Kakistocracy XXXV:Planes, Trains, And Automobiles.

It's good, finally, that most of the UK are wising up to just how unfit and amoral a leader Boris Johnson is but could it be too late? I hope not but some of the sounds coming from Johnson's corner at the moment suggest that, like his nearest analogue - Donald Trump, he won't go easily. When even the likes of Michael Howard and William Hague (both former Tory leaders) are calling for Johnson to resign you'd think, surely, the gig is up.

But, of course, it's not. Because Boris Johnson has no shame and he has no sense of either morality or truth. At least many of the voters of Tiverton and Honiton did when the Tories lost their seat there (to the Liberal Democrats' Richard Foord) and where their share of the vote fell by 21.8%. The voters of Wakefield, whose by-election took place on the same day - and for the same reason - Tory sleaze, also decided they'd had enough of the Tories. There the Tory vote fell by 17.3% and they now have a Labour MP in Simon Lightwood.

Boris Johnson, of course, doesn't seem to particularly care about this and has, instead, bullishly talked about a third term that would take him into the 2030s before, hinting - very ominously, that when that happens they'll take a look at how things are done. I'm not saying Boris Johnson is planning on becoming a dictator. Just that his words are very much the sort of words that someone planning on becoming a dictator would say.

Hopefully, the systems of checks and balances we have in this country will prevent that scenario should Johnson choose, or already have chosen to go down that route. But then with Johnson and his cronies constantly rupturing, or destroying, those checks and balances we shouldn't be totally confident they will. We saw how close Trump came to destroying democracy in the USA and we only have to look at the disgusting reversal of Roe vs Wade to see that Trump is not finished yet.

Since I last wrote we have seen Johnson throw as much red meat to his rampant, and racist, base as possible but none of it seems to have landed quite where he'd hoped. That's not to say he's finished with those tactics. Let's take the intended first forced flight of asylum seekers to Rwanda as a very clear example.

It had been said there'd been one hundred asylum seekers on board but come the day of the flight the number was believed to be somewhere between ONE and EIGHT. Which is still one (or eight) too many. Then, as we all know, the flight was stopped by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). That was, of course, good - but will (and has), equally obviously, given this government of division the perfect excuse to relitigate arguments about Brexit (their biggest (s)hit) and complain that the ECHR are run by our old friends, the "lefty" lawyers.

I suspect this is the start of the campaign for the next General Election where, like Brexit beforehand, the government will likely juice division between those who believe in human rights - and the ECHR - and those who think we should scrap human rights pretty much in their entirety. I remember my dad telling me he didn't believe in human rights once and it struck me as a very strange thing to say. 

What with him being a human and all that. The thing about the flight to Rwanda was that it didn't matter if it happened or not. The threat of doing it was enough, as it got the right wingers foaming at the mouth in just the way it was intended, and the fact the ECHR stopped it is almost perfect for Johnson and his culture wars. But not only was the aborted flight pretty much a publicity stunt, it was a stunt that Johnson and his government made us, the tax payers, foot the bill for. We're paying our own government to troll us now.

It's worth noting a couple of things - the ECHR is not part of the EU and the UK is one of the founding nations of the ECHR. Because of the Brexit agreement it is now harder to leave the ECHR than it was before leaving the EU. Also, there seems to be some kind of myth, no doubt borne of exceptionalism, that the UK takes more migrants than anywhere else. 

That's not true. Percentagewise, we're 26th on the global list (topped by Bahrain, Maldives, and Oman) and 10th among European nations (behind Luxembourg, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Ireland, Belgium, Cyprus, and Sweden). We're also behind Australia on that list which is quite surprising as right wing Tories often cite Australia as a country who's example they'd like to follow.

Some will suggest we should leave the ECHR so we can carry out these forced flights but that would put us at odds with every single country in Europe except for Russia and Belarus and are they really the bedfellows we want right now? Do we really want to be lining up alongside them? It'd be a strange case for Boris Johnson to make while he calls, at the same time, for a total victory for Ukraine in Putin's War. 

But then consistency is not Johnson's strong suit. If anything, inconsistency is. Look at how the protocol of the Irish sea border (which was both agreed and signed by Johnson - who then won a general election on the back of it) is being dangerously scrapped and look at how Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said he wanted to ban the fire and rehire practices used by P&O to sack their staff but now says he wishes to adopt those exact same methods to punish rail workers for striking.

More and more people have had enough of all this bullshit and when people like Lord Geidt (Johnson's ethics advisor - surely the most ludicrous and laughed at job in the whole country, I'd rather wank off turkeys for Bernard Matthews) and Oliver Dowden (previously an absolute Johnson arse licker of the highest order) resign we can see that more clearly than ever.

How some people have taken so long to come round is beyond belief. The fact that some still haven't suggest they are basically cult members and need deprogramming. Perhaps, what says more than anything about Johnson the man is just how craven he is and how compliant some of the media is in his dishonesty and corruption.

The Times, mysteriously, dropped a story about Johnson trying to make Carrie, then his bit on the side and not his wife, Chief of Staff for the Foreign Office (£100k pa) before that was quashed by Geidt (one of many things that may have been on his mind when he quit). It soon transpired that the government had pressured The Times to stop the story.

Although Johnson wasn't PM at the time, he was the Foreign Secretary and was still married to his second wife Marina Wheeler. Wheeler had cancer and while she was suffering with that Johnson took up with Carrie. It shouldn't be a surprise as, while married to Wheeler, he also had an affair with Jennifer Arcuri and gave her £100,000 of taxpayer's money.

He's pissing our money away, he's pissing our country away, and he's pissing our democracy away. Every time I think of him I become sad, angry, and scared for the future of the country. So, obviously, I write it all down in this series of blogs and then try and focus on the good things of life and, luckily for me, there are still plenty of them.

I've chatted with Adam, Simon, and both my parents on the phone, I've been to a great Walter Sickert exhibition with Vicki, had a nice curry (in Shad, near London Bridge) with Ian, and visited Dream Machine at Woolwich Works (read all about it). Better still, I had a lovely walk around Lewisham (to celebrate it being this year's London borough of culture) with Mo and Roxanne and, best of all, I've just returned from an absolutely lovely holiday in Hafan y Mor, near Pwllheli, with Michelle and Evie.

It was an absolute tonic and tonight I'm meeting Kathy and Pam to see LCD Soundsystem at Brixton Academy which will, surely, be a good one too. But I still need to write about what I see as a historically important moment in our history. The time that the UK fell into the hands of a criminal government and the dangers that spells for our future.

At the moment in this country it feels like you can't get a plane (unless you're a migrant and even then you just sit on the tarmac as you're used as a pawn in a Tory election campaign), you can't get a train (because Shapps and Johnson are refusing to sensibly negotiate with the unions), and you can hardly afford to fill your 'automobile' up with petrol. 

In the 1987 John Hughes film Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, Steve Martin found himself stuck with the annoying John Candy on a journey that used all three of these forms of transport. In the UK, in 2022, we find ourselves stuck with the criminal liar Boris Johnson. Steve Martin didn't realise how lucky he was.