Dear James,
I seem to have touched a nerve. A rather raw one. But hey ho, aren’t you politicians supposed to have thick skins? Besides, I think I detected a small vulnerability in your rather irritable response to my last message? Nothing wrong with that! It shows there’s a beating heart behind the ‘political personality’!
Read MoreDear James,
Well, what a surprise! Let me say immediately that I do appreciate your finding time in your schedule to reply to me personally after two years of my writing to you. I suppose beggars can’t be choosers and that one personal response out of 188 attempts is not too bad as a return! Anyway, may I take this opportunity to reciprocate and wish you and your family a Happy New Year!.
Read MoreDear James,
Can it get any worse? Yesterday the rest of the world put the UK into a very solitary, solitary confinement. Ports were slammed shut, flights from the UK and into the UK were cancelled, cross-border passengers were banned. Today the M20 down to Dover and Folkestone is blocked by stationary trucks and Manston Airport is filling up fast. In the international press, the New York Times called us ‘Plague Island’ revealing a lot of pent-up Schadenfreude for this sad little island. And it’s coming our way, thick and fast.
Read MoreDear James,
The government went strangely quiet on Sunday. It was supposed to have been the make or break day and yet the day passed without a decision and ended with both sides saying that they would continue talking. They are still talking. There are at least two possible interpretations. Firstly Boris may seriously be trying to explore every avenue before going for no-deal. But the second option is far more interesting. Perhaps he has, at last, looked into the chasm of no-deal and has been terrified by what he sees. In other words, perhaps Boris has panicked!
Read MoreDear James,
Small gestures give away much. Did you see Boris at the Press briefing with European Commission President, Ursula Von der Leyen, after their fruitless last minute talks last Wednesday? As both removed their masks before the press, Boris, sporting a new and, for once, tidy hair cut, immediately and reflexively thrust his fingers through his mop, ruffing it up into standard ‘devil may care Boris’. Here we saw the brand at work. The superficial ‘seductive charm’ of populist leaders as they lead the gullible towards the cliff edge. Boris, the entertainer, the superficial chancer who takes nothing seriously except his own ego, was in his element as he prepared to inflict appalling damage upon our nation and its people. Boris is full of such reflexes that tell us all we need to know about the man.
Read MoreDear James,
The newspapers are calling it a final throw of the dice, a last ditch effort, the endgame. It is none of these things. It is the beginning of years of mutual antagonism between the government of Britain and its nearest neighbours. Boris is facing the ultimate lesson that he cannot have his cake and eat it and he doesn’t like it. Especially when the trading block with which he wishes to have free trade is five times bigger than you and knows that he cannot have freedom to do deals all round the world (the cake) and to have free access to the EU single market (the eating of said ‘cake’) at the same time.
Read MoreDear James,
Another dramatic week among many. And you certainly had a ringside seat as our nation’s massive economic crisis was officially announced on Wednesday. As PPS to the Chancellor, you will have watched – and perhaps even participated in - the deliberations that led to Mr Sunak’s Spending Review. It must have been quite a roller coaster!
On Wednesday, with the serene self-confidence of a multi-millionaire, the Chancellor declared our nation to be in the greatest economic slump since 1709.
Read MoreDear James,
Oh dear. What a mess! In the week that the Covid-19 death count rose above 50,000 people, Downing Street went mad. Actually it has been mad from the start of this administration. Last week, in an attempt to reset things, two key sociopaths were ejected and your Party breathed a sigh of relief. They claimed and expected Boris to return to ‘normality’. Some hope! Yesterday Boris told his MPs to ‘form a square’ around the Home Secretary, Priti Patel,
Read MoreDear James,
He’s gone. Dominic Cummings, this eminence grise, this deus ex machina, this urban guerrilla embedded at the heart of Boris’s government, has departed with his revolutionary mate, the same way that Steve Bannon, his alter ego in the USA, went last year. Last night at about 11pm, it was announced that Boris had been pushed to do the unthinkable.
Read MoreDear James,
Last Wednesday, the megaphone was turned off. What had seemed impossible for so long has happened. Donald Trump has fallen silent! Into this stunning and momentary ‘noise space’, have erupted the voices of hope and renewal. After four years of ranting and raving, four years of barefaced lies and deceit, four years of bluster, bluffing and name calling, the pursuit of decency and truth as an honourable aim, is being expressed once again. Last Wednesday, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris stood before the American people and the world and smiled. In France, Paris Mayor, Anne Hidalgo, tweeted, ‘Welcome Back America!’.
Read MoreDear James,
Early on Wednesday morning Donald Trump entered the White House Briefing Room and gripped the lectern. The usual energy was gone. He was running on empty. “This is a fraud on the American public,” he muttered. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win the election.” He was like a tired robot, mouthing the usual platitudes but running down through a rupture in the power lead. Later, before a wall of the stars and stripes,
Read MoreDear James,
Last December Boris sold himself to the nation as ‘not Corbyn’ and won a massive 80-seat majority. The era of Mrs May’s U-turns, climb downs and continuous parliamentary defeats, seemed to be at an end. How wrong that has turned out to be!
On September 21st the government scientific advisory body, SAGE, advised Boris to introduce a two week, ‘firebreak’, circuit breaker to check the rapid rise in the Covid infection rate across the land.
Read MoreDear James,
They say it is darkest just before dawn. For four years we have watched, dumfounded, the humiliation of America by its own President. We have seen the damage that he has done to allies and treaties across the world while he has pandered to the autocrats, state assassins and the hydra headed Russian mafia that infects our globe. This reality TV star has made America into a television soap opera with ever more ridiculous plot lines. But just perhaps, we may be entering the final plot. The one of his own demise?
Read MoreDear James,
I’m beginning to feel sorry for Boris. First he takes on the Mayor of Manchester. Then he attacks the Mayor of London on totally false grounds. Then he gets his party to vote against Marcus Rashford’s call for the extension of free school meals until next spring. Add to all this his divide and rule tactics and the division of our nation into different levels of danger and support and, hey presto, without even trying, Boris has managed to alienate at least half the population just by being Boris! It seems he has lost whatever plot he ever had but especially the one about ‘levelling up Britain’. And you James, in your unwavering and cringing support for him, are helping him every step of the way.
Read MoreDear James,
Can you hear it? The sound of rivets popping. The sound of a keel twisting. The crack of metal stringers breaking, of spars rupturing. It started almost a year ago in Northern Ireland. Ever since, the creaking and straining have become ever more prominent, ever more persistent. Bit by bit, James, the ship of state is beginning to crack up. The United Kingdom has never been under such strain from within and without and much of it is to do with your party, its ideology and the lack of coherent, inspiring, leadership.
Read MoreDear James,
He was warned. Three weeks ago, at a meeting on 21 September, SAGE, the government advisory council, told Boris that he should have a short circuit lockdown to stop the dramatic rise in the infection rate since the beginning of September. Boris decided to go against his SAGE advisers. Instead he introduced a 3-tiered system that put different areas into bad, very bad and very, very bad categories. Yesterday the latest infection rate was 17,234. Total Excess Deaths stood at over 54,000. Yesterday Sir Kier Starmer called Boris's bluff, saying that local restrictions were not working and accusing him of ignoring the science. He called for a ‘circuit breaker’. At least 60% of the public are with him. Starmer looked like the leader we do not have.
Read MoreDear James,
Self-esteem is a wonderful thing. Of course, for reasons of genetics, psychology or social conditioning, not everyone has it. I’m lucky. I have a not inconsiderable store of self-respect although esteem might be pushing it a bit far. However, compared with Boris Johnson, I am a pauper. Boris is in a league of his own. He was born into the stuff and it seems that nothing can drag him from his bounteous hoard. His irrepressible smirk says it all. He was born to be admired and trusted. Even when he misspeaks or misgoverns, in his own world, Boris can do no wrong.
Read MoreDear James,
The ancient Greeks knew a thing or two about life and politics. They had seen it all before. They called it Nemesis, the retribution of the gods. It is what Mr Trump is facing today as he lies in his hospital bed. Nature, in the form of covid-19, has bitten back. America has another layer of chaos to add to its current nightmare.
Nemesis follows hubris as sure as night follows day.
Read MoreDear James,
On Tuesday, cocooned within all the televisual trappings of power that his minders could muster, Boris came before us all to announce new measures to stop the current resurgence of Covid-19 in its tracks. He wanted to talk to us directly about “the choices that we face - none of them easy - and why we must take action now.” The faux Churchillian tone and the smirk free visage suggested that here was a man set on real action, a man taking charge at last in a moment of extreme national crisis. His hands came out over the mahogany desk in breathless exhortation. His sentences spluttered out in short exhalations seemingly fuelled by small energy cells exploding according to some predetermined time fuse closely programmed into the autocue before him.
Read MoreDear James,
Last weekend I was in Lancashire visiting my son who is a large animal vet. As it happened he was on call over the weekend and, often when up there, I go out with him on his various call outs. Last weekend it was sunny and warm in Lancashire, unusual for that friendly but rain sodden part of our nation. My son has a wonderful life visiting farms full of Lancashire Vikings, blonde women and their grumpy old farmer partners with a smile behind each grump.
Read More
