publish and be damned
This last week we all learned that our Honoury Members of Parliament are not allowed to directly call each other liars. In the same vein, they are also unable to call another a blackguard, coward, git, guttersnipe, hooligan, rat, swine, stoolpigeon and traitor. Doing so would incur the wrath of the Speaker, who would then direct such a foul-mouthed miscreant Member to rephrase the term or withdraw it completely, as happened to the SNP’s Ian Blackford, who only said what the rest of us were thinking! As it transpires, MPs are more likely to get punished for calling someone a liar than for lying itself.
Without rehashing everything that’s already been said a thousand times, it’s difficult to think of what exactly to say to add to the debate concerning our beloved Prime Minister’s immoral behaviour. It’s safe to say that were the government a company, the employees would be on strike and the shareholders would have ousted the chairman and board of directors. If it were a school, it would have been placed in special measures, the head would be on gardening leave and a public inquiry would be being initiated. If it were a totalitarian country, there’d be a general uprising and the military would now be in charge.
But it ain’t, and there’s no sign of anything akin to these actions taking place. Boris Johnson remains in post, his titles still his to use. So what does this turn of events say about us? What exactly does it say about our society, and the rule of law within society, that the man who sets the rules is completely free from adhering to them? What will it say about the convention that a minister who lies to the House of Commons has to resign, chooses not to do so and carries on regardless?
No-one in their right mind truly believes much that BoJo now says and it reminds me of the “How do you know when the PM is lying? His lips are moving!” quip. When sacked from the Torygraph, his former editor, Max Hastings, made his feelings perfectly clear by unequivocally stating, on the record, that the man “would not recognise truth if confronted by it in an identity parade”. Ouch. If his continued lies, eight new ones in last week’s various interviews alone (counted/verified by The Grauniad), go unpunished then we, the great unwashed, have the right to feel a basic level of democratic trust will have been shattered. Furthermore, if he stays in his job, we are all saying that we accept it.
Speaking of identity parades, Johnson’s fate will not be decided by any action from The Met, or by the full unexpurgated version of Sue Gray’s partygate expose, but by politics: initially by his own MPs and latterly by the populace. It should be a matter of conscience for us all to bring this shambolic turn of events to a close. Boris does not ‘get it’, will not change and what’s worrying is that this bad apple eventually infects the whole barrel. Tory MPs owe it to us all to start the process and remove this tawdry charlatan before he brings yet more ruin. If they, and we, fail to do so, given all that we’ve seen and heard, it says something far worse of us all.
Mind, surely if politicians were allowed to accuse each other of lying, they would do nothing else all day! Boom-boom…
