YOU all know the endless list of scandals by this point. Since I last wrote a column, the initial redacted findings from Sue Gray’s report into Partygate have been released. The report states that there were “failures of leadership” at Number 10, as well as failures of “judgement”.
There remains a live police investigation into the whole affair, and the bulk of the report will remain under lock and key until that process is completed, it seems.
However, there’s no doubt now that the Prime Minister cultivated a culture of ignoring the rules in his office. While others attended funerals over Zoom, the Prime Minister partied. There is simply no justifying any of it. No-one wants to see him “learn” from it, no-one wants to see him “focus on the stuff that matters”. Everyone wants him to go.
He needs to resign, but it seems he is incapable of doing so. Therefore, the other Tory MPs in Westminster have a duty to remove him.
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It is pathetic how such a scandalous character as the Prime Minister gets away with so much, because of excuses like “the economy is thriving and that’s what people really care about”, or “people are richer now than before, they don’t care about the petty politics” etc.
It is a morally reprehensible position to take at the best of times, but given the fact that inflation and interest rates are hitting household budgets, the usual excuses do not apply. Skyrocketing utility bills are hitting even harder. Citizens Advice Scotland reckon that around 640,000 are already struggling to pay their energy bills – and every single one of them is going to struggle even more after the recently announced price hikes for electricity and gas.
The cost of living is increasing rapidly. When Tories claim people are getting richer, I assure you they are unlikely to be talking about you.
As well as the cost-of-living crisis, and being condemned in the Sue Gray report, the Prime Minister’s staff are now jumping ship. At the time of writing, five of his most senior staff have resigned their posts in the past 24 hours. One, his policy chief, had been working for him for 14 years.
These individuals have either finally seen sense, or have jumped before they were pushed – either way, I am glad they have done the right thing. It is nonetheless frustrating that they somehow manage to do the right thing for all the wrong reasons.
If the public never found out about these parties, do we honestly believe there would ever have been any resignations? Harming the poorest in society, and letting people drown in the Channel aren’t resignation matters – neither is racism, homophobia, or misogyny – but a scandal that won’t go away is.
The problem the Prime Minister has now is who on God’s earth would want to go and fill one of these now vacant posts? Who would want to tarnish their reputation by going to work for what is now essentially a zombie government? Because let’s be clear, the Tories know the PM is a goner – it is now a simply selfish matter of when it suits them best for him to go.
It is bemusing to me that this Government, drowning in scandal, is being allowed to struggle on. Any right-minded person can see that the Boris Johnson experiment has been a massive failure. He should never have been allowed near the most senior political office in this country. He is a dangerous, selfish, entitled man with seemingly no conscience.
Every day that backbench Tory MPs allow him to continue the farce of trying to pull this thing back together is only serving to fan the flames of destruction.
They claim that it is people like me, who believe in Scottish independence, who seek to sew distrust in the Westminster system. I think it is absolutely obvious that they can claim credit for that without any effort from us.
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We’ve watched three Tory prime ministers flounder and struggle from problem to problem in recent years, and every single time they are problems entirely of their own making. Cameron and May were both destroyed by Brexit, and Johnson is being destroyed by his own ego and selfishness.
In the same time Labour has hopped from leadership competition to leadership competition, completely incapable of uniting behind a policy platform of improving people’s lives and repairing the damage of Tory austerity.
It is so frustrating to watch, knowing that we didn’t vote for any of this in Scotland. It’s why we must take every single campaigning opportunity as we move towards an independence referendum next year.
We have to win and escape this nightmare. If we don’t, I dread to think what the UK will end up looking like.
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