READERS who are a bit long in the tooth may remember that in the first year of Margaret Thatcher's government, following her victory in the May 1979 General Election which the Conservatives won with a majority of 44 seats over Labour, the Conservatives were massively unpopular in those seats which they had taken from the Labour Party and were languishing in the polls.
The Conservatives had campaigned in the General Election with the now infamous slogan "Labour isn't working" on billboards showing a long queue of people outside an unemployment office. Yet, once in power, the Tories proceeded to create mass unemployment as a tool in their ideologically driven war on the trade unions and unemployment soared to levels not seen since the Great Depression in the 1930s.
There were rumblings that the Conservatives might move against Thatcher and a widespread belief that she would not survive long in office and would most likely be deposed before the next General Election. All that changed in April 1981 when the Argentinian military dictatorship of General Galtieri, which had its own issues with widespread popular discontent, invaded the Falkland Islands. Britain and Argentina were soon at war over an isolated group of islands where penguins outnumbered people by thousands to one. At the time, left-wing opponents of Thatcher referred to the Falklands campaign as a war between two unpopular juntas.
Thatcher revelled in being a war leader, and the Tories whipped up an orgy of jingoistic British nationalism which not only secured her position as leader of the Conservative Party but which ensured Tory victory in the next two General Elections. That ushered in a period when the Conservatives embarked upon their project to destroy the post-war settlement which saw the creation of the NHS and the welfare state, a project which they now seek to complete with the privatisation of the NHS and the BBC and the final transformation of the UK into a tax haven for the super-rich where public services are minimal and the vast majority have poorly paid work and no job security.
Although the immediate cause of his unpopularity is different, Johnson is now in much the same situation that Thatcher was two years on from her first election victory, and here we are again with another unpopular authoritarian regime – this time Putin's Russia – threatening war in order to distract from growing domestic pressures for change.
We can only hope that the current talks prove to be productive, but should war break out in Ukraine, this British Government will not hesitate to use it to generate a new orgy of jingoistic British nationalism in the hope of distracting us all from Johnson's manifest inadequacies and repeated lies. They have already started.
Already the arch-Brexiteer and fellow posh-boy Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP for Gainsborough, has spoken out in the Commons using the tensions in Ukraine to support Tory MPs who claim that it's a "waste of time" to debate the Prime Minister's serial dishonesty and contempt for the rules.
Leigh said: "When European stands on the brink of war and there is a cost-of-living crisis, can we please have a sense of proportion over the Prime Minister being given a piece of cake in his own office by his own staff."
Meanwhile, Stuart Anderson, Conservative MP for Wolverhampton South West, said: "Every time the Opposition call for our Prime Minister to resign, does my right honourable friend agree that we're only strengthening Putin's hand and destabilising negotiations?"
So in the eyes of the Tories, if you expect Boris Johnson to be honest in office and not to break the laws and rules the rest of us must abide by, it can only be because you are in cahoots with Vladimir Putin.
If there is one thing we can be certain of, it is that this Conservative Government is utterly bereft of morals and scruples, and there is nothing it will not stoop to in order to maintain its grip on power.
This piece is an extract from today’s REAL Scottish Politics newsletter, which is emailed out at 7pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Wee Ginger Dug.
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