Kangaroo Courts and Coup d'états: Boris Johnson and the Power of Nightmares
Aside from the fact that Dominic Raab is an intellectual pygmy he’s also doing himself no favours in his continued support for the Prime Minister when Esher and Walton - Raab’s constituency - is one of those on the long list of Conservative seats likely to turn a different shade of Blue at any future election.
By ‘different shade of Blue’, I mean Yellow.
Do not let Raab’s stupidity fool you, however; nor the fact that he's an inveterate prick.
It wasn’t his inadequacies that set him apart from what was a disastrous and sneering performance at Prime Minister’s Questions while Boris Johnson was jimbo-jet-setting his way across the globe to boost his international credentials while his reputation back at home went to the pits.
It was the revelation [once again] of Angela Rayner who - quite frankly - wiped the floor with the unofficial Deputy Prime Minister.
Just last year readers will remember that Raab was demoted for his failure to tackle the humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan.
This demotion subsequently led to Raab “throwing his toys out of his pram” - but not until after having a hissy fit with Elizabeth Truss over who had the right to live in the grace and favour residence of Chevening House and insisting that he be called Deputy Prime Minister in all official correspondence.
This is the calibre of politicians we have in ministerial positions right now.
Raab stood in for the Prime Minister at the despatch box and naturally made several patented blunders - chief among those, according to Dominic Raab, is that working class women [like Angela Rayner] can’t go to the opera as if Glyndebourne Music Festival [and opera] should only be the preserve of a privileged class.
He did so after providing Rayner with a wink that left fellow MP Toby Perkins, “soiled.”
It’s fair to say that if this were an audition for the role of Prime Minister, Raab did not perform particularly well and perhaps needs to work on his lines.
It also serves - perhaps above all else - as a reminder to those within the Conservatives casting their lines into the political equivalent of Tartarus hoping to catch ‘a new leader’ from the Conservative pool of despair of one of the possible [and likely] contenders that’d seek to fill the boots of the beleaguered and equally inveterate Boris Johnson if he were to be deposed.
In the case of Raab, focussing on substance, there is a serious risk of ‘Deputy PM, Sir, Esquire, Lord of the Manor, Sir’ looking like a hypocrite when it’s reported that he spent £1 million on private jets in just 9 months and spent an undisclosed sum schmoozing wealthy donors at a lavish party at Chevening House in 2021.
Nobody really appears to know what the date is for the Prime Minister’s departure - although you’d think that it was imminent based on what I’m sure Dominic Raab believes was an absolutely convincing rehearsal.
Note to readers: it wasn’t.
Kangaroo Courts and Coup d'états!
One such event that could hasten his departure is the outcome of the Privileges Committee investigation into whether he knowingly misled Parliament on the matter of ‘Partygate’ which, for the last few weeks, Johnson has been attempting to draw a line under.
The Telegraph - despondent in recent weeks - has gone with the angle that it will serve as a ‘kangaroo court’; a ‘kangaroo court’ presided over by a majority of Conservative MPs, oh Telegraph overlords.
[NB: This page has, for the last few weeks since it was first announced, been more interested in the outcome of this than the findings of the Sue Gray report, incidentally]
As we saw with the recent by-election results in Wakefield and Tiverton & Honiton, clearly, ‘drawing a line under’ the matter of ‘Partygate’ has been met with mixed success that might be destined to repeat itself in:
Somerton and Frome [David Warburton’s constituency where Liberal Democrats are already making advances]
Bridgend [Jamie Wallis’ constituency, where Labour gained at the local elections]
The constituency of the ‘unnamed’ Conservative MP released on bail pending allegations of sexual assault.
Recently, too, in Tamworth, after Deputy Chief Whip Chris ‘Pinchy’ Pincher MP resigned in disgrace following allegations of having “drunkenly” groped two men.
It was a catastrophe in no uncertain terms, as this page noted previously.
We can speculate wildly on the exact date of Johnson’s departure but Autumn seems like as good a timeframe to be looking at as any.
By October, the public will be reminded of the Owen Paterson scandal ‘one year on’ that saw the beginning of the Prime Minister's slide into public disrepute that led to the Conservatives losing the previously safe North Shropshire constituency.
Since then, the party’s reputation has yet to recover. It most likely will not, either.
To be given more time by the Conservatives to ‘relaunch’ his brand - when every attempt up to now has failed - would be seen rightly by the voting public as spinelessness; the white elephant in the room.
As noted in my previous article, a successful relaunch is not likely to happen anyway.
Indeed, reflecting on my previous article, I direct readers towards a quote from Conservative MP Pauline Latham who echoes a point this page made before on the matter of ‘complex and emotional questions’ worth asking when relationships break down.
At what point do the benefits of loyalty to Johnson outweigh the disadvantages of enduring anger and disappointment from not-so-supportive colleagues who can see the electoral iceberg ebbing closer?
That Conservatives are asking these sorts of questions might indicate that the time has been expended for any attempt at ‘yet another bloody relaunch’ - Oliver Dowden’s resignation should have been the biggest clue yet for idiots like Raab.
This page suspects the new relaunch strategy will involve another cabinet reshuffle in the short-term, though how it materialises elsewhere remains to be seen.
Where it has been attempted before via so-called 'Operation Red Meat' - a flurry of policy announcements [ongoing since January 2022, by the way, for those old enough to remember] and culture war-focused wedge issues that have, as noted previously, 'died a death' - it still will not matter.
There is one fundamental problem that Conservatives must address - it’s Boris Johnson.
As far as the public is concerned the matter was resolved as early as December 2021 as to what the outcome should be for the Prime Minister - the Conservatives have seen no remarkable recovery in the polls since.