No. 109 - Boris Has a New Base and I'm not Referring to his Posterior!
Dear James,
Boris has a new base and I’m not referring to his posterior. It is the North and the Midlands and consists of all those traditional Labour seats which so comprehensively abandoned Jeremy Corbyn on Thursday. Boris and his new base will make strange bedfellows. No doubt they will start off co-habiting. But will it ever lead to a real marriage? For the moment we must give the new boy the benefit of the doubt. But doubt there still is. In bucketloads.
Today though, Johnson is, for once, doing the right thing. With his new majority of 80 padding out his already voluminous back pocket, he is travelling north to see for himself what needs to be done to help the new Tory constituencies. It leaves him and your party with a massive problem to solve. To keep his new fans, he must deliver the promised goods. Many of their votes are only ‘lent’ and to convert these loans into permanent assets Boris has to spend massively and intelligently across the North and the Midlands. But at least he will be addressing one of our nation’s main conundrums. How to bridge the gap between the pampered south east base and the depressed and empty streets of his new and unlikely fiefdom in the North. Good luck Boris! The nation is watching!
While Labour and the Lib-Dems stalk the ruins of their recent campaigns, it must be remembered that the main failure was in Mr Corbyn and the Labour Party. They refused to enter into a pro-European alliance and so, although the Brexiteers got only 47% of the vote while the pro-European parties got 53%, the latter were divided and in disarray. Boris therefore romped home through the vagaries of our first past the post system which exaggerates small majorities of votes into massive increases in parliamentary seats. It works well in two party states. In terms of overall justice it fails to deliver.
After your party’s campaign of lies, distortions and avoidance of proper scrutiny, the country is hardly enthusiastic for your new regime James. But at least it removes a log jam. Now someone will be allowed to govern in the face of the massive problems that face our nation. The biggest of these is climate change. Your Tory manifesto was the weakest of all in this area and the susceptibility of your party to fossil fuel industry lobbyists is notorious. In the meantime you must ‘Get Brexit Done’ i. e. negotiate an ‘ambitious’ trade agreement with our erstwhile partners in Europe. That promises all sorts of fun and games including the possibility of a no-deal Brexit. Then there is the NHS. Tens of thousands of new nurses and doctors and many more than six new hospitals are needed to deal with the relentless rise of our ageing population. In addition to this is the question of care for the aged, an issue avoided by your party in the recent campaign. And then finally, you have the great issue of the Union. The implications of Boris’s great betrayal of Northern Ireland, in order to get his deal, is already having its impact. On Thursday, for the first time more Nationalists were elected than Unionists in that part of the kingdom.
All in all, we shall all be watching very closely how a populist party attempts to convert its rainbow promises into a reality that helps to solve our nation’s fundamental problems. These remain deep and entrenched. You may have convinced many, for the moment, that you are the natural party for the nation’s most deprived but how long can that last? In the end the elite of the privileged and asset rich will be seen to be what they are. Your party has protected those assets for another five years and so your duty to the fundamental Tory values has been served. But there will be a reckoning. Unless, you help establish the ‘level playing field society’ – economically, socially and environmentally - whereby everyone enjoys equal opportunity wherever they are born, your time in government will be limited.
So James, your new parliamentary dominance may be strong but on climate, the NHS, the north-south divide, the Union and the fundamental social problems of our nation, your underlying base is fragile. Message? Watch your rear! There are many more surprises coming your way.
Kind regards,
BH - Your Concerned Constituent