I saw a headline about Boris Johnson today. Even though he has been forced out to resign, he is still, technically, the Prime Minister, so the press continues to write about him (although I am counting the days until he is irrelevent). Parliament is not in session, so the press call it ‘The Silly Season.’ Okay, stories about Boris make more sense in that context.
So here’s the headline:
Boris Johnson ‘Wants To Remain Prime Minister And Lead The Tories Into Next Election’
Excuse me, Mr Johnson, but what planet are you on? You got into office on the promise of delivering Brexit, a failed scheme which has significantly worsened the post covid economic crisis. Your tenure has been marked by scandal after scandal, either directly involving you or made worse by your mishandling. The Tories have lost every recent by-election, even in supposedly safe seats, because You were that toxic. They lost to the Liberal Democrats. You were eventually turfed out in the biggest cabinet rebellion in history, primarily because they were all just sick of your BS and bungling, and couldn’t, just couldn’t, go on TV to defend you AGAIN. But you think you can carry on as Prime Minister? I think when BoJo looks in the mirror, he sees Winston Churchill looking back at him. Someone please tell him that’s really a portrait of Churchill and direct him to an actual mirror, if only to sort out his hair.
BoJo clearly lives on Planet BoJo, where all his plans work out and everything goes his way. If there are other people on his planet, they don’t not have opinions or priorities of their own. In Boris’s mind, he did nothing wrong; it was everyone else defying him: The Cabinet, The EU, The Northern Ireland Assembly, poor people, sick people, unemployed people, Lefties, Climate Change activists. Get rid of these people, and he could set the world to rights.
That said, most politicians live in their own worlds, and resent the intrusion of the real world. Enter the Right Honourable Lee Anderson, MP for Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, with a net worth estimated between £3 and £5 million. He denied the Cost of Living crisis was that bad, that families were struggling with food costs because they lacked cooking skills, and that with careful planning, you can easily feed a family for 30p per person, per meal.
Chefs, Nutritionists and the Press all said, “Challenge Accepted.” They proved the 30p per meal claim was as ridiculous as it sounded.
Lee Anderson has not said much since then. I’m sure he thought it was such a good line. He’s probably been locked in a cupboard by the tory PR team, along with MP Rachel MacLean who advised people struggling to pay bills to either “Work more or move to a higher paying job.”
Definitely on another planet.
The US also has it’s share of extra-terrestrial politicians. Marjorie Taylor Green suggesting Jewish Space Lasers were causing wildfires is one example. She believes the claim sincerely, cuz she read it on the internet. Ted Cruz can at least see earth from his planet, but he doesn’t understand how it works. He suggested the solution to school shootings was to have all the students enter through one door and be searched before starting classes. Given the average High School has about 1000 students, they’d be at final bell before everyone could get to class… Why am I giving so much time rebutting this patently ridiculous idea?!
Sadly, tragically, most of the people in charge of things, either politicians or business CEOs, live on their own private planets. They guard their delusions fiercely, with electrified fences and security guards, to prevent any scrap of reality from penetrating the perimeter.
But some people, most people, 99% of people cannot escape the one real world. The world of rising food prices, rising energy prices, rising housing prices and wages so stagnant that if you are earning what you did three years ago, you’ve actually had a 20% pay cut in real terms.
We need to push back; break the windows on the ivory towers and force the 1% so see what their policies of self serving greed are doing to the planet and the people who live on it.
And if they don’t feel remorse and spread the wealth around in a meaningful way, we need to climb through those broken windows and steal their shit.
So That Happened 