Kakistocracy XXIV:Thick As A Brick.

"To use Article 16 to suspend parts of the protocol would be absurd. This protocol is being denounced week after week by Lord Frost and the Prime Minister. Who negotiated the wretched protocol? Lord Frost and the Prime Minister, they negotiated it, they signed it, they now wish to break it. At the moment we are negotiating over the protocol with all the subtlety of a brick" Sir John Major, former Conservative Party lead and former Prime Minister

For a former Conservative Prime Minister to call the current Conservative Prime Minister and his cabinet, or at least their actions, "colossally stupid" would, in normal times, be quite a thing but these are anything but normal times. The United Kingdom is an abused spouse making constant excuses for its leaders and hoping that, one day, the good times will return.

They used to bring us flowers, or at least promises of sunlit uplands, £350,000,000 a week to the NHS, and world beating track and trace systems. Some wish they would again. Even if that money never made it to the NHS, the world beating track and trace system was an international laughing stock, and the flowers? They were replaced by ginormous flags fluttering in the background during interviews with mediocrities like George Eustice as he willingly lies to the camera to protect himself and his boss Boris Johnson.

Make no mistake. Britain is facing the greatest threat against its democracy in modern times. Sure, Adolf Hitler was more evil than Boris Johnson but the vast majority of Brits were very much against Adolf Hitler. There is a significant minority (enough to provide him with a large majority) who are still very much for Boris Johnson even as he tries to destroy the democracy they have enjoyed all their lives.

The list of transgressions against democracy is endless but, these last couple of weeks, there has been one painfully typical episode that, we can only hope, may have begun to resonate with Tory voters. Tory papers like the Daily Mail and the Daily Express certainly seem to have picked up on the story of Owen Paterson - and it's been quite a story.

Full of twists and turns as Johnson and his cronies perform like contortionists trying to break the law in what they like to call a 'specific and limited way'. Or what the rest of us simply call breaking the law. Let's have a brief recap.

Owen Paterson has been the Conservative member for North Shropshire in 1997. He is sixty-five years old and he lost his wife to suicide last year which is, of course, a tragedy for which he deserves to be the recipient of our sympathy. But other aspects of Paterson's life, and career, are not so easy for us to just brush under the carpet as he no doubt wished.

Martin Kettle, writing in The Guardian, alerted me to the fact that on top of his wages as an MP, Paterson was receiving £100,000 each year (for just sixteen hours 'work', an impressive £6,250 per hour wage) from the healthcare firm Randox where he holds a second job as a consultant. His third job earns him a marginally less impressive £3,000 per hour (£12,000 per annum for just four hours 'work'). That's another consultancy role. This time for Lynn's Country Foods.

You'd think that MPs would be busy enough dealing with parliamentary and constituency issues and not be able, or allowed, to take these 'side hustles' but many do. Very many. Especially within the Conservative Party. Paterson was seen to be lobbying for the companies he worked for and that, as surely anyone can understand, goes against democracy.

Under normal circumstances, he would lose his job and there would be a by-election in North Shropshire. But these are not normal circumstances and we are not governed by people with any interest in fair and decent democracy. We are governed by a vain and cruel kakistocracy whose only interest is in consolidating and extending their power base and enriching themselves and their friends.

Boris Johnson himself, and his government, are so used to breaking the rules that they just can't stop themselves now. So, in the case of Paterson (and with Johnson no doubt concerned about just how many investigations into his own behaviour are piling up), they simply did it again. Johnson even sent the whips out to make sure Tories voted for a change in the rules which would let Paterson off the hook.

Carrying a threat to Tory MPs that if they don't vote in line with Johnson and his government that funding would be cut to their constituencies. That's not democracy. That's an extortion racket.  

The vote was won 250-232 with some Tories abstaining and a few more honourable ones voting against it. Then later the same day, Paterson resigned as an MP claiming he was leaving the "cruel world of politics". As if it's somehow our fault he's corrupt.

The reason the world of politics is curel, or at least one of them, is down to people like Paterson corrupting and the indulgences he has been shown by Johnson. The whole sorry episode has left everyone, even Tory voters and Tory MPs, alienated and disgusted by Britain's sorry state. Even the Tory MPs who voted against the government, despite possibly feeling vindicated in doing so, now know just how far Boris Johnson will go to undermine democracy and that even if you back him there is no certainty whatsoever he will back you in return.

If the extortion racket idea wasn't extreme enough for Johnson what's next? Poisoned umbrellas? Horses heads in people's beds? Elevation of his least competent, and nastiest, MPs like Priti Patel and Jacob Rees-Mogg to high ranking cabinet positions?

Err! Of course, while Johnson has been busy trying to undermine democracy to such a degree that the UK becomes an international pariah state and laughing stock, the real business of governing is left undone. Covid cases (and deaths) per day, and it's got worse since this graph was made a month ago, are towering above those of other nations. Not least those pesky EU ones that Johnson is always so keen to deride.

Our infection rates are currently four times higher than those of Germany, nine times higher than in France, and twenty-five times as high as in Spain. Looking at the House of Commons, until very recently, it was quite easy to tell which side of the house was which. The opposition, for the most part, were masked up, and the government, the Tories, were not.

On this subject, step forward no less an authority than Rees-Mogg who said the "convivial, fraternal spirit" within the Tory party (yes, really) and the fact that they knew each other meant they didn't need to wear masks. Which would certainly be news to any epidemiologist out there. Why did the government keep Chris Whitty on board when Rees-Mogg is so well informed on the transmission of viruses?

All of this has been keeping the COP26 climate crisis conference in Glasgow off the front page and, to be fair, despite climate crisis being by far the most pressing issue the entire planet is facing that is just about fair enough. Climate crisis is a story worth telling and telling again until people are sick enough to do something about it. But COP26, so far, has produced little but hot air and that's one thing the world is, resolutely, not short of.

People were rightly angered by Joe Biden flying a huge motorcade in for the conference as much as they were at him falling asleep during it. But Johnson, also, had a little nap - and a much uglier one too. Imagine waking up next to that? Right next to David Attenborough. Johnson is maskless. I guess he's got away with nearly killing the Queen, perhaps he thought he'd give an even better loved national treasure a go next.

Right after COP26, a conference in which a way of growing concrete was not found despite Talkradio's resident gammon Mike Graham claiming it is possible to do so, Johnson boarded a private jet from Glasgow to London where he had dinner with former Daily Telegraph editor and climate change denier Charles Moore, a man Johnson has been eager to install as head of Ofcom.

Johnson, when he's awake, may now be saying the right things about climate change but a man, as Prince Andrew can tell you, will be known by the company he keeps. Maybe something good will come out of COP26 (though as neither Greta Thunberg or George Monbiot seem to think so and they've been banging this drum for longer than most, it seems unlikely) but if we're gonna be lectured by world leaders on cutting down our carbon footprint they need to lead by example in giving up the motorcades and private jets.

Most of my journeys, of late, have taken place on foot. I've been up, I've been down, and I've been in the middle so par for the course really. I won't focus on the downs or the middles (there's enough negativity in the rest of this blog) but I will mention a few things I've done that have cheered me up.

I've chatted on the phone with Ben and Simon, I had a family meal in Pizza Express in Basingstoke for nephew Dan's birthday (and the day after a baguette in The Plough in Little London with Dan and his brother Alex), a curry with Shep, Adam, Teresa, Tina, and Neil in the Bengal Dynasty, also in Basingstoke, and I attended a very fun hallowe'en party at Tony and Alex's in Kintbury.

It was on the anniversary of my brother's death (and at the end of a very stressful week) so I may not have been on best form for which I apologise to the hosts and fellow party-goers. I went to see an Alvaro Barrington exhibition at the South London Gallery and, with Colin and Patricia, had a day out in Oxford that took in pubs, pies, Anish Kapoor at Modern Art and a wonderful Tokyo exhibition at the Ashmolean that I've still not got round to writing about yet.

On top of that I went to see the brilliant Velvet Underground film at the ICA and, on Saturday, I lead the final TADS walk of 2021 from Woolwich to Waterloo where I was joined by Adam, Pam, Mo, Dave F, Kathy, and Shep. It all ended up with a very spicy veg jalfrezi and a visit to The Hole in the Wall near Waterloo station.

As ever, lots of fun in the real world, lots of problems with the kakistocracy, and lots of anxiety linking the two together. John Major is right when he says this government has the subtlety of a brick. If we vote them in again we'd be proving ourselves to be thick as a brick. It's our duty as citizens to come up with a better alternative than this odious pile of shitbags.