Electionwatch: Borismandias - a warning from poetry

I’ve always like Shelley’s famous poem, Ozymandias –

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias

The huge ancient statue of the ‘king of kings’ who had thought such a lot of himself but who no one now remembers – reduced to a few bits of rubble on the desert ground.

Boris Johnson is such a persistent liar that it is hard to be sure of anything about him, but, of one thing we can be certain. The man whose ambition as a child was to be ‘world king’, will one day be gone. And then the Conservatives will have to share the fate of Ozymandias or start the painful project of rebuilding themselves as a decent political party.

Just as he did with the 2016 Brexit referendum, Johnson has built the Tories’ 2019 General Election campaign around a cynical, amoral lie: ‘get Brexit done.’ (See my blog of 20 November.)

The Tories’ tragedy is that they have allowed Johnson’s poison to infect the whole party. Every single parliamentary candidate is signed up to his lie. Any with any real loyalty to their party would be defying Johnson and telling the truth: yes, you can have Brexit if you really want it, but it will make you poorer, it will destroy jobs, businesses, savings, opportunities and rights, and severely damage the NHS and other public services, while possibly destroying the UK.

That is the choice. So will Tory candidates find the courage to explain it, or will they consign a once-great political party to the fate of Ozymandias?

‘Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.’

Electionwatch: pity Conservatives - they have no one to vote for

Conservatism, according to the Oxford English Dictionary means ‘commitment to traditional values and ideas.’ So neither Boris Johnson nor any of the maniacally nodding acolytes lining up as Tory candidates are Conservatives.

Johnson is not a detail man and has only a very tenuous grasp of facts, as numerous interviews have shown, which means he needs people to work out policies for him. So the person running 10 Downing Street’s policy unit is very important. And who is she? Step forward Munira Mirza, a ‘former’ member of the Trotskyite Revolutionary Communist Party, who has been helping to write the Tory manifesto.

Perhaps that explains its attacks on democracy on the now-notorious page 48, with its threats to undermine the independence of parliament and the judiciary and to elevate the prime minister above the law.

Even more important than Mirza is ‘Johnson’s brain’, Dominic Cummings, who has never denied that he is not a Conservative. Indeed, Cummings seems to be consumed with contempt for anyone who is not Dominic Cummings.

He was formally ruled to be in contempt of parliament because he refused to be questioned by a committee investigating fake news. Cummings has a particular disdain for our politically independent civil service and wants to abolish it. Civil servants have an infuriating habit of telling the truth.

And then there were those three mysterious years in Russia. Of course, the degree to which Boris Johnson and his party are under Putin’s thumb remains shrouded in mystery because Johnson is suppressing the official report that might shed some light on it. But what was Cummings doing while he was there? What links did he form with politicians and the security and intelligence services?

The modern Conservative Party is decidedly not conservative. A better label would be 'anarchist' or 'nihilist'. More than anyone they remind me of the 19^th century left-wing Russian extremist, Mikhail Bakunin, who said he would be happy only ‘when the whole world is engulfed in fire.’ He advocated smashing everything up in the hope that something better would arise to replace it.

Just so for today’s Tories: smash up the UK, the NHS, our links with the EU, Parliament, the judiciary, the civil service, your jobs, rights, opportunities, etc. And maybe a phoenix will rise from the ashes: perhaps a hyper-Thatcherite capitalist paradise, red in tooth and claw, with no nonsense about a welfare state or workers’ rights or the rich paying tax?

If you really have nothing to lose, you might consider voting Conservative. If you have ANYTHING to lose, think very, very carefully before you put the nihilists into power.

Brexitwatch: working together to beat Brexit - a disappointing response from the Greens

Last week I wrote to the three main pro-Remain parties in England: the LibDems, Greens and Independent Group to ask how they would be co-operating in the local and European elections (see my post of April 12).

The only response I've had so far has been from the Greens. It was disappointing (and suggested a lack of understanding of how the voting system works): 

Hi John, 

Thank you for getting in touch. 

We released this statement on the matter yesterday: 

"The Green Party has no plans to field joint ‘remain’ lists in the upcoming European Elections. The Green Party has a long and proud history within the European Parliament - from being a strong and unwavering voice for Remain, to fighting climate change and standing up for workers’ rights. 

"The European Parliament election is conducted by proportional representation, which means every vote counts and every vote can make a difference. In the last European Elections the Green Party came ahead of the Liberal Democrats, with three MEPs elected. We would also resist any calls for us to stand alongside parties with whom we have fundamental ideological differences on austerity, economic policy and beyond." 

Kind regards, 
Culann 
Membership Team 
Green Party of England and Wales 

I have replied to the Green MP Caroline Lucas  caroline.lucas.mp@parliament.uk and to the party's leadership - leader@greenparty.org.uk

Dear Caroline Lucas & Green Party,

I am bitterly disappointed by the reply I have received to my question about how pro-Remain parties are going to co-operate in the local and European elections. 

You do not even mention the local elections, and your reply on the European elections reflects a tribalism that would fit perfectly in the Tory and Labour parties. It also suggests an ignorance of how the electoral system in the Euro elections works. Except in N Ireland, it is not a properly proportional system. A threshold has to be passed before a party can get any MEPs. The more pro-Remain parties fight each other, the fewer pro-Remain MEPs there will be.

If the election is handed to Nigel Farage or the Tory party, it will be a terrible blow for the Remain cause, and anyone in the pro-Remain parties who helps facilitate it will not be forgiven.

Please thing again.

Yours sincerely,

John Withington

Typhoon Haiyan: How (not) to commemorate a disaster

How do you commemorate a disaster that killed thousands, and raise some money for survivors? Not with a dance party, seems to be the answer ringing out from the Philippines.

A year ago, Typhoon Haiyan (known as Yolanda locally) left about 7,000 dead or missing, and millions homeless. A survivor organised a ‘dance party’ to be held tomorrow in Tacloban, the worst hit area, with the slogan: ‘Party like it never happened, remember because it did.’ The proceeds were meant to help set up educational scholarships.

But the announcement of the event brought protests that it was insensitive, to which the organisers bowed, cancelling it, and apologising to those who had ‘misinterpreted’ the reasons for holding it. They said it was meant to be a celebration of survival, and that they would go on selling a tee shirt reading: ‘not even the strongest typhoon could bend the strongest people.’

With gusts hitting nearly 200 miles an hour, some consider Haiyan the strongest storm ever to make landfall. President Aquino declared it a ‘national calamity’.