No.228 - Boris: How the Mighty Fall?

Dear James,

How the mighty fall! Last Monday Boris, with his 80 seat majority, needed the Labour Party to push through legislation to contain Omicron. Ninety-nine – or almost a third of his MPs - voted against the motion. Boris is gravely wounded. This puffed up ball of hyperbolic fluff is deflating before our very eyes. There is no way back for him and, in the long-run, the wounds are probably fatal. Confused? Well the other story is that in that vote, the Tory party also revealed its own massive splits. 

The fanatical right wing of your party James, organised by Steve Baker of the ERG, stuck to its Libertarian insistence on ‘freedom’ of the individual to choose while the Omicron virus with its 35 changes in its spike configuration, is already running riot through our population. Boris was for once right in his insistence on mandatory vaccination for front line staff and Covid passes for nightclubs and the likes. The irony is that his decision has blown up in your party’s face! A large chunk of your MPs no longer supports their leader and, instead, decries measures to limit transmission. Meanwhile the public is following its own rules. Boris is almost an incidental bystander between your ideologues and public common sense. And it shows. The poor man looks shattered.  

If only our rich nations had followed the dictum that that ‘no one is safe until everyone is safe’. The Omicron variant probably emerged somewhere in Africa (probably South Africa). Only 6% of people in poorer countries have received at least one dose of the vaccine. Omicron seems to have developed there in the time made available to it by the absence of vaccines. Yet not only did Boris cut our foreign aid budget from 0.7 to 0.5 % but he has selfishly refused to consider vaccine patent waiver to allow those countries to produce their own vaccines at much lower costs. Like climate change, viruses do not respect national borders. We’re all in this together - virus, vaccines and carbon emissions - and the costs of the new variant will vastly outweigh the costs of helping to distribute vaccines to the poorer world.

Nearer to home, Boris claims he loves the NHS. The NHS does not love him! It is the institutional and professional strength of this organisation and the medical sector as a whole that has allowed him to claim erroneously that the success was his. Your party James has always treated the NHS like a pauper when it comes to funding. In 2018, the UK had 2.8 doctors per thousand population. France had 3.3. Germany 4.3. Boris’s constant ‘elastoplast treatment’ of our single most important institution in the fight against Covid must end. Cut out the empty rhetoric Boris and face the facts. We need more doctors, more nurses and we need them fast. 

James, Boris’s authority as Prime Minister has been seriously damaged. Even if he hangs on, he will be a straw man. Many of his supporters are saying he must be controlled by putting some kind of ‘political straitjacket’ on his behaviours. But Boris is Boris. If constrained, his mojo will wither. Remember Trump? The same happened to him. No one can contain or direct the ‘populist leader’. They live in their own worlds oblivious to reality beyond! Which is why they are so dangerous.

Last weekend an Opinium Poll showed that Labour has a nine-point lead over your party, James. 57% of voters think Boris should resign. His personal rating is down to an all-time low of minus 35. Today Omicron cases surged to 78,000. Boris is probably going to have to return to the Commons with even more stringent restrictions. If Steve Baker and the ERG has its way again, Boris will need the help of Labour once more. What an embarrassment that will be!

Our nation is stuck with a pantomime leader and a divided government. Yet all we get is Boris appearing, jacket off, sleeves rolled up and tie tucked away inside his shirt while a vaccinator does the real work in front of him. Boris is surplus to need, an awkward embarrassment to anyone wanting to get a job done. And when he’s not doing that, he’s standing at the dispatch box flailing with false indignation at the Opposition, incapable of answering their straightforward and logical questions.

Our Prime Minster is deeply and fatally flawed James and our nation knows it.  Perhaps the by-election in North Shropshire today will sign his ‘political death warrant`? If so, it will be about time!

BH – Your Concerned Constituent

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