Boris Johnson is the most venal, the biggest liar,
the most immoral and the most incompetent
Prime Minister in all British history.
There is however going to be a battle,
fought over Johnson's posthumous reputation.
We're already seeing a vigorous attempt to create the myth of
the lost leader this magnificent lonely courageous politician
who led Britain out of the European Union
and this is a man who was brought down
to quote the Daily Mail by 'Pygmies.'
Johnson was deliberately constructing his final act.
He wanted to go out in drama and he succeeded.
He's a rule breaker he wants to reinvent reality,
and that's quite deliberate it's the theatre the way he goes.
It will take a lot of people in there are going to be a lot of
Boris Johnson loyalists just as there are Trump loyalists.
He will want to shape the Conservative party even while
out of office and I predict that he will be quite successful in this.
There's been a claim that ministers such as Sajid Javid,
Rishi Sunak and co were acting honourably.
That claim is unsustainable
it is actually the opposite of the truth.
They didn't mind when Johnson seems to have lied to the queen.
They didn't mind about the completely mendacious
and fabricated 2019 general election manifesto.
They all sat in the house of commons listening
to Boris Johnson lie week after week from the dispatch box
it didn't seem to bother them in the least.
"All guidance was followed completely"
"The guidelines were followed at all times"
"I can tell you once again that I certainly broke no rules"
In fact they would go out afterwards into television
studios and defend the Prime Minister and repeat his lies.
"Do you believe the Prime Minister?
Of course I do...
the Prime Minister set out his understanding of this matter."
This applies to Sunak it applies to Javid.
All of the main contributors to the coming leadership contest
are part are complicit in the moral squalor
of the Johnson period in office.
The tory party no longer exists as it used to do until quite recent times as a sort of
manifestation of much wider civil society it is now owned by oligarchs and by a handful
of non-dom press barons who successfully mobilized international capital in order to
run the publicity machine which took johnson into power what we're going to see now that johnson has
gone is the newspapers and the donors looking for somebody else who will serve their ends they will
seek to choose the next leader of the conservative party just as they chose johnson almost exactly
three years ago it's too early to say who that person will be because they've got to show
that they have the policies which will please the billionaires whoever wins will come in on tax cuts
they will continue the policy of confrontation with the european union they will continue the
war against human rights they will continue the weaponization of asylum seekers and they will
continue the general attack on the rights and freedoms of the british people particularly in
the workplace those policies will be fitted for three categories of people the right-wing press
the big billionaires and that tiny tory membership is a minute constituency and not in any way
representative of the rest of the country but these people have the privilege of choosing the
next conservative leader and therefore the person who can be prime minister for the next two and a
half years and one key figure here very unknown to the public but enormously important to today's
conservative party somebody called ben elliot remember that name he is the money man inside the
conservative party the umbilical cord which links conservative party donors to the conservative
party machine he's the founder of a company called quintessentially it's a kind of concierge service
for the super rich and so if you're a oligarch or billionaire and you land in london and you want to
go to the best parties or go and have dinner with the royal family or meet politicians on special
terms you go and knock on mr elliot's door that is what the tory party has now become a vehicle
for very very rich people to have such a figure as chairman of the conservative party tells you
everything you want to know about how boris johnson has governed britain for the last three
years i'll tell you an example of how the media really was determined not to upset johnson and his
associates two months into the johnson premiership i noticed the fact that he was lying all the time
and this was new may haven't been like that cameron hadn't been like that gordon brown hadn't
been like that so i went to channel 4 and i said let's make a dispatches documentary documenting
johnson's lies they showed some interest and then it was stopped i said to the production company
what about the bbc said no no no they won't be interested i went to the spectator magazine i was
told that they were too close to dining street i then went to the daily mail for which i had a
column and i did write a piece but that was killed it was impossible at that time in the run-up to
the 2019 general election to say through vast tracts of the british media that johnson lied
whereas you could say anything you liked about jeremy corbyn you could really make any stuff you
liked up about jeremy corbyn and nobody was going to worry about it or complain i finally wrote a
piece for open democracy i showed how political journalists were being used by the johnson
political machine to smear their opponents they themselves were part of the machinery of deception
that is what happened in the run-up to 2019. although johnson was a very distinctive figure
he did at the height of his powers have a amazing almost mesmeric effect on quite a large number of
people ultimately he was the manifestation of a broken system or a corrupted system is a better
phrase whereby the super-rich govern british public life he was able to rise because of
powerful anti-democratic forces first of all the manipulation of the mainstream media its
failure to do its job and secondly the power of billionaires something went hideously wrong
to enable somebody we can now see to being a venal cheat and liar to occupy the most
important position in british public life the collapse of the johnson government is taking
place at a terrible moment in british social and economic life we are probably entering a period of
economic fragmentation on a scale that's not seen maybe since the 1970s possibly not since
the 1930s people can't afford to live there will be plenty of people trying to step into the breach
and provide excuses for economic failure and pointing their fingers at vulnerable people that
is the way you move towards a right-wing populism and veering even towards a certain stage fascism
boris johnson has resigned and a lot of people are really pleased about that and so they should be mr
johnson has resigned in shame and disgrace he has done immense damage to this country but i would
warn people don't be too optimistic i don't think things get any better from here they may get worse
whoever becomes the next prime minister it'll be very important to hold them to account if the
record of the mainstream media with mr johnson has anything to go by
it won't be the mainstream papers that's why it's important to support
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