Boris Johnson: the greatest wastrel of all time
By Pete North - May 26, 2022
Writing in The Telegraph, Allister Heath predicts extinction for the Tories at the next general election.
Wake up, Tory loyalists, for time has almost run out to save the Conservative Party from its drift into incompetent, unprincipled oblivion, and prevent the nightmare of a hard-left Government. If a general election were held tomorrow, Boris Johnson’s Tories would be toast, the thrashing more severe even than that meted out to their Australian counterparts last weekend.
In candid, private moments, Conservative MPs, in northern as well as southern seats, will admit to being shaken at the scale of their constituents’ fury, even before the cost of living crisis runs its course. By 2024, in the absence of a seismic change to the Government’s performance and style, impoverished swing voters will surely find a “time for change after 14 years in office” message all too irresistible.
Partygate and sleaze are more a symptom than a cause of the implosion: Johnson’s 2019 voters would find the gross violations of the lockdown rules detailed in Sue Gray’s report easier to forgive if this Government were doing what it was elected to do in the manner it pledged to do it. It is because they are so bitterly disappointed with Johnson’s overall performance that his popularity has plummeted.
Gray’s report describes a delusional, arrogant elite who thought the stringent rules they had imposed on the public didn’t apply to them, a politically toxic state of affairs in the middle of a cost of living crisis. Johnson’s Conservatives were meant to be different, humble servants of the public, implementers of the general will; instead, they have turned out to be just as bad as other ruling castes, breaking manifesto promises with as much abandon as they ignored the Covid rules, convinced that they could get away with everything. It is the gulf between what was promised and what has actually happened – in terms of substance as well as of style – that has hurt Johnson (or “our Boris”, as voters once saw him) so much.
My question is is why did Heath, or anyone else, expect any different? When you put that man in charge, what else could have happened? And if you didn’t see that coming, having recommended the man on the pages of your Tory vessel, are you not complicit, Mr Heath?
Nothing is more emblematic of this government’s philosophical, moral and intellectual collapse than the announcement today that all households will receive a £400 handout to help take the sting out of rising energy bills. The latest spending spree will cost £15 billion, taking the total value of Government cost of living support to £37 billion. Mr Sunak announced a windfall tax will be imposed on oil and gas giants to help fund the moves.
This is exactly the robbing Peter to pay Paul we might expect from a Corbyn government, blaming the energy companies for structural policy failings from the last two decades. It could abandon its absurd Net Zero agenda, it could scrap VAT on home energy and the myriad of green taxes. But then a remotely intelligent government would never have embarked on such a anti-democratic, quasi socialist agenda like Net Zero in the first place. Nor would it be doing everything possible to prolong an expensive and disruptive proxy war on Russia.
This government lacks a principled conservative agenda because its leader is similarly lacking in principle and intelligence. Tax and spend is the only tool in their box, attempting to rebalance the economy with ever more elaborate subsidies. Johnson is sealing his legacy as “Fat Blair”.
By every measure, this government has failed and has failed to deliver on everything it was elected to do. Brexit was supposed to be transformative but our energy policies remain in lockstep with the EU climate agenda, and Britain is to follow the the EU in implementing a carbon border tax that will only make it more expensive to to rebuild our creaking energy grid. So much for “free trade”. Meanwhile, Britain is still a borderless country, while this government negotiates more visas for Indians. Long-term visas for foreign nationals are up 40pc since Brexit.
By the time this government leaves office, the economy will be a smouldering wreck, our energy and food costs through the roof, our cities completely lawless and migration completely out of control, and the keys to Number Ten will be gift-wrapped for Labour who would now struggle to make things worse. But will try all the same.
Boris Johnson has wasted every single day of his term, broken every promise and all but abandoned Brexit. This government was gifted a once in a lifetime opportunity to change the way we are governed for the better, but Johnson pissed it away, squandered our money and spat in the face of those who voted for him. His administration limps form one farce to the next. He’s going to lose – and he deserves to lose. Too bad he’s going to take us all down with him.