DICK Dastardly and Muttley versus Thelma and Louise.
They’re not the sharpest insults ever traded during Prime Minister’s Questions.
Keir Starmer kicked off yesterday with the clumsy assertion that Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak are like Thelma and Louise – driving Britain’s economy over the cliff.
Not a great analogy since that film, its main characters and its stars are still massively popular. And not the right interpretation of that memorable clifftop scene – not so much a failure by selfish conspirators as a successful friendship, right to the bitter end. If such loyalty exists in the upper echelons of any political party, I must have missed it.
But if Starmer’s film choice was wide of the mark, Johnson’s riposte was completely off beam. After all, no-one in the Commons more closely resembles the scheming, lying Dick Dastardly (a character from the Wacky Races 70s cartoon series) than the Prime Minister himself.
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And there’s no party with a wider selection of candidates for the slavering canine sidekick Muttley than the Conservatives, whose ministers abase themselves nightly to defend the Big Dog’s latest transgressions on TV. Indeed, Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries evidently found the prospect so stressful earlier this week, she appeared to have downed a half bottle of vodka before facing the cameras.
And so, the circus of Westminster continues. Distracting, colourful and dramatic – sure. But also callous, remote and utterly unfit for purpose.
A relic. A place of posturing. The living embodiment of a time when public schoolboys ruled the world, without the encumbrance of democratic restraint.
A place cocooned from reality where Tory backbenchers can cheer the bullish assertion that PPE distribution was a great success without considering for one minute how that sounds to front-line workers who actually watched colleagues die.
A place remote from normal rules of political exchange where a liar cannot be called out, even as he lies through his teeth.
Worse. A place where the Prime Minister can make false accusations against the leader of the Labour Party (libellous if uttered beyond the privileged confines of Westminster) yet escape censure, while another MP is ordered out of the Chamber for refusing to lie.
Indeed, the Commons is so hopelessly archaic that Ian Blackford’s hinging offence didn’t involve actually using the L-word. He merely accused the Prime Minister of “misleading parliament” – a relatively opaque rebuke still considered ungallant enough to trigger the red card from a Speaker meant to uphold MPs’ interests against the Executive.
WE all knew the Commons was trapped in a Victorian time-warp, where MPs are unable to clap like normal people or call a spade an actual spade.
But the flaws being dredged up now are so many and so much worse than imagined – and Scots are watching it, clocking it and increasingly seeing Westminster for what it is. A terminally busted flush – whoever is in charge.
It is though, a tremendous irony that Johnson’s feverish determination to cling on to power is delivering an unexpected indy bonus, and a longer-term problem for Westminster to address than the mere personal failings of a Prime Minister who will soon be toast.
As he desperately seeks out hidey-holes, loopholes, fall-guys and escape routes, Boris is drawing attention to jaw-dropping levels of dysfunctionality within the self-styled “Mother of Parliaments”.
First, he shone a helpful spotlight on the scandal of MPs’ second jobs through inept handling of the Owen Paterson affair. Who knew so many “let them eat cake” Tories were diddling the taxpayer by holding down better-paid second jobs – some of them apparently travelling overseas? For weeks. During lockdown.
Who knew that it’s also apparently quite normal for MPs to be threatened with the loss of funding for local capital projects if they don’t toe the party line? Suddenly the lack of rebellion in government ranks over Johnson’s serial failings makes perfect sense.
Backbench Tories aren’t happy with him – the Honourable Ladies and Gentlemen are just too feart to take a stand.
IN his long, slow, ungraceful political demise, Boris is accidentally spring-cleaning, shining a light on Britain’s stale democracy and uncovering dodgy practices other PMs have kept behind locked doors.
Of course, Scots generally, and Yessers in particular, have been no great fans of the Westminster system. But Boris is going above and beyond to make sure any remaining scales are pulled from our eyes – sacking erstwhile allies, reversing devolution, forcing councils into undignified competitions for cash, abusing every Henry VIII power in his possession and subverting any procedure that constrains his own quasi-presidential position. In the process, he’s uncovering more evidence about the sham nature of British democracy than the best Select Committee.
Westminster – a place of dead-ends, where an “independent” report commissioned by the Prime Minister into his own behaviour is conducted by a civil servant accountable to the Prime Minister himself.
A place where top-down control is so complete that regional “lightweights” who disagree with their UK leader can neither function within the same political party nor summon up the courage to leave.
A place where £5 billion of Covid grants was paid to fraudsters, but the specialist National Crime Agency was barred from investigating lest that prove “embarrassing” for the Government.
A place “policed” by a constabulary that is evidently not above politics – just far beyond the passage of time. Where Cressida Dick was either leant on to stop the Met investigating Downing Street or happy to farm police work out to civil servants, only to weigh in and freeze their democratic progress once the going gets a bit too public. Which is it? And who has confidence in this arrangement?
And so the dysfunctionality goes on and on.
EVEN though Westminster is being torn apart by evidence that Tory Ministers broke Covid rules, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss was seen maskless in the Commons on Tuesday and later at a meeting of the backbench 1922 Committee, before announcing she’s tested positive for Covid.
Even though her party is trying to shrug off allegations of an enduring alcohol culture, Nadine Dorries appeared to be drunk on air.
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Welcome to Westminster – where saying one thing and doing another is literally in with the bricks.
But one thing’s certain.
The current meltdown at Westminster is now about much more than the personal fortunes of Boris Johnson.
It’s about the craven nature of the Conservative Party and the general unseaworthiness of the Good Ship Britannia itself – archaic rituals, undemocratic parties, central command, safe seats and all.
In refusing to go quietly, Boris is hanging the whole rotten edifice of the Union out to dry.
And even for those not yet fully convinced by independence, it’s not a pretty sight.
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