Kakistocracy XVII:Nice'n'Sleazy.

"No more fucking lockdowns - let the bodies pile high in their thousands" - Boris Johnson

The quote above, believed to be said by Boris Johnson in the run up to Christmas last year when Covid infections and deaths were rising at a terrible rate, has, of course, been denied to those close to the Prime Minister. But, as everyone knows, including his colleagues, lovers, family, admirers, and voters, Boris Johnson lies. 

He lies, he lies, and he lies again. To the extent that it seems highly likely that he did indeed say these words. The fact that The Daily Mail, more or less a Johnson fanzine, plastered them over its front page last month suggests he did. But here's the rub. Despite the fact that everyone knows Boris Johnson is corrupt, that he's a liar, that he's a bully, and that he has no moral compass whatsoever - there are a sufficient amount, a GROWING amount, of people in the country who simply don't care and continue to vote for him.

Despite revelations about Johnson awarding his suspected lover, and guest on at least three trade mission trips, Jennifer Arcuri £25,000 of public money and despite the 127,629 Covid-19 deaths (still the highest death toll in Europe and the fifth highest in the world), the voters in last week's Hartlepool by-election gave over 51% of the vote to the Tory candidate, Jill Mortimer.

A 23% swing from Labour which made Mortimer (who is on public record as admitting she has spent more time in the tax haven of the Cayman Islands than in Hartlepool) the first Tory MP in the constituency ever. During the Napoleonic Wars, legend has it that the people of Hartlepool hanged a monkey believing it to be a French spy and historical fact has it that the Hartlepool United FC mascot H'Angus the Monkey became the first directly elected mayor of the town in 2002 - a position he held, under his real name Stuart Drummond, until the post was abolished in 2013.

Interestingly, H'Angus polled over three times as high as the Conservative candidate Stephen Close. Admittedly, the Hartlepool by-election was triggered by the Labour incumbent, Mike Hill, being forced to step down because of sexual harassment allegations. Which is not a good look. So you can understand why people wouldn't vote Labour in that constituency.

Not least because Labour, right now, doesn't seem to know what it stands for except not being the Tories. Which is enough for me (just) but it doesn't win over a lot of the general public. The Labour Party are caught in a seemingly endless game of blame where those on the left of the party attack those on the centre and vice versa. 

To the degree, you suspect there are few Labour supporters who actually want power. While Corbyn was leader the mantra of his supporters to those who doubted his leadership was to "respect the democratically elected leader of the Labour party". Strangely, now Keir Starmer is in charge, they're not saying that so much now.

It's true Starmer and the Labour representative Paul Williams fought a poor campaign in Hartlepool (as one local said, posing with fish'n'chips and pints of beer just looked patronising) but to think they couldn't beat the Conservatives, the Boris Johnson Conservatives, in Hartlepool is just tragic. Instead of fighting among themselves the Labour Party need a clear vision for the future for the country and to not let go of attacking these Tory crooks and liars or they will lose even more voters (potentially me) and members (potentially me).

It's not like there's a shortage of things to attack about Boris Johnson and his chums. This is the seventeenth blog I've written on the subject of the Johnson led Conservative Party's failings (and they're cutting through even less than Labour did in Hartlepool) and since I last wrote three weeks ago we've seen Johnson sending gunboats to Jersey (admittedly, the French threat to turn off their electricity was ridiculous but gunboat diplomacy? Is that how we roll post-Brexit), Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has had her time in an Iranian jail extended (she's there partially due to Johnson's negligence when Foreign Secretary), and Arlene Foster resign as First Minister of Northern Ireland (she was far from a great politician but what comes next may be a lot worse).

Foster's resignation was, it is widely conceived, due to the fact that she had believed Boris Johnson when he lied about not putting a border in the Irish Sea following Brexit. Johnson doesn't really have a head for details. At least not political ones. When it comes to home decoration he's not too fussed either but his fiancee Carrie Symonds is. Even if she's less concerned with who pays for them.

Something she does share with Johnson. In a Guardian piece, the ever brilliant Marina Hyde reminded us that when the former Labour MP Peter Mandelson took an undisclosed home loan and was sacked for it a Daily Telegraph journalist, a young homophobe by the name of Boris Johnson wrote "in the Ministry of Sound, the tank-topped bum boys blub into their Pils .... for Mandy is dead".

Suggesting Boris Johnson has never once set foot in a nightclub. Does he really imagine people go to The Ministry of Sound to discuss Peter Mandelson's political career? Sarah Vine (the Daily Mail journalist and wife of Michael Gove - truly a CV from hell) claimed that Johnson should not be expected to live in a skip.

To be fair, he should. A skip decorated by John Lewis. A company that most in Britain are either proud to be able to buy furniture from or aspire to do so. Not Johnson and Symons, who described their sofas and armchairs as a "nightmare". Even this can't put some people off the Tory party. Even Johnny Mercer, who was sacked by text after offering to resign as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence People and Veterans last month, and went on to describe Johnson's government, one in which he worked, as a "cesspit" and an awful, distrustful, environment in which "almost nobody" tells the truth, can't sway people away from falling from Johnson's lies.

It leaves me utterly despondent and searching in the dark for answers as to how this cruel and callous man can so divide a nation and not pay the price for it. How this cruel and callous man can enable liars like Nadine Dorries (who tweeted this week to claim Johnson has created 180,000 well paid jobs in Hartlepool (which she spelt wrong not once but twice - Harlepool and Hartleypool) despite the fact that Hartlepool's entire population is roughly half of that) to thrive. How this cruel and callous man can set about further dividing the nation with pointless culture wars about flags (judging by my walk in the Hampshire countryside at the weekend, there are many footsoldiers waiting to serve him) and bringing in voter ID cards as a fix to a virtually non-existent problem.

In 2019 there was ONE solitary case of voter fraud. Matt Hancock says that's one too many (which it is) but wasn't over 100,000 Covid deaths too many? Aren't 280,000 homeless people in the UK too many? The idea for ID cards will affect those less likely to vote Tory than it will those who vote Tory. It's obvious to everyone why it's being brought in (we saw Trump try similar tricks in the US election last year) but still Tory apologists can go on the news, lie, and only rarely be questioned (thankyou, Emily Maitlis) about their lying.

Recently, Rafael Behr wrote about Johnson's Britain. A place with courtiers in lieu of a cabinet, a place where government "swirls in an unstable vortex of advisers and officials vying for proximity to Boris Johnson's throne", a place where "compromise is weakness" and "victory is secure only when all the bridges are burnt", a place where the PM himself "approaches truth the way a toddler handles broccoli", and a place, ultimately, of selfishness and unreliability.

All presided over by a man who craves affection and demands loyalty but lacks the character to cultivate either. A man so incapable of faithfulness he assumes everyone else to be as weak as him and will betray him which, ultimately, provoked by his duplicity, they do. A man convinced "that rules are a trap to catch weaker men and honour is a plastic trophy that losers award themselves in consolation for unfulfilled ambition". A man who makes a nonsense of the unwritten protocols at the heart of our government and a man who will soon enough make it necessary for us to pass these protocols into law to prevent the rise of anyone so dangerous again.

It's a lonely time to be writing about the weaknesses, the moral failings, and the wanton criminality of our current Prime Minister. He's got a huge majority, he's riding high in the polls, and he's enjoying a vaccine bounce courtesy of the NHS that him and his party would, and will, get rid off if they can. But it is important for me to do it. To understand how we allowed the rise of this vile clown.

I got to thinking recently how Johnson the journalist and campaigner is a very different man to Johnson the politican and governor but it's the former, the one that offers hope and change, that people vote for. The booster who won't "do Britain down", not the gloomster of real life that we actually get. Johnson the journalist once wrote, of ID cards, that "if I am ever asked in the streets of London, or any other venue, to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am, when I have done nothing wrong and I am simply ambling along like any other freeborn Englishman, then I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded I produce it".

Johnson the PM is proposing the introduction of ID cards. Johnson the journalist said he'd lie down in front of the bulldozers at Heathrow, Johnson the politician waved the bulldozers through. Johnson the journalist told Arlene Foster and the people of Ireland there would never be a border down the Irish Sea, Johnson the politican had already signed if off. If you don't think he said "let the bodies pile high" you're living in cloud cuckoo land. Which may be a better place to be than a future one party state UK in which you can be arrested for not having a flag in your garden.

That's a joke, of course. But I see the UK moving in a very worrying direction and with no sensible opposition that becomes even more worrying. As ever, I take my mind off it with nice things. Friends, culture, and nature. I've walked in Brenchley Gardens and Peckham Rye (as ever) and went for a longer walk with Adam, Teresa, Ian, and sixteen month old Arlow from Waterloo to Peckham (stopping for drinks in The Tiger in Camberwell and The Rye in Peckham - where Kathy joined is).

Another longer, and equally enjoyable, walk took me from Basingstoke to Hook with Adam and Teresa (again) as well as Shep and Tina. We ended up in, well - outside of, the Hogget pub by the side of the A30 where I had a very tasty halloumi burger and fries. I've met Simon for beers in The Elephant & Castle pub (you can guess where that is) and The Duke of Sussex near Waterloo, and I've chatted to Michelle, Ben and my parents on the phone.  

I won, very luckily, Carole's film quiz and I hosted a quiz for Evie (which is getting more difficult as she's getting so clever now), I attended two online Skeptics talks (about police defunding and how to be an online agony aunt - both really interesting), and I've watched The Elephant Man (for the first time in about thirty years), Viewpoint (just as the revelations as Noel Clarke came out), and the first four series of Line of Duty (nearly finished the fifth).

I even got out to not one but three ACTUAL REAL art galleries. Luc Tuymans at David Zwirner, Ugo Rondinone at Sadie Coles HQ, and Rachel Whiteread at the Gagosian on Grosvenor Hill. None of them blew me away exactly but it was just good to visit them, even masked, and get into town. To walk about, breath the spring air, and see people again. In the short term, life in Britain is definitely improving. In the long term there is a looming dark shadow in the shape of Boris Johnson hanging over all our futures. Bring him to justice now before it's too late.