Boris Johnson, bad boy Billy Bunter of British politics, penned a crass, pro-Brexit article that thrust him back into the limelight. His critics shrieked ‘sack him!’ and one suspects Boris would have added his voice to the chorus if he could, but Aunty Theresa is as smart as he is, and she said no.
Of course Boris doesn’t think leaving the EU will result in the repatriation of £350 million pounds a week to be spent on the NHS. Boris is either a highly educated, clever man, with a string of successful appointments behind him to prove it, or he’s a moron. If you think he’s the latter then good luck to you, you probably saw him on Have I Got News For You and thought him a bumbling fool, who was somehow a top journalist, became an MP, then Mayor of London, led a successful Brexit campaign, and is now Foreign Secretary.
Boris is smart, and campaigning has made him street savvy. He saw a seismic shift in world politics and felt the power of an unstated appeal to the electorate. Like a business that says ‘we’ll do this or we’ll do that’, but ends up doing nothing, Boris knows this is not a choice of Leaving the EU or Remaining, there’s a third option the public are far more likely to go for — rebellion!
Today’s politics is about dissatisfaction. People are justifiably dissatisfied and they will therefore take every excuse they can to give the Establishment, no matter who runs it, a bloody nose. That’s how Brexit came about in the first place. 90% of Brexit voters didn’t even know there was such a thing as a Customs Union, and if the ‘experts’ still can’t work out how to leave it you can be sure Jack and Jill voter hadn’t a clue either. It was a case of ‘we’re tired of this, let’s give that twit Cameron a bloody nose. How did he want us to vote? Vote the other waaaaay!!!’
Boris knew the reaction his article would get, and the debate it would generate. What he probably hoped was that Theresa would sack him. That would put him on the opposite side to the establishment and make him de facto leader of The Dissatisfied, a HUGE group that far outweighs any other. He could then bide his time as Wounded Hero of the Oppressed, the only one out there fighting for the people against… well bloody everybody. Come Theresa’s judgement day, a nailed on political certainty, and following the economic and political farce that a rushed Brexit will become, up would step Boris, backed by a bunch of Swivel-eyed Loons and People Power, to take the reins. A simple plan, well thought through and cleverly executed. Too bad it failed to fool Aunty T.
Poor Boris, Theresa’s too smart for him. She dislikes him too much to sack him. And why make a bad situation worse? She only brought him into the cabinet to clip his wings and drown his ambition in a puddle of the stagnant, muddy water she blames him for stirring. She knows he’s fundamentally a populist rabble-rouser who wants to dodge the speeding bullet of Brexit. The only way Boris becomes Leader in Waiting is if he resigns, and then he’ll be portrayed as a coward who ran away from difficult decisions to howl at the moon, a man so clearly unsuited to becoming PM he’d never have the support of the party. You can appeal to the people all you like, if the party machinery moves against you before you have proven popular support, you’re toast.
This is about austerity, which is about the biggest con ever perpetuated on the public in the history of modern politics. We are witnessing an expression of anger from people who found their governments siding with a bunch of rich bankers whose naked greed destroyed the economic prospects of a generation. They stole the money, precipitated a crisis, and we the people paid for it while the bankers got away scot free and were richly rewarded for their stupidity.
While suffering, we got to watch a bunch of greedy bastards lining their pockets on low interest rates, quantitative easing, and pay freezes, things that make the richest segment of society even richer and do nothing for the rest. Yes the UK has high employment, but it also has zero wage inflation. Who do you think that works for, people with low wages?
C’mon Theresa, I remember you bleating about the JAMS, so where is your help for the Just About Managing? Nowhere! You’ve done nothing you haven’t been forced to do, and even that you’ve done badly. Do you think people who go to food banks and who live in highly flammable tower blocks don’t hate you for your designer leather trousers and squillion pound shoes? You know they hate you, which is why you declined to go anywhere near them after Grenfell. You might be politically naïve, but you’re not so utterly inhuman it didn’t occur to you they might just rip your head off before the police could intervene.
Human beings have a peculiar quality; it is the ability to cut one’s nose off to spite one’s face. We the people despise the ruling classes for the betrayals of the past decade. Ask the Liberal Democrats what happens when the electorate decide to punish you. Ask Theresa what happens if you call a snap election and turn to us for a vote we seemed to promise beforehand. Theresa should have won a landslide, but we punished her for her arrogance in daring to turn to us, forgetting she’s only in power because of an earlier expression of our dissatisfaction with her predecessor. She foolishly thought we thought better of her. We don’t. Why should we support her, or anybody else? People like her fed the common man like a hamstrung lamb to billionaire wolves to sustain a whopping lie — that banks were too big and powerful and rich to be allowed to fail. After all, if they failed, whose boards would all the corrupt politicians sit on when they leave office, gravy train gravy dripping down their cheeks?
Theresa has learnt a lesson Boris will hopefully never get a chance to learn (though it would be a pleasure to teach it to him) — it doesn’t matter what the question is, what the issues are, or who stands to gain what. We don’t care how much we have to suffer for our idiocy if it causes you pain as well. We’ll sink the ship we’re standing on and sing as she goes down. Every time the lying, thieving, self-serving, bastard politicians on any side of the political divide give us a chance to vote on anything, we’re going to make them pay.