No. 77 - Boris 'In Must' - A Wounded and Angry Elephant Lets Loose

Dear James,

No contrition, no remorse. No apology. Just bare faced defiance. The full panoply of public school boy bullying and anger was on display in parliament last night as Boris Johnson hit back at what he calls the establishment stitch up. With his usual bluster and empty rhetoric, he showered contempt and disdain on Parliament and more importantly on the Supreme Court. Yet behind the bluster it was clear for all to see. Here was a painfully wounded animal, cornered in a very dark place by his own mismanagement and crass ineptitude. ‘We accept the law but The Supreme Court’s verdict was wrong!’ ‘Parliament must stand aside or face its day of reckoning’. Boris Johnson was taking on the whole of a system which must be broken. He has been well tutored by his mentor Dominic Cummings.  

After yesterday James, I would like to think that you are deeply embarrassed and keeping your head way down below the parapet. Your day began with Geoffrey Cox, the Attorney General - he of the famous ‘codpiece’ - cavorting in full Gilbert and Sullivan mode and stating that ‘This parliament is dead!’.  With his stentorian voice and his ridiculous posturing, he seemed like a caricature from some nineteenth century, small town melodrama.  His hands waved with a combination of superior disdain and gratuitous generosity in this parody of court room reasonableness. His bulk twisted in carefully rehearsed moves towards his own side but we soon realised that it was all a front to disguise another wounded animal. After all, his job was on the line after yesterday’s verdict. He had given advice that the proroguing of parliament was lawful. So now he told us that he had acted in ‘good faith’ and that the Supreme Court had acted retrospectively in creating a new law. It had not. It had interpreted the law as the law stands. That was its job. It is parliament’s job to create law, the Supreme Court’s job to interpret it.  And It was clear that it was Geoffrey who had got it wrong though he was not going to go quietly. He was going to fight to the last ditch. He would not be scapegoated by this ravenous hoard behind him. There was fire in that notorious codpiece yet!

Then came Boris. With even less convincing histrionics than Codpiece Cox, he too twisted and turned in his ridiculous pretence at oratorical omnipotence. His words were pure Farage or Cummings.  Surface compliance. Surface politeness. And beneath it all the seething anger and resentment of the entitled thwarted. It was as if he had a mirror in which he was admiring himself as an actor – like those Hitler photographs where the Fuhrer silently rehearsed his oratorical postures knowing that it was these that counted and words were secondary. He attempted to thunder but the thunder was sundered by its clear falsity. ‘The surrender document’, ‘betrayal’, ‘capitulation’ spat out of his mouth like machine gun bullets. And when MPs accused him of inflammatory language, all he could reply was that he had never heard such ‘humbug’!  Now there is a word straight out of the 19th century public school dictionary! 

When asked about the memory of Jo Cox, who campaigned for Remain and was killed by a right wing fanatic in 2016, he responded by saying that the best way to honour her memory was "to get Brexit done". Mr Cox, Jo’s husband, later tweeted he felt "sick at Jo's name being used in this way”. Keep digging Boris! 

Yesterday was, as someone else has said, a day of fear and loathing in the Commons.  It was Parliament’s saddest day.  Boris Johnson and his non-descript front bench were wounded animals cornered by the Supreme Court in a dark place of revenge and recrimination. But the biggest player in the chamber yesterday was not even in the place. Mr Dominic Cummings was elsewhere watching carefully his elephant ‘in must’. He was happy. His elephant was charging. His elephant was angry. His elephant  was vicious and it was tearing down the ancient trees of our constitution. Just what Mr Cummings had always wanted. 

James, parliament is all that we have between ourselves and populist chaos.  For heaven’s sake ask your craven backbenchers to demand that Mr Cummings is sacked immediately. And then start to remove the fear and loathing from your place of work. And the obvious starting point for that is by putting the vote back to the people.  

On your performance so far however, I know there is little hope of that! 

Kind regards, 

BH - Your Concerned Constituent.