Yes Boris is dreadful, but…
By Pete North - December 12, 2021
There’s no need to rehearse my opinion of Boris Johnson here, nor is it necessary to recite his growing list of failures. It is worth stating, however, that much of it stems from the fact that the man simply isn’t up to the job because he isn’t interested in it. One gets a sense that every major problem we encounter is just boring hassle for the man, and is content to let his underlings manage it all for him. There’s no drive or vision to the man, and each strand of policy is being managed by others on behalf of the power brokers who put him where he is. Brexit especially.
This dynamic sort of worked back when Cummings was running the show, because for all that you can say about the man, he still had a personal mission that gave the government at least some direction, even if it was rooted in a personal vendetta against the civil service. Since his departure, with Carrie calling the shots in terms of vision and direction, and the management of Covid delegated to an expendable fall guy, there’s not a lot going for this government and certainly nothing that qualifies it as a coherent conservative government.
The problem with all this about Johnson, I fear, is that though his unfitness for office and lack of personal integrity is not in doubt, I’m occasionally reminded why he’s popular – and it’s as much about who he isn’t as who he is. The same people talking about restoring the dignity of parliament are among the worst debasers of it. Particularly those who did everything possible not only to sabotage Brexit, but also wrecked any chance of a viable compromise.
And though the consequences of Johnson’s overall incompetence have been horrifying, the blundering indifference is, by a country mile, preferable to the ruthless zeal of the professional and scientific elites who’d have turned Britain into a prison camp by now. Say what you like about Johnson, but the alternative is pure evil.
When it comes to to it, Johnson’s most ardent foes are some of the scummiest people in politics who’ve made no attempt to conceal their contempt for democracy, freedom of speech and freedom of choice. That there are people like Maugham, Adonis, Grayling and Simor waiting in the wings behind Labour is chilling. Restoring the dignity of parliament is a euphemist for restoring the power of technocratic and legal elites and their capacity to overturn the democratic will.
In that regard, Johnson shares a commonality with Trump, in that he’s only a temporary blocker and once he’s gone we’re on a countdown – not only to the previous order, but one also bent on revenge, who will never let something like Brexit happen again. That then means a raft of social media censorship, turbocharged wokery and the feeding of puberty blockers to children if they so much as pick up a pink or blue Lego brick that doesn’t conform to their gender stereotype, rapists in women’s prisons, drag queen story hour, and the effective abolition of borders. Oh yes, and the full onslaught of climate cultism that will leave all but the wealthiest living a colder, darker and poorer existence, as we re-take our place in our glorious progressive EU.
That, though, is not an argument for backing Boris, if one takes the view that the weakness and cowardice of this government makes the long term victory of the establishment a foregone conclusion. After all, much of this is already happening on Johnson’s watch with nothing but token opposition, leaving the core battles to be fought through the courts by those with sufficient social credit and the money to do it. We already have an informal social credit system that determine who can speak in the public domain, and we’re not very far from that being formalised, and eventually they’ll get round to domain level censorship and search engine censorship so that no dissenting voice is ever heard.
Our participation in politics, you see, is not welcome. The enemy believes in rule by the few for the few, and the masses are there to be corralled into supporting their agendas in the name of the climate gods and the lore of globalist “human rights”. If they’re in danger of voting the wrong way, it will be dealt with. They have a whole raft of hate speech laws to ensure there are personal and professional consequences for disagreeing with the narrative, and there are plenty of narrative enforcement trolls patrolling the internet to ensure the proper authorities are informed of any dissent.
Ultimately, if we didn’t want this to happen then there should have been a coherent plan for Brexit and demands for serious constitutional reform, and we shouldn’t have picked an oaf like Johnson to deliver it. But we are where we are, and the Tory party is an empty husk with waning authority, so we may as well abandon a lost cause and start building an alternative movement for the next big fight.
Though I’m not wholly in agreement with the core of Covid sceptics who’ve had it from the start that Covid is just the sniffles, I have admired their willingness to take to the streets and make a nuisance of themselves, and to show up in large numbers. We’re going to need that down the line because there won’t be any referendums or electoral reforms that would challenge the incumbency of the establishment. If we’re going to take back our country then we’re going to have to fight for it. And we’re going to have to fight as dirty as the enemy does.