It's 'Dead Cat' week in Westminster - somebody inform the RSPCA!
Also "the Levelling up white paper is shit," according to... oh, Levelling Up secretary Michael Gove
The defamatory comments made by Boris Johnson towards Sir Keir Starmer - hidden behind the formalities of parliamentary privilege - are, obviously, reprehensible and the Prime Minister has debased himself in making them.
But.
Nobody should really be ‘that’ shocked that he would mention them when - after all - he took the opportunity in 2020 to respond to a legitimate question being asked at the behest of members of the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice Group [on why Johnson wouldn’t meet them] and felt it appropriate to make a joke about Calvin Klein underwear.
Naturally, what he said [about Starmer’s record in the CPS] was untrue. The ‘Full Facts’ on the matter are here and here.
Why not write about it again?
Because it’s nonsense - so why bother? And why not simply dismiss the allegations as such rather than spending an inordinate amount of time proving otherwise?
The allegation naturally back-fired, with many Conservatives visibly uncomfortable when the comment was made in the Chamber.
Indeed, former chief whip Julian Smith was one of the ‘brave’ [a relative term] Conservative MPs to speak out against it.
As did Sir Bob Neill [...“Keith”]
Some - like Dominic Raab, Nadine Dorries and later Michael Gove and others like Jake Berry and Simon Clarke - pandered to it; albeit short of repeating the comments outside of the Chamber where they may have actually been subject to defamation laws.
Speaker of the House Lindsay Hoyle publicly rebuked the Prime Minister’s comments, too - though showed a fundamental weakness in his [mostly] powerless role to compel the Prime Minister to return to the house and withdraw and/or apologise for the comments.
Other MPs, meanwhile - such as Tobias Ellwood, Peter Aldous, Gary Streeter, and Anthony Mangnall - have each publicly withdrawn their support for the Prime Minister; they have no confidence in him.
So why do it?
Those most offended by the comments were of course victims of Jimmy Savile who accused the Prime Minister of “weaponising their suffering” - but like members of the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group, who were also shocked by Johnson’s language, they will not receive an apology.
So why do it in the first place?
Obviously, to distract - in spite of its insensitivity.
Bearing in mind the historicity of the allegations, it was also used as a chance to galvanise support from within the more marginalised community of extreme far-right Boris Johnson supporters - as Donald Trump did during his presidency.
More revelations regarding the Downing St. parties are leaking through into the press - including two such parties first spoken about here on this page relating to ‘leaving do’s’ for secretaries that was later picked up by both The Guardian and The Telegraph.
The outcry over the release of the heavily redacted Sue Gray report, too, left Johnson with no other option than to press the nuclear option.
In the Prime Minister’s own words, from a 2013 article in the Telegraph:
Let us suppose you are losing an argument. The facts are overwhelmingly against you, and the more people focus on the reality the worse it is for you and your case. Your best bet in these circumstances is to perform a manoeuvre that a great campaigner describes as “throwing a dead cat on the table, mate”.
That is because there is one thing that is absolutely certain about throwing a dead cat on the dining room table – and I don’t mean that people will be outraged, alarmed, disgusted. That is true, but irrelevant. The key point, says my Australian friend, is that everyone will shout “Jeez, mate, there’s a dead cat on the table!”; in other words they will be talking about the dead cat, the thing you want them to talk about, and they will not be talking about the issue that has been causing you so much grief.
Dead Cats
The ‘Australian friend’ in question is Lynton Crosby, PR guru that has advised the Conservatives on strategy on many occasions.
Actually, it was revealed recently that in his meeting with members of the Conservatives following the debate in the Commons on Monday that Boris Johnson was apparently bringing Lynton Crosby in to deal with the fallout over ‘Partygate’.
The Financial Times were also told this.
According to Conservative writer Peter Oborne however, this turned out to be a complete lie - and at the very least it was not made clear exactly what his role might be.
However.
If the ‘dead cat’ strategy was implemented, it worked.
Because Twitter was outraged - with many sharing previous comments made by the Prime Minister on how the Prime Minister said that spending on child sex abuse was “spaffing money up the wall”.
LBC did an entire broadcast deconstructing the Savile allegations.
Others noted that it was Margaret Thatcher who attempted to put Jimmy Savile's name down for a knighthood against aides' wishes four times.
And that was the point.
That was Tuesday - with some already overwhelmed assessing the so-called ‘Benefits of Brexit’ document that was timed to coincide with the Sue Gray report the previous day.
Meanwhile.
Boris Johnson went on a pointless trip to Ukraine and Michael Gove went on the television and spoke at length about a so-called ‘Levelling up’ paper [that you can read here if you wish], which the Financial Times and Institute for Government have ripped to shreds; that Gove himself has already previously described as, “shit.”
And the ‘Levelling up’ White Paper was “shit” - I agree with Michael Gove.
One very minor [yet strange and frankly mystifying] example is why an official government paper is putting stock images of women in the white paper - that they’ve just casually lifted from a press release courtesy of Alcohol Change UK to celebrate ‘Dry January.’
And that was just Wednesday.
Today, it’ll be something else - maybe a weird Kurt Scwhitters inspired amalgamation of Junk that combines elements of all the stories.
And Friday, something else - and it’ll be an onslaught of nonsense to meet the immediate rancour we communicate to our Conservative MPs over the story that ‘cuts through’ the most.
In another ‘local-to-me’ coincidence it was the Wellingborough Conservatives that laid it out perfectly when activists were instructed to ‘weaponise fake news’.
Everything the Conservatives say right now - especially Johnson’s supporters - is nonsense, and they know it’s nonsense.
But the media will, of course, spend an inordinate amount of time ‘deconstructing’ what is being purported by the government, and dismissing it, because the government knows that it will, and the longer Johnson spends doubling down on certain stories [as he did during PMQs], the greater chance it has of deflecting away from the Prime Minister.
Even if it drags Parliament further down the proverbial gutter.
From one day to the next, X story will dominate the headlines because so long as it does, the story that cuts the most will not.
At the very least, it will be a flesh wound somewhere in the background.
But when you look at the background…
The Sue Gray report, and the continued drip-feed of allegations and fresh reports of other parties, not to mention Dominic Cummings’ occasional grenades, the outstanding police investigation combined with numerous MPs publicly calling for a vote of no confidence in Boris Johnson - each story is obviously damaging.
BUT -
Although nonsense, stories relating to Savile, the ‘Levelling up’ agenda or the 'Benefits of Brexit' are designed to ‘outrage’ .
They compell those who already know they’re nonsense into describing [in 700 words or less, and usually on the front-page of the newspapers and mainstream media] why they are nonsense, to an audience of people that either - a) already know, or b) don't know and don't particularly care until they're prompted by the sight of Allegra Stratton laughing.
And they often do not care because - however important it may actually be - engaging with the substance of words or explanation, in describing policy, is often not in the public’s vested interest.
This is the nature of our high arousal emotion click-bait algorithmic society.
On ‘Levelling up’ - as an example - compare and contrast the pledges made by Michael Gove [on expenditure; note his figures] and then compare them with the figures from the Institute for Public Policy Research found here:
Gove knows this. Yet he parrots on regardless.
Gove also knows the public will not be suitably outraged either - at least, no more or less from when they could have been back in November when it was first announced as part of the Spending Review.
Because it's not simple, even if Gove himself described the plan, simply, as "shit."
A video of Allegra Stratton, on the other hand, is simple. A picture of her smiling said a thousand words.
I mean, if you think about it, it would only take a picture or video of Boris Johnson eating birthday cake and drinking prosecco while the country was in lockdown to condemn him into “losing the argument.”
By all accounts, he already has.
Hence, dead cat - the sheer number of which, at this point, makes me feel I need to inform the RSPCA rather than the Metropolitan Police.