Thursday 2 December 2021

Boris Johnson's Xmas Party Hangover

Who doesn't like to party? Unfortunately, like a great many, yours truly hasn't "partied" for going on two years thanks to the Covid situation. More importantly, the introduction of tier four restrictions just shy of a year ago was a sensible, if belated precaution to stymie the spread of the British-made Kent Variant before the vaccine programme properly ramped up. But it didn't come without cost. Millions of people were stuck on their own. Others missed out on that rare chance to down tools and spend quality time with loved ones. A lot had a miserable time, and for hundreds of thousands of people they missed seeing relatives for the last time before they contracted and succumbed to Covid.

I can well imagine the churning vulcanism out there since it turned out Boris Johnson's hand wringing last Christmas was entirely that and knees ups were a regular occurrence at Number 10. At Wednesday's Prime Minister's Questions, Keir Starmer kept worrying away at it and despite his bombast best, Johnson couldn't help but look shady, evasive, and downright untruthful. Likewise, Johnson's spox had a hard time of it in front of the lobby hacks. When Tory leaders behave like this, you know they've been got bang to rights.

But does it matter? Since his election on a blasted December evening in 2019, Johnson has persistently and repeatedly goaded his new supporters. He concocted and signed up a Brexit deal hailed at the time as the best thing since sliced bread, but now it's treated like an old loaf mouldering on the lawn. We're meant to believe the test and trace debacle and PPE procurement was entirely above board. He has consistently promoted and defended the worst people on the Tory benches, promised and then dramatically scaled back his half-arsed Tory modernisation of the country outside of London and the South East. There was nothing to see here with the ill-fated effort at derailing present and future allegations of corruption against MPs, and now we have this. If you carry on baiting the public the public will be baited. Latest YouGov polling finds 74% of respondents thought 'it mattered' (61% overall say "a lot"), with over half of Tory voters agreeing too. Ouch.

It might turn out that Johnson's shindigs were within the rules. But so was the corruption of the disgraced Owen Paterson and the expenses troughing of the new shadow home secretary, but it's the politics that matter. And in this case, Johnson has affected a very bad look indeed. The idea of sacrificing something while others are laughing at you behind your back has deep resonances in British culture, and one the Tories have mobilised effectively plenty of times. On this occasion the shoe is on the other foot and it's reasonable to assume this will prove even more damaging, coming hot on the heels of the corruption allegations.

But there is something curious about the whole affair. Why has it taken almost a year to come out? True, the Tory press have only turned on Johnson relatively recently, but the media's blue wall that has sheltered him so effectively is not a seamless edifice. There are leaks and gaps between the brickwork. Given how incestuous the relationship is between top politicians and top journalists, it's unclear why we've been waiting so long for the detail to emerge. Basic class solidarity? Respecting state authority for the duration of a national emergency? Take your pick, but the clues Johnson had disregarded the rules have been in the public domain for a couple of months. It emerged Nimco Ali, one of Carrie Johnson's chums, spent last Christmas with her, Wilfred, and the other baby. Again, entirely in contravention of the rules. One rule for them, to coin a phrase.

Johnson has played fast and loose with people's patience these last two years, and repeated disasters have pricked the Prime Minister's balloon. But is this the moment his fortunes head south? For once, I don't fancy his chances.

Image Credit

5 comments:

Graham said...

I doubt it will make any long term difference to the Tory's prospects.
What matters is the outcome of their Omicron gamble.
If we get through winter without a significant upsurge in hospital admissions and deaths, Johnson will declare victory on the second anniversary of the first lockdown and the pandemic will become yesterday's news.

Blissex said...

«and repeated disasters have pricked the Prime Minister's balloon. But is this the moment his fortunes head south? For once, I don't fancy his chances.»

Maybe, but there is a big difference between his chances and those of the Conservatives; the political careers of losers like Cameron and May ended, and the Conservatives continued to win, also thanks to the help from the Militant Mandelsoncy.

«What matters is the outcome of their Omicron gamble.»

But do many people vote on public health rather than on property or "nationalism"?
So far it does not look like many do, and regardless "public health" has not been made an issue by the "opposition", only "competence" in doing it (and secondarily "sleaze").
Also, while many voters take 10-15 years to forget that a governing party caused a property price crash, they may be far readier to forget a small epidemic by 2024.

«Johnson will declare victory»

Johnson (and Starmer has seconded him) has already declared Big Pharma's victory in the vaccination campaign, which unlike the abandoned test-trace-isolate project was done at high speed and massively.

«on the second anniversary of the first lockdown»

He will do that regardless: what is at stake is the worldwide marketing campaign for "our saviour" Big Pharma, so the message will be, by necessity, that Pfizer/Moderna/... vaccinations defeated the epidemic unless the bodies literally pile high in the streets. As to the worldwide marketing campaign, two of the great symptoms of our age are:

* the synchronized adoption of "half-baked lockdowns" strategy by most "Washington/Pfizer Consensus" governments;
* while some media have reported in a subdued way the enormous difference in results of the "test-trace-isolate" strategy, this has not become a prominent issue for the oh-so-loyal oppositions or most of the "speak power's truth" media.

As to the latter I think I have detected that for example "The Guardian" has been giving repeatedly prominence to reports of small difficulties in "test-trace-isolate" countries because of the Delta variant, as if the total outcomes were not still 10-100 times better. Note: "The Guardian" has also published articles reporting the enormous difference, but somewhat indifferently, as if "for the record". Better than nothing.

Blissex said...

«True, the Tory press have only turned on Johnson relatively recently, but the media's blue wall that has sheltered him so effectively is not a seamless edifice. There are leaks and gaps»

That seems to me a bit of a simplistic view implying that there is a single monolithic “Tory press” that has mere “leaks and gaps”: the Conservative party is a coalition of incumbency interests, and there are adversarial factions fighting often brutally, both on personal level and because they represent conflicting interests.

Quite clearly not only Johnson has destroyed the political careers of Cameron, Osborne, May, Heseltine, Clarke, etc., and major has not forgotten the "bastards", his property and investment finance faction has rather divergent interests from those of the business and commercial finance faction (things are more complicated than that). It is pretty obvious that the enemies, both personal and political, of Johnson are working hard to undermine him and take back control of the Conservatives; and through the "deep state" they are also clearly supporting Starmer as to that purpose.

«Latest YouGov polling finds 74% of respondents thought 'it mattered' (61% overall say "a lot"), with over half of Tory voters agreeing too. Ouch.»

My usual quote from Grover Norquist as to how and when polls matter:

«Pat Buchanan came into this coalition and said, “You know what? I have polled everybody in the room and 70 percent think there are too many immigrants; 70 percent are skeptics on free trade with China. I will run for President as a Republican; I will get 70 percent of the vote.”
He didn't ask the second question … do you vote on that subject?
»

BCFG said...

“and for hundreds of thousands of people they missed seeing relatives for the last time before they contracted and succumbed to Covid.”

I remember a time when seeing relatives was one of the downsides of Christmas!

If you ask people in a poll, are you a nice person, they will likely respond Yes. That doesn’t mean we should conclude that polls show 100% of people are nice! Loaded poll questions should simply be ignored, for example, does corruption in government bother you. Well, who isn’t going to say yes to that! Well I guess those who say, I would be surprised if there wasn’t corruption going on! Which frankly seems like the intelligent response to me!

If Boris has been holding shindigs while telling us not to, then this must mean he cares more about us than he does those close to him! But Johnson isn’t the only one to break and flout covid rules, in fact breaking covid rules is a pandemic in itself on plague island (Britain).

I have lost count of the number of shops and ‘salt of the earth’ fuckwits who are not following the mask rule in shops. You can say something improper on the internet and your life, liberty and job security are threatened, you can ignore important public health advice to stop the spread of a dangerous virus and there are literally no consequences. This is where woke hysteria has brought us.

Boris, the 1% et al are the least of our problems. People like you and Graham are!

Blissex said...

From the recently updated Wikipedia page, the actual vote counts from the recent by-election:



1992: 40,520/49,449: 24,450 Con., 8,751 Lab., 6,438 LD
1997: 42,133/67,841: 21,608 Con., 18,039 NLab., 8,284 LD, UKIP 489
2001: 44,572/68,226: 19,130 Con., 15,785 NLab., 5,792 LD, UKIP 1,426
2010: 45,492/65,699: 24,625 Con., 8,768 NLab., 6,996 LD, UKIP 1,532
2015: 46,748/66,035: 24,682 Con., 8,879 NLab., 1,644 LD, UKIP 8,528
2017: 48,042/66,005: 29,545 Con., 14,074 Lab., 1,572 LD, UKIP 1,619
2019: 46,145/66,104: 29,786 Con., 10,384 Lab., 3,822 LD
2021: 21,733/64,831: 11,189 Con., 6,711 NLab., 647 LD, ReUK 1,432

Not so good news for Johnson, but really bad for Starmer, and catastrophic for Davey. who somehow managed to achieved a collapse in New Labour and LibDem voters with respect to 2017 and 2019...

Blair (Nov. 2017): «'Labour should be 20 points ahead in polls'»

Hattersley (Dec. 2017): «Fears about victory for the far-left helps to hold down Labour’s opinion poll lead to 4-5% at a time when the government’s incompetence should put him 20 points ahead.»