Thank you for showing up - but... what took you so long to be angry?
One of the overarching questions I alluded briefly to in my previous article, was ‘wouldn’t it be a shame if this is what sank the previously unassailable Johnson in the end?’
This article is unoffically the sequel and falls within the same cinematic multiverse.
For 2 years, almost every day, I’ve covered Johnson’s premiership and - almost - every day, as expected, we have been met with something utterly scandalous.
Least of all, empathise and take a second to think of those hearts on the Covid Memorial Wall outside Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust.
Consider the juxtaposition then, of what people - now - are so angry about.
Wouldn’t it be so typical - so pathetically British - that we can't even get political scandals right - or react accordingly when real ones exist?
I mean, where to begin?
Take your pick:
Free school meals and the stand-off between the government and - of all people - Marcus Rashford.
The A-levels, BTEC and GCSE fiasco alluded to previously where Boris Johnson absconded to a remote Scottish field all the while the education system was brought to its knees.
The deduction of the Universal credit uplift.
Impending tax rises and numerous broken manifesto pledges.
Pointless and absurd culture wars against the BBC for their socially-distanced approach to ‘Rule Britannia’ at the Proms. [The BBC this very morning are once again serving as a target, as it happens]
Immigration and the ridiculous, ‘Nuke the Hurricanes!’ style stories about sending asylum seekers to Ascension Island. [Which they’re doing now with their nonsense dog-whistle story about resettling migrants in Rwanda]
On policy, the government is riding roughshod over our democracy with illiberal policies such as the PCSC Bill or the Nationality and Borders Bill, plans to change Judicial Review or commit to an overhaul of the Human Rights Act.
NATB Note: Readers feel free to contribute.
Or -
Maybe the outrage should begin [and end] with the government’s approach towards coronavirus.
Of course, we can trace it all back to February 2020.
Specifically, Johnson’s ‘Superman’ speech at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich where he said:
The sense, beyond everything, that the Conservative Party were preparing to put coronavirus behind them before it had even performed a mandible claw on the United Kingdom:
‘…go on the telly and tell people to treat it like a pox party.’
‘…put every healthy person in Kent and every vulnerable person in Scotland and let’s have a nice pandemic down there.’
‘…Draconian measures; take it on the chin - I have a book on Shakespeare to write to pay for my divorce bill; are you off to Cheltenham, Dido?’
‘…send more ventilators, Donald!”
Almost two years later, there have been 175,000 preventable deaths, untold suffering caused for thousands of families; millions affected by ‘Long Covid’ and school children among the many used as canaries in the coal-mine in a hyper-normal ‘herd immunity’ experiment.
The latter left most in society undaunted. The British public was not shocked by this.
Though it wasn’t until October 2021 that the public mood began to shift.
It began when the Conservatives sought to protect Owen Paterson over suspicious contracts that we knew about and queried… as early as March 2020.
But the judgment of Owen Paterson - by the Parliamentary Standards Commission - was the moment that we discovered that the Conservatives weren’t just corrupt.
Many discovered - for the first time - that they were actually rather fiendish and conniving. As many said they were. And had been saying for some time.
But within essentially the same late-autumn timeframe, Conservative voters then learned that Downing St. and No. 10 held parties throughout the pandemic while many of us followed the coronavirus restrictions.
Many discovered for the first time that the Conservative Party consisted of a very large number of hypocrites, too. Possibly even law breakers.
But the straw that broke the camel’s back was the story of Downing St. staffers - as part of a wider culture of rule-breaking - held a party on the eve of the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral.
Combining this with the Prime Minister’s repeated obfuscation of the facts - many discovered - for the first time - that Boris Johnson was pure evil in physical form.
The question then is, where were you, when many of us knew this already?
“Best Since Churchill”
Johnson's supporters have carried the torch for him for 2 years.
Every day supporters would opine on how great a job Boris Johnson was doing; "under the circumstances", "all things considered" and "no other Prime Minister would have done a better job."
Since October, some would query if they still venerating their Messiah in meritless superlatives as 'the best since Churchill'.
Indeed, treasury minister Simon Clarke MP subscribes to the ‘glass half full’ approach of reminding us about the apparently positive aspects of what Johnson has achieved.
But even when the Prime Minister apparently offered his apology, he was still looking around for people to blame.
According to the Sunday Times, Johnson told aides:
“How has all this been allowed to happen? How has it come to this? How haven’t you sorted this out?”
And quoted a senior government source that said:
“[Johnson] made it clear he thought they had let him down. Boris’s view is that he is not to blame. That everyone else is to blame.”
Revealing, as this page suggested, that the apology was merely lip-service to a general public calling for his head.
“Over 1,000 constituents” spoke to Andrew Bridgen. “80 per cent of which were demanding the prime minister quit.”
The Prime Minister apologised - albeit half-heartedly and insincere - but will we ever hear the apology, or the tales of buyer’s remorse from individuals like Question Time’s Eileen?
Do they feel a sense of shame - now, having flagrantly ignored every conceivable error - only to be outraged by seemingly the most absurd of political scandals?
Are they ashamed to have not discovered this mendacity sooner?
There are many questions then - for Boris Johnson’s former supporters to answer; chief among which, at this point is, ‘what took you so long to be so angry?’
Remarkably, there is a German word for it - if at all these people ‘feel’ a collective sense of shame. It’s ‘Kollektivschuld’.
It is attributed to Swiss psychologist Carl Jung in his essay, ‘After the Catastrophe’ where he describes the collective sense of shame felt by the German people for their role in the Nazi’s crimes during the Second World War.
Conscious of Godwin’s Law [which Godwin himself has since rescinded]
“Operation Red Meat”
The Times’ account of what Johnson hopes to achieve is revealing.
As noted before - if Johnson were to stay, as this page suggested he might, this is their plan to ‘ride it out.’
Tantamount to bribery, actually; a testament to just how stupid the Conservatives “probably feel” voters are.
At most, it is a pithy wish-list compounded by the initial proposal of a ‘workplace booze ban’ being implemented by a man who famously admired Churchill for his drinking habits and dilineated on being a functioning alcoholic to the Radio Times in an interview from 2014.
The avalanche doesn’t stop tumbling down the mountain of absurdity even when it’s being suggested that Gavin Williamson off of ‘failure-at-everything’ fame is to be given a knighthood.
The truly depressing thing about so-called ‘Operation Red Meat’ though, is that this is the best they can muster as a riposte.
This is how much they hold the British public in contempt - because they do not feel as though they have to offer anything else and “probably feel” that the British public is stupid enough to fall for it.
Sadly, the Conservatives may even be right.
For instance, all it took was a picture of Big Ben with some text written in Impact font, that looks as though it was designed by your dad on MS Paint, to help them go on to win an 80-seat majority.
And if they aren’t shocked that so many are now dead in the UK because of the Conservatives’ failures at government level, the British public will not be woken from their malaise and suddenly revolt if Michael Gove unveils a ‘levelling up’ white paper in February that turns out to be a treasure trove of melted permafrost mammoth-sized ivory bollocks - will they?
But evidently, if the white paper offends Her Majesty, only then will the British public be able to form a judgment, it seems. The British public’s anger is that mystifying. And the circumstances are that sad and tragic.
The End?
One of the most telling aspects of that Times piece, however, is a tiny point near the end - by extension to the broader point made in this article.
In one way, this is hilarious - and as clear a case of buyer's remorse as any.
In another way, it’s tragic.
What's remarkable though, is that Peter Hargreaves - despite having donated £1 million to the Conservatives - was presumably the last person in the country to know this about Boris Johnson and only recently found out.
So what about those who turned up to vote for Boris Johnson in 2019 and knew “Boris” about as much as Peter Hargreaves did - how do they feel now?
Well, let’s find out:
James Johnson is a pollster for the Conservatives, and arranges ‘focus groups’ to gauge public mood and opinion.
His collation of information from Conservative voters’ groups is telling [to say the least]. I would strongly encourage readers to explore his thread in full here courtesy of the Threadreader App.
But the consensus of opinion consists of disdain and a myriad of angry voices; and sadly for them, disappointment - often met with contradictory and binary views; many of them, misguided or of the impression that Boris Johnson was anything more than a “sideshow curiosity” - as noted previously.
None of them give the impression that they feel a sense of regret, however. At least not explicitly.
As noted by James Johnson:
Everyone had voted Tory in 2019. Asked if they would vote for Boris again now, not one person put their hand up.
Can we interpret that as ‘having learned one’s lesson’? Possibly.
The point made in the unoffical Part #1 the other day however, is that the Conservatives will probably not care too much; even if their voters do feel ashamed or regret voting for him - even now ‘the mask has slipped’.
Because ultimately, the Conservatives feel that the public mood is fleeting; they are complacent.
The Conservatives are also ignoring the words of Dominic Lawson writing elsewhere in The Sunday Times who wrote:
If true, would be the most egregious breach of the ministerial code to date and declared at a time, and on the record, when the Prime Minister was ‘supposed’ to be apologising to the nation.
But they can be complacent, in this instance, because it has happened so often before - and nobody really appeared to mind then.
Not only are they complacent and contemptuous but they have several years until the next election to be complacent and contemptuous, too.
They may even be right.
After all, when Boris Johnson said ‘let the bodies pile high in their thousands’ - and, as it turned out, they did pile high in their thousands and Johnson’s wish was granted - the public were mostly unconcerned.
And now they are concerned, they may regret not noticing sooner - but it’s entirely up to them to decide if they wish to stick around - or leave the party early having already turned up rather late.