Like many people, it is difficult to put into words the level of anger felt at Boris Johnson being fined over Downing Street lockdown parties.
But that’s what I’m paid to do, so here goes.
I, like so many other people I have spoken to and heard from, am raging.
The anger is not only at Johnson, because like most people, I have long been convinced he was breaking the law and that the reports in various papers and television news reports were accurate.
The anger is also at his response, and excuses, and attempt to deflect by using the unimaginable suffering of people in anther country to explain why he should not resign.
The anger is at the parade of pathetic politicians, dutifully trotting out the centrally scripted lines to protect their boss at all costs.
Totally, morally bankrupt excuses, from supposed representatives of the people, showing neck with more brass than the Grimethorpe Colliery Band.
If they believe what they are saying, then they are unfit to represent the people, the people who have been expected to obey the laws no matter how hard it was, and if they don’t believe what they are saying then they are obviously even more unfit.
For months Boris Johnson denied there were any parties. Then he said all rules were followed at all times.
Then when he was caught out he urged us to wait for the Sue Gray report, when a watered down version for that was published, which still showed him to be culpable he said wait for the Police investigation.
Now we have the police investigation.
It found him guilty, bang to rights as they say, and slapped him with a fine, for breaking the law.
The first serving Prime Minister to be found to have broken the law, and a law that was passed by his government when he was Prime Minister, at that.
But still, he wriggles and he dodges and he ducks, and a compliant bunch of ministers, backbenchers and supporters bob and weave in front of him to form a shield.
I have heard, and come up with, better and more credible excuses when I was at school and turned up late or didn’t do homework.
The worst, in a snaking conga of slithering boot-lickers ordered out on to TV and radio shows was Michael Fabricant, Tory MP for Lichfield.
He said Johnson was only doing what teachers and nurses were doing.
He claimed nurses and teachers were ‘having a quite drink in the staff room after a long hard shift’.
Fabricant claimed to know personally of nurses and teachers who were doing so.
Teachers and nurses will tell you what he said is totally made up, fabricated not real and as one Glasgow teacher said: “absurd and insulting”.
Living in the real world I do know nurses and teachers.
I can tell Michael Fabricant they were not drinking in their staff rooms after a shift.
They do not drink in their staff rooms after a shift whether it is during a lockdown or not.
They do their job and go home or if they have a drink, they go to a pub but mostly they go home because many have families to look after and often are too tied to do anything else.
For Michael Fabricant, and anyone who accepts his garbage, to besmirch hard working public servants in this way to save his boss’s and his party’s skin is utterly reprehensible.
We are also told, by many including the Scottish Tory leader, Douglas Ross, that now is not the time to change Prime Minister because “there is a war on”.
We are told Boris Johnson is leading the West’s response.
Nonsense. Boris Johnson is not leading Joe Biden, or Emmanuel Macron or any other western leader who is doing their bit to support Ukraine and oppose the Russian invasion
And in such a time of international turmoil, when we must unite against a dictatorial and maniacal leader in Vladimir Putin, and a country that is breaching international law with an illegal invasion, slaughtering civilians and destroying a country, it must be better to have someone who we can trust to have the decency to abide by the laws of their own country in charge.
Also, the coronavirus pandemic has not gone away. It has been managed to the extend that it is nowhere near as serious as it was in 2020 but it still poses a threat.
New variants are still emerging.
It is entirely possible that another variant develops and we are back where we were two years ago.
Then, the Prime Minister of this country may have to give another address to the nation and once again give out the order to “Stay at home”
Boris Johnson cannot give that order.
Boris Johnson has not authority legally or morally to ask people to do what he himself failed to do last time.
Boris Johnson, by breaking the law, a law which necessary as it was, caused so much hardship, anxiety and suffering for so many people who abided by it, has invalidated his mandate as Prime Minister and has to resign.
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