I don’t want to do it. I’ve been writing about Boris Johnson far too often recently and I don’t want to do it anymore. But he’s still there, he’s still he’s still a problem, and he has too much power to be ignored. Ignoring the problems he doesn’t like is more of a BoJo move, and I don’t want to be anything like him.
So here we go.
In the last episode of “Boris; Diary of a wimpy toff”, BoJo technically won a vote of no confidence. 59% does not say ‘Resounding confidence and support.’ 59% says, ‘We don’t have any better candidates at the moment, but don’t get cocky, we’re watching you’. As I predicted, he ignored the warning and is instead acting like he won a landslide, and people wrote comments on the ballots telling him how great he is. His toadies have started publicly referring to him as ‘Big Dog’.
I briefly wondered if BoJo misses the days of the Pandemic. It was a terrible time for him politically, but it was a problem not of his making. I mean, he bungled almost every aspect of it; not shutting down travel early enough, late lockdowns, Partygate, but It’s not like he was in Wuhan having a Bat Barbeque. (Actually, where was he in the fall of 2019?)
Now Boris is having to deal with both the problems of his own making, and the pre-existing problems that he is making worse.
He wants to make changes to the Northern Ireland Protocol. I will hold my hands up and say I do not understand the details of what’s involved. It’s about Brexit and the EU and trade and where the actual border lies; is it between Ulster and the rest of Ireland or is it the Irish Sea?
Boris and the Brexiteers created this problem by ignoring it. In all their campaigning to leave the EU, they never considered the Northern Ireland question, or if they did, they never came up with an answer. Not one they liked, anyway.
So they just didn’t talk about. Even their manifestos didn’t mention it. But the problem was still there and now they have to deal with it. As Brexit was all about ‘Taking back control of our country’, Brexit logic would dictate a Hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic but that’s not a feasible solution. From a political perspective, a Hard border would mean the return of checkpoints and soldiers; a return to life before the Good Friday Agreement. The Agreement has been in place for 23 years, and while there are still tensions, the Agreement has worked. There’s now a generation of adults who don’t remember what it was like before, but they’ve heard about it. There’s a generation who remember what it was like then and don’t want to go back.
From a practical perspective, a Hard Border won’t work as houses have gone up along the border. Some people would need a passport to cross the street. Others would need one to go from the living room to the Kitchen.
It’s also ironic that Brexit was about cutting out the EU red tape, and a Hard border in Ireland will generate a mountain of it.
The only practical solution is for Northern Ireland to join the Republic. Boris won’t acknowledge that solution, of course, as it runs counter to his Brexit plan of everyone doing what he says because he says so. As the hard core unionists died off and the younger generation don’t care or don’t see any advantage to a British passport, Re-unification of Ireland has always been just a matter of time. BoJo’s meddling is just accelerating the process.
Here’s the story that made me REALLY angry this week, as it affects me more directly.
Boris Johnson tells workers to accept pay cuts or UK faces 1970s–style ‘stagflation’
I’ve been looking at that headline for days and it still makes me incandescently angry. He’s proposing pay cuts at the same time he’s proposing tax cuts. Most of the population, already on low wages, will be squeezed even more by the pay cuts, while not remotely benefitting from the tax cuts, as only rich people get any advantage from tax cuts.
And also, UK wages have stagnated over the last 40 years as governments worshipped at the alter of ‘Trickle down economics’, which theorised if the rich people got more money, they would spend it and the money would eventually make it’s way to everyone. The problem? Rich people don’t spend money. They hoard it. It goes into trusts and Hedge funds and off-shore accounts. Whatever trickled down onto the poor people, it wasn’t higher wages.
And a few months ago, all BoJo could talk about was levelling up and the ‘High Wage Economy’ he was going to create. I don’t know how he plan to put everyone on a high wage, because that’s not how numbers work. For some people to be high, other have to be low. Unless he wants to implement a Universal Basic Income, but I know he would look at those three words together and not understand how they connected.
And again, just as Boris ignores the problems that he doesn’t have an answer to, he ignores the solutions that will make his donors (controllers) shout at him; Wealth Tax and Windfall tax.
Why should workers accept lower wages to try to save the economy for the rich people? If the last 12 years of Tory government, if the last 40 years of government in general has taught us anything, it’s that money matters more than people. So now a very few people have ALL the money. Let them fix the economy.
Boris is making his own problems worse, because he can’t see beyond his immediate self interest and think of the long term strategy. Each policy he tries just makes the long term situation worse, for the public and for himself. Each problem he has to deal with (I can’t say solve) is made worse by all his previous decisions. If he would look beyond his own self-interest, he would see his own larger self-interest.
It’s time for him to go. Can we please have someone who can see beyond tomorrows poll Numbers?
So That Happened 