Skip to main content

In defence of Boris Johnson

 I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm about to go into bat for Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.

Yes, yes, fair enough, I have to date regarded him as pretty much the fount of most things wrong with politics today, and I stand by that. But there is one thig that I'm not going to criticise him for, and thats's his religion.

As you might imagine, I regard mos religion with a mixture of bemusement and contempt. At its best it's something to get you out of the house. At its worst? Genocide, torture, repression, untold misery. As a concept, I'm not pro, on the whole.

But inasfar as I have any opinion on which deity or manifestation thereof you wish to have guide your daily decisions, I pretty much put them all on a par. I don't giver a monkeys which iteration of the magical sky fairy you choose to believe in.

So the news that Johnson's recent marriage to his inamorata has caused something of a constitutional kerfuffle has caused eyes at Coastalblog towers to toll to no uncertain degree. BJ's presto-changeo conversion to Catholicism has meant that, as PM he's fallen foul of some archaic law dating from Wellington's time about recommending Bishops to her maj.

This fucking country man.

I mean, every aspect of this, the PM...recommends......clergy....to a Monarch? Is deeply embarrassing, and yet further proof that we're still mentally living in a cosplay of Mallory's Morte d'Arthur. I'm all in favour of collective folk legends, but the idea that any of this is remotely relevant to the machine of the modern state induces acute queasiness.

There are many reasons to dislike Boris Johnson: his disdain for due process, his elastic approach to the truth, driving a coach and horses through the law when it suits him to do so, selling the country out on the whims of his own ego. His religion (and does anyone think that this serial philanderer has a religious bone in his body?) is not one of them.

The problem is, that he incites such levels of dislike, that it becomes all too easy to grab any stick to beat him with. I tend to his view that his personal life is personal, and bears no relevance upon his job as PM.

Take the Jennifer Arcuri affair, for example. Yes, he was shagging her on his sofa as his wife was out getting treatment for cancer. Pretty morally reprehensible, I'm sure we can all agree. Not, however, relevant to his job. The 130K her company was funded? The business trips she went on without the correct accreditation? THEY are relevant. 

There is a tendency in our press to play the man and not the ball, and it doesn't help anything at all. The obsession with people makes it easier to ignore policies.

So you can dislike Boris Johnson for ignoring 5 COBR meetings at the start of the pandemic, the disastrous failures over lockdown, the release of Covid positive patients to care homes, the 120K + death toll, the chaos in Northern Ireland, the complete mismanagement of the Brexit agreement, selling the fishing industry down the river, chucking the farmers under the bus, screwing up lockdown again, the naked theft of public funds by Tory donors and cronies, threatening the Union, rolling back civil liberties and trying to distract everyone from his mistakes by fomenting a made up culture war in which minorities are a target.

You can dislike him for his racism, his sexism, his boorishness. "Letterboxes", "Piccaninnies", "Fuck Business", reciting Kipling in Asia and saying "your wife will get bigger breasts if you vote Conservative." 

By all means hate him for his clear contempt for the NHS despite it saving his sorry hide, the attacks on teachers who've worked their arses off right the way through the pandemic, the assaults on human rights lawyers, judges and anyone who tries to trammel the power he believes should be unconditional, the brushing off of Ministers breaking their own code, for "forming a square around the Prittster", for not sacking Cummings, for not sacking Hancock, for investigating himself and finding out he did nothing wrong, for getting everyone else to pay for him, for freebie holidays, for 72Ks worth of takeaways when people in this country are using food banks.  All good reasons.

His religion? Don't give a fuck about that, mate.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The last day of the county season

 Look, I never claimed to be cool. As a a cliched middle aged male, I have a number of interests which, if not exactly niche, are perhaps not freighted with glamour. Not exactly ones to set the heart racing. I yearn not for wakeboarding, my cocaine with minor celebrities days are well and truly behind me, you are unlikely to catch me writing graffiti under a motorway bridge. I do cycle, but only as a way of getting from point A to point B, you are unlikely, you will be relieved to hear, to see me purchasing lycra and or/doing triathlons. I like going for a nice walk. I'm fond of a good book. I have a deep attachment to county cricket. Yes, that's right, county, not even the international stuff which briefly captures the nation's fleeting attention once in a blue moon. County cricket. Somerset CCC to be precise, though I'll watch / listen to any of it. The unpopular part of an unpopular sport. Well, that's the public perception, the much maligned two men and a dog. N...
Post a Comment
Read more

D-Day Dos and Don'ts for Dunces

Oh Rishi. Lad.  You have, by now, almost certainly become aware of the Prime Minister(for the time being)'s latest gaffe, as he returned home early from D-Day commemoration events in France, in order to "concentrate on an interview" which, as it turns out was already pre-recorded. There's been a fair bit of outrage, the word "disrespectful" is being bandied about a lot.  The word I'd use is "stupid". It is often said of the Brits that we have no religion but that the NHS is the closest thing we have to one. This, I think, is incorrect, because the fetishisation of WWII is to my mind, far closer to being our object of national veneration.  I understand why, last time we were relevant, fairly straightforwardly evil oppo, quite nice to be the good guys for a change, I absolutely get why the British public worship at the altar of a conflict which, I note, was a very long time ago. I think it's a bit daft, personally, but I understand it. So you...
Post a Comment
Read more

The three most tedious food debates on the internet.

 I very much only have myself to blame. One of the less heralded aspects of running a business is that one is, regrettably, obliged to maintain a social media presence, it's just expected. And, if I have to do it, I'm going to do it very much in my own voice, as I don't tend to have time to stop and think when I'm bunging something on Insta. It seems to have worked okay so far. But, as a man better versed on the online world than he would prefer, I should have known better than to stick up a picture of our bread rolls, fresh out of the oven. In my defence, I did preface said picture by saying "one of the most tedious debates on the internet is what these are called...". Doubtless you've seen the argument somewhere, it's one of the workaday tropes that shithouse FB pages use to drive engagement. Need a few thousand clicks to raise the profile of your godawful local radio station/page about how everything was better in the past/shelter for confused cats?...
Post a Comment
Read more