From the beginning of Johnson's huge victory in the 2019 UK General Election, he has functioned abysmally. Virtually every day he makes public mistakes. He spins his 'U Turns' like a Whirling Dervish. His laddish cohorts infuriate the Tory women MPs. His 'inner team' annoys his 'do as you are told' Cabinet. His advisers, who obviously set up the government's strategy, are in a melee. And now that the US is not going to give the UK a big, fat, trade deal, the EU can make mincemeat of Brexit. The only two advantages that Boris has established are the results from his illness (ahhh) and the (non) effect of the excruciating caution of the Labour leader's opposition (which has been far more devastating in its attack made on his own party's left wing.)
All these fun and games cover up an extraordinary and historic shift in British politics.
You could cover this shift from a number of angles. There is the deep drama of Scottish independence and Northern Irish radical nationalism. More alive in Scotland since the 18th century and in Ireland since the 1970s and 80s. There is the utterly impossibility now of an Eastern Asian / British deal or deals, which was the main lever in the economic argument for Brexit. As the US are trying to shut down China, which Biden will maintain, UK business in SE Asia will be 1, American and 2, in direct contest with the much praised digital capacity of Britain, (read Cambridge and Shoreditch, a patch in London). Moving on, the UK, and especially Boris's bit of England, have among the worst results dealing with the Corona virus. The UK is projected as having the worst economic results from the end of the virus, in comparison of all main European countries.
But the 'heave' now moving UK politics is not always obvious. And there is another angle that needs to be surfaced. British government's leading personnel are creating a monumental mountain of corruption. For example 'Public First' is a small, new PR firm, run by Rachel Wolf, who co-wrote the 2019 Conservative Manifesto and James Frayne who is a long standing ally of Cummings (the PM's first advisor.) It was given contracts worth a £ million for running focus groups to 'urgently' manage communications around the government disaster of the school's exams failure. There had been no competitive tendering. It has been dropped in favour of using 'emergency provisions'.
Competitive tendering has been suspended by the Tory leaders. In late March the accountants Deloitte were called in to run a crisis unit to sort PPE. (The result, of course, was utter chaos.) The Cabinet office has not published the contract. The Cabinet office minister, Chloe Smith was a Deloitte consultant before she became a Tory MP. Deloitte (again - an accountant firm) went on to screw-up contact tracing, and their thousand consultants to work on Test and Trace included 'imports from Boston' that were paid £6250 a day.
£12 billion went on Test and Trace according to Rishi Sunak. (SERCO got £410 million of it.) And, so far, the government have tossed out non-competitive contracts worth £100 million. (Mate rates.) SERCO provided a batch of 500,000 test tubes including leaking vials and contamination with hair and blood. It's ok. The Department of Health did not include any penalty clauses. SERCO profits are still mounting. And the chief executive, Rupert Soames, told staff (in a leaky Email) that the pandemic is 'going a long way in cementing the position of the private sector companies in the public sector supply chain'. Soames should know - as a grandson of Churchill and a brother of the Tory grandee, Nicolas Soames. And so it goes; on and on. (See many more details, LRB, 5 November.)
Corruption, in the sense of MPs and Ministers pocketing irregular money from Parliamentary benefits as was seen in the early 2000's appalled the British public. But Boris's crew are doing something else. They are using 'emergency provisions' to provide businesses that want large public funds - on an industrial scale. And this is the most poisonous aspect of the new politics.
What is the impact of this cesspit?
Spraying public money from the government to your private company friends, without the tiniest indication of any questioning from the opposition parties, shows how desperately sheltered the democratic centre of British politics is today. This is a democracy which does not challenge some of the greatest self-seeking so called 'political' decisions that are now in full display. If anybody wishes to answer the question; 'why does the British government fall so far behind similar European (and not to mention East Asian) when it comes to the Pandemic? Why do the British government have failures in PPE, in Track and Trace, in Care Homes and in the numbers of deaths from Covid-19? Why? Because the structure of British politics today is incapable to manage, let alone lead any serious crisis. It is organised to prevent any real democracy.
The corruption of modern political life in Britain is seeping into the whole of society. Parliament, with its hundreds of giddy Lords and its criminals in the Commons is promoting a real revolt where millions directly challenge their leaders. In Germany in the 1930s the Nazis smashed up a similar, bent democracy. In the USA, in France and Italy, in Poland, in Belarus, Hong Kong, the left (just about) have the momentum and the chance, not to re-vamp a dubious history, but to start now and build a real democracy of the people.
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