Has He no Shame?

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It appears that what the government imagined would be a good day to delay difficult legislation, under the smokescreen of the Johnson-lying/Partygate enquiry, has backfired somewhat spectacularly; with the standards committee refusing to release BoJo's submission to the press in advance of their interrogation of the man ('... Boris Johnson, was incandescent ...' - New Statesman, today) live on TV. It would seem that he - backed by whom, one wonders? - had sought to undermine the credibility of the committee and its principals, before the public, via the usual sympathetic media channels, with his carefully-crafted diatribe. His subsequent squirming and backtracking betrayed his original intent to bludgeon his way past the committee and its allotted remit of enquiry into his conduct. Having lost the tactical advantage of priming his 'public' in advance, he then sought desperately to avoid the obvious offence to the committee and its chair that they were biassed and indeed a kangaroo court, in order to curry some sort of favour with said panel. Pathetically transparent.

The fact that the PM, Rishi Sunak, had already delayed actioning 'key policies', such as the Victims Bill, energy security strategy, and the state pension age issue; on the premise that these would be 'crowded out' of the news agenda by the enquiry, speaks volumes both of the priorities of this PM and his government, and the obvious and deliberate link between the Johnson circus and government media policy. Either Johnson is the current Tory government-iteration's 'convenient idiot', or he is, and will remain, a key plank of their collectively insane modus operandi. Whichever it is, the end result of yesterday's sandbagging of the former PM should still be the same: a deserved and ignominious ousting from politics for good. If he gets out of this one smelling of roses, then there is truly no hope for society, and you should book tickets for somewhere more democratic than these septic isles...

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