After watching and listening to him attempting to deal with ninety minutes of questions from senior members of the powerful Westminster Parliament Liaison Committee, most Tories across the UK must have wished it had indeed been Worzel Gummidge instead of Johnson facing the questions. Gummidge would surely not have performed so badly.
The more you see and hear from Boris Johnson the more you realise just how much of an empty vessel he really is. He has been over-hyped, over-exposed and over-promoted. His inadequacies should have been apparent for years but under the cloak of protection from media luvvies like the ever reliable BBC Anchor-woman Laura Kuenssberg he was able to con his way into Number 10 because the whole British Establishment and the billionaire owned media which backs it was so terrified of the alternative they didn’t care how useless Johnson actually was.
‘Time to Move on’ – Desperate Attempt to Deflect Criticism of Cummings
Instead of a man of real substance and political integrity in the shape of Jeremy Corbyn all the billionaires, millionaires and middle class media they own and control turned everything on Corbyn lest he actually gain power and force the elite to pay their bloody taxes and break up the media magnate monopolies run by the likes of Murdoch. Corbyn came close to winning in 2017 so he had to be subjected to the most concerted and dishonest campaign of distortion and vilification ever witnessed in UK politics in 2019 to destroy him in the eyes of the public and pave the way for Johnson.
Those with a shred of brain matter and a morsel of human compassion amongst the elites must surely now be regretting their actions. Of course, it is not they who pay for the mistakes; it is ordinary folk who have had to endure the misery of an idiot in charge of the wheel amid a public health emergency.
Six times Johnson uttered the phrase ‘time to move on’ during his Liaison Committee session. He is desperate for everyone to forget the Dominic Cummings debacle because it represents the tipping of the iceberg, the straw that breaks the camel’s back. He has nowhere to hide now. No fridges to retreat into, no bumbling references to Greek mythology to deflect the viewer. This is a guy who has utterly failed the public in relation to the Covid19 crisis and has the blood of thousands of victims and the grief of tens of thousands of family members of the dead on his hands. We refuse to ‘move on’ when the Cummings story has exposed the dark and tragic truth that he has been prepared to do more in the last four days to save the job of one rabid political adviser than he was in the last three months to save the lives of hundreds of frontline health workers and thousands of elderly care home residents.
The mask has finally slipped, the gloss has worn off and the real Boris Johnson and his Cabinet of nodding donkeys stands guilty of nothing but failures and gross incompetence and irresponsible governance.
A Litany of Government Failures
Their failures on PPE left thousands on the NHS frontline unprotected while they tried to save the lives of others. Several hundred paid the ultimate price and are now a Covid19 statistic because they tried to do their jobs in hospitals and care homes but without essential Personal Protective Equipment.
They failed on testing despite the constant warnings from the World Health Organisation and health professionals. Hancock the Health Minister lied again today when he said he ‘hadn’t noticed’ the daily briefings over the last 4 days had mysteriously dropped the daily testing report. It was dropped because they have never reached the 100,000 target and have a snowball’s chance in hell of reaching the Johnson invented target of 200,000 daily tests. He told the Liaison Committee today he was ‘banned’ from announcing any more targets. That is because they are as spurious as his own integrity.
They failed care homes across the UK. Years of disastrous privatisation has created a private care lottery and profit at all costs philosophy which has reduced the quality of elderly care across the board. That was a crime committed by Tory and Labour governments alike. The case for the creation of a National Care Sector and the return of such an essential service to the public sector is now unassailable. But the ‘ring of protection’ they claimed to have put in place was complete myth. The majority of Covid19 deaths now arises in the care home sector precisely because of the Tory government failures to implement any measures to protect that especially vulnerable section of society.
These Tory Ministers failed to stop mass gatherings when several other European countries were already in lockdown. The eventual lockdown was too late and unaccompanied by an essential test, track and trace strategy of the ilk practiced by scores of other countries. The test, track and trace strategy announced yesterday to start today is three months too late.
The number of new Covid19 deaths across the UK the other day was 412. In Ireland there were zero new Covid19 deaths. In New Zealand there were zero Covid19 deaths. In Albania there was one new Covid19 death. The official reported Covid19 death total of 37,460 is greater than in over 40 other European countries combined.
Years of NHS Underfunding Left it Vulnerable to Pandemic
Speaking to a Parliamentary Committee in March the Government’s Chief Scientist Sir Patrick Valance laid out what he thought would be a good outcome from the Covid19 pandemic in the UK. He said the number of deaths could be kept down to 20,000 and below and that would constitute a ‘good outcome’. Still a horrible death toll but a good outcome, nonetheless. According to a Channel 4 Report yesterday the actual number of Covid19 deaths across the UK is over 47,000 not 37,460 while other reputable outlets utilising Office of National Statistics data and other sources predict the real death toll is over 60,000 and constitutes the worst Covid19 death rate in Europe and is second only to the US as the worst death toll and rate in the world.
The spread of Covid19 across the UK was inevitable. The massive death toll and death rate was not. Years of NHS underfunding and privatisation left it weak, unprepared and vulnerable. The fact that millions of important procedures and operations had to be cancelled to cope with Covid19 is evidence writ large that Tory stewardship of the NHS over the last ten years has been a record of shameless cuts, irresponsible disregard of warnings and greedy privatisation to benefit their rich pals. Read the splendid We Own It Report recently released to understand just how much they have facilitated the privatisation cancer which has seriously eroded the fabric of the NHS.
What Johnson displayed today during the virtual session and over the last few days was his determination to put his personal interests above everyone else in the UK. He believes he needs the spinning skills and sloganizing knack of Dominic Cummings to retain power. Being such an empty vessel so bereft of ideas and political substance means he relies on someone like Cummings to promote and sustain a myth of competence. By keeping Cummings in his job Johnson has wholly undermined the public health message his scientific advisers were insisting be promoted to combat Covid19. Cummings deserved to be criminally charged and unceremoniously sacked for his flagrant disregard of the lockdown rules but instead Johnston has facilitated an unprecedented pantomime from which he will never recover.
Cummings Presser Made the Government a Laughing Stock
Johnson’s press conference on Sunday was bad but Cummings’ press conference on Monday was even worse. An unelected nobody with a specific talent in communicating deceitful messages effectively was allowed to host a press conference during which he literally took the piss. He thinks ordinary people are stupid and dense enough to believe his circumstances were exceptional and justified the London to Durham road trip despite the rest of us being instructed to Stay At Home and isolate should Covid19 symptoms arise. He blatantly lied several times and will forever be associated with the ridiculous proposal that the way to test your eyesight is to jump into a car with your partner and child and drive 30 miles. He proved the old maxim that no matter how many times you polish a turd it remains a turd.
No wonder a plethora of parody videos and Mickey Taking memes have now emerged. When otherwise apolitical celebrities opt to take the piss out of senior government advisers the mood music is clear. The Johnson Tory government is not just disliked and subject to disdain by many it is now a laughingstock, a subject of ridicule. The likes of David Walliams and Paddy McGuiness are not known for political comments, but their Twitter lampooning of Cummings illustrates how low in public esteem Johnson and Cummings have fallen. The fact several millions have watched these videos is worthy of note in Tory ranks.
The number of Tory MPs seeking Cummings removal has climbed to over forty and even a normally compliant Scottish Tory has resigned in protest at Johnson’s refusal to sack Cummings.
Douglas Ross MP is an unknown Tory in Westminster, but he was a Junior Minister in the Scotland Office. His other job is a professional referee and several of his performances during games in Scotland show his eye sight stinks but even he can see that driving thirty miles with a child and partner on board to ‘test your eyesight’ is not just mad and dangerous it is a story which treats the public with sheer and utter contempt. A level of contempt underlined by Michael Gove’s LBC ‘car crash’ interview, pardon the pun.
Time for an Independent Public Inquiry
The clamour to get rid of Cummings will undoubtedly grow. The public petition demanding he is sacked is nearing one million signatures. Opinion polling after his contemptuous press conference showed a rise in the public support for him being sacked and a decisive majority believing he broke the lockdown rules. Johnson’s exhortation to ‘just move on’ will fall on deaf ears.
In the face of the criminally irresponsible handling of the Covid19 pandemic in the UK it is not enough for Cummings to go we must also redouble our efforts to demand the Worzel Gummidge head of Johnson as well. The man is out of his depth and incapable of recognising the difference between truth and lies, honesty and integrity. He is a self-righteous narcissist who must be ditched from Number 10 forthwith and subjected to an urgent and independent public inquiry which will inevitably produce grounds for manslaughter charges. His reckless actions and decisions in office have cost thousands of unnecessary deaths. His failure to uphold a reasonable duty of care must result in criminal charges. I am so proud of us Scots who were wise enough to see through him in December and reject his snake oil potions of lies and distortions. Our independence cannot come soon enough.
It is not just time for you to ‘move on’ Boris its time for you to familiarise yourself with the inside of a court room in the role of the accused.
