tory self-immolation
Although the suggestion would appal the mop-headed nihilist, the present political crisis is about a lot more than Boris Johnson. If Johnson had never entered politics, the implosion of the Conservative Party would still have taken place, though perhaps less imminently. The crisis is not about Boris Johnson – he is merely the catalyst – it is about the inevitable demise of the faux-Toryism that has inhabited the Conservative integument for several decades and the wider failure of parliamentary democracy.
“The adults are back in charge.” That is the telltale mantra of establishment entitlement that infallibly signals when the parliamentary managers of decline, their collaborators in the civil service Blob, the mainstream media and the financial institutions have suppressed an insurrection by the mug punters against the globalist elites. Brexit was a severe shock to the establishment and provoked serious alarm among the oligarchs and a resolve not only that it must be reversed, but that no such outbreak of self-determination by the Proles must ever again be permitted.
In the current confrontation, the ostensible issue is the conduct of Boris Johnson, the central fetish a slice of cake that he apparently did not eat during lockdown in 10 Downing Street. Having been ejected from the premiership, supposedly because an MP indecently assaulted a man in a club from which Boris was totally absent, the follow-up sanction aspired to expel him from Parliament for an alleged offence that could only be judged by looking inside his head.
The imperfections of Boris Johnson would take longer to recite than a public reading of “War and Peace”. The most frequent characterisation of him is “liar” and those making that accusation are not short of supportive evidence. But that broad issue is not what the investigation by the Parliamentary Privileges Committee is about. Its narrow remit was to determine whether Johnson knowingly misled Parliament on the “Partygate” (why must that tiresome suffix still be fatuously appended to the subject of any scandal, half a century after Watergate?) episode.
That question, by its nature, is unanswerable. The facts are controverted and unclear, no matter how the committee’s report may strive to prove otherwise. This question resembles the Catholic theological “full knowledge and full consent” definition of mortal sin and is necessarily subjective, within the interior disposition of the individual concerned. It is a profitless investigation to pursue and it is obvious the motive for doing so is to hound Johnson out of politics altogether.
The committee, lately, has been on its high horse, stung by critics of its “kangaroo court” composition. Now it is threatening a further report and sanctions to be directed against those MPs who have criticised its obvious flaws, claiming that such criticism amounts to “contempt of Parliament”. Do those pompous buffoons not realise that contempt for Parliament is the universal default position of the British public?
Would the committee’s partisan composition be tolerated in a British court of law? Sir Chris Bryant, who formerly chaired the Privileges Committee, recused himself from participating because of the condemnation of Boris Johnson he had already voiced. Instead, it was chaired by Harriet Harman, one of Johnson’s most bitter enemies, who had already condemned him. Beyond that, she had allegedly also had discussions with Sue Gray, the former civil servant whose report, hostile to Johnson, was pivotal to the committee’s deliberations, regardless of the fact that Gray has shown her political colours by accepting appointment as chief of staff to Keir Starmer.
Would such compromised personnel and evidence be acceptable in the context of any other tribunal? Ah, claim the committee’s defenders, but it has a Tory majority. In the current internecine blue-on-blue strife sundering the Conservative Party, that was hardly calculated to reassure Boris Johnson. The anti-Boris crusade is a carbon copy of the anti-Trump witch hunt in America. The viciousness of leftist – in Britain Remainer – politics is rebarbative; the relentless pursuit of Johnson and the anarchic disorder within the Conservative Party is reminiscent of William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies”.
Johnson has been put to the Ban of the Empire by the establishment, for the unforgivable offence of having “got Brexit done”. In fact, as with so many other Johnson initiatives, he did no such thing: he flinched from the reality that the only sure way to secure British sovereignty was to implement a no-deal Brexit, ride out the punches from Brussels and then use untrammelled nationhood to plot a new course for Britain. Instead, he surrendered Northern Ireland to Brussels and Dublin, creating a dangerous fault line through the United Kingdom.
It was the one occasion when many people hoped Boris was cynically lying and would scrap the Northern Ireland Protocol after a decent interval. Instead, Rishi Sunak set Brussels rule in stone with the infamous “Windsor Framework”, a shameful sell-out of British sovereignty that proclaimed the globalist clique was back in control of the Tory Party.
It was also a nail in the coffin of Conservative electoral hopes in Red Wall constituencies. But it must be asked: does the Sunak clique really care about that? An election defeat would leave Sunak free to go to California, which he calls “home”, having prepared the ground for a Starmer administration to return Britain to the Single Market, as a prelude to associate EU membership and eventual reintegration into that shambolic empire. “I’m a conservative, a Brexiteer and a Unionist,” Sunak has claimed; and they say Boris Johnson is economical with the truth.
Expect, any day now, to hear from the Tory parliamentary ranks the cry: “We need a period in opposition.” It became a mantra in 1997 and Tony Blair obliged, awarding the Tories 13 years to spend more time with their non-executive directorships.
For a glimpse into the workings of the contemporary Conservative Party, consider the embittered claims of Nadine Dorries about how she was deprived of the peerage Boris awarded her, voiced both in her Talk TV interview with Piers Morgan and in an article in the Daily Mail. To anyone who has had any dealings with the Tory Party it rings authentically true. The reassurances from people who have themselves been misled; the unanswered telephone calls; and the failure by a middleman to inform honours recipients of a statement they must make to the House of Lords Appointment Commission (Holac) to keep their honours viable.
Such carefully crafted failures of communication are designed to allow the main man to avow, hand on heart, that he did not “block” peerage appointments. Rishi Sunak’s sanctimonious claim that “Boris Johnson asked me to do something that I wasn’t prepared to do” was calculated to provoke a stampede for sick-bags; it made Boris’s cheerful, in-your-face mendacity seem refreshing by contrast.
Nadine Dorries has had her share of controversies, nor was she the greatest secretary of state of recent times; but, by any normal conventions and in comparison with other beneficiaries of the ermine, there was no reason to deny her a peerage, other than the desire to avoid a by-election. If that was the case, as she has said, why did the party leadership not talk to her and arrange a compromise solution?
In further evidence of how poor a politician Sunak is, he is now facing a by-election in any case, plus reputational loss over his treatment of Dorries. She is openly using reproachful class terminology, believing she was deprived of a peerage by two “posh boys”, meaning the two Wykehamists, Sunak and his political secretary James Forsyth. But while Tory MPs are sneering down her complaints, do they realise how damaging this narrative is?
Nadine Dorries keeps harping on her deprived origins in Liverpool and how her elevation to the House of Lords would have sent an aspirational message to potential working-class Tories. Instead, the message is that the upper house is not for the likes of her. If there was a ghost of a remaining chance for the Tories in Red Wall seats, this perception has scuppered it.
The Sunak government is the antithesis of Toryism: mechanistic, technocratic, driven by Treasury “orthodoxy” and globalist prescriptions; anti-Brexit, high-tax and woke. After 13 years of Conservative government, why is it that a schoolteacher is barred from his profession for calling a girl a girl? Why is Stonewall dictating the legislative agenda? Why are schools marginalising parents, sexualising children and sowing an epidemic of gender confusion?
Johnson was no better on such issues. He increased the immigration he had pledged to reduce and Sunak is expanding on that betrayal. Even in his latest attack on Sunak, Johnson was burbling on about animals, indicating that his wife is still driving the agenda. Johnson’s commitment to net zero disqualified him for the premiership more than any porkies or surreptitious cake consumption.
But this is politics and it seems things may be about to become entertaining for everyone who wants to see the forsworn, globalist, Rejoiner Tory Party spectacularly blown up. Boris is free to indulge his anarchic instincts. How will he set about it? Not by joining Reform, though it would not be astonishing if Nadine Dorries and other victims of Tory vendettapolitik did so.
There is no room for both Nigel Farage and Boris in one party; but an informal alliance might be a different thing. The prospect of Farage, Boris, Dorries et al. leading an anti-Sunak crusade in the Red Wall constituencies is CCHQ’s worst nightmare. There is a growing feeling that the major reset that British politics needs, including a voting system based on proportional representation and radical reform of the House of Commons – beyond all recognition – could best be achieved not by a political party, but by a broader movement.
Rishi and the boys have had their cheap laugh; from now on the joke may be on them. Then there is Liz Truss and another camp of malcontents. When people are deprived of their careers and aspirations, they become emancipated from previous restraints. There may be a very bad time coming for the Sunak clique.
Meantime, in the Palace of Varieties, there is no end to the La La Land delusions. A glance at the headlines confirms how extravagantly the Tory Party and media have lost touch with reality: “Here’s how the Tories can win the next election”… “Rishi Sunak could pull off a John Major-style comeback”… “Gillian Keegan to present herself as heir to Thatcher”…
There has not been a conservative party in Britain, apart from UKIP and the Brexit Party, during the 21st century. Rishi Sunak was once regarded as a Brexiteer, but the Windsor Framework revealed his true globalist allegiance. If people are so naive as to wonder why, after the electorate mandated Boris and the Tory Party membership subsequently elected Liz Truss, the incumbent is Rishi Sunak, the answer is evident: by voting for Brexit the electorate forfeited the confidence of the establishment, which therefore had to step in and appoint its own man. The adults are back in charge.
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