Don’t you know there’s a war on? Actually no, I didn’t. Sure Ukraine is at war with Russia, but the UK isn’t directly involved. I mean, I know that Ukraine begins with ‘UK’, but that still doesn’t mean that Boris Johnson is a war leader and therefore shouldn’t be kicked out of office for minor stuff like breaking the law and lying to parliament, despite what the right-wing press might want us to believe. It isn’t just the usual suspects like the Daily Mail and Daily Express trotting out this sort of nonsense – the other day I saw some Tory MP blathering on about how while we might not actually be at war, we’re damn close to being. Again, we’re not. He was trying to make the case not so much for Johnson to stay in office, but for the Tories to cling to power, suggesting that if Johnson did resign, then there should be a ‘war cabinet’ set up. Not a cross-party national war cabinet, mind you, but a Tory ‘war cabinet’ to see us through this ‘crisis’. Once more, why would we need a ‘war cabinet’ when we are not – nor are we likely to be – at war? The only crisis facing the UK is the constitutional one Johnson and his cronies are creating by his effective tearing up of the ministerial code and ignoring all of the established norms for behaviour in public office.
But hey, now it seems that the UK even has ‘war aims’ – for a war which we aren’t actually fighting in. This is according to living cartoon character and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, (possibly the most over-promoted person in cabinet, although in this government, that’s always going to be a close call), who has declared that it is the UK’s ‘war aims’ to give Russia a ‘good spanking’, or something equally asinine. Basically, she seems to have grandiose delusions that, using the Ukrainians as proxies, the UK is going to defeat Russia’s military and bring about the downfall of Putin. This sort of approach makes a sort of sense for a government as right wing as ours – they’ve ‘out sourced’ just about every other public service, so why not wars, as well? It’s far better value for money to fight them on someone else’s soil, using someone else’s army – it avoids all those casualties and damage that seem to upset voters so much. So why not have out-sourced ‘war aims’ as well? While we don’t actually fight the war, just send supplies, instead, why not tell those fighting it what they should be fighting it for?
So intent do the Tories and their press lick spittles seem to be upon convincing the British electorate that we are, in fact, at war, when we aren’t, that I’m surprised that they haven’t started handing out gas masks and testing air raid warnings. It is surely only a matter of time before they start handing out the tin hats and arm bands to local Tory party members so that they can dress up as ARP wardens. I’m even more surprised that Johnson hasn’t spent the local elections campaign going around the country dressed as Winston Churchill, puffing cigar smoke and giving the v-sign to potential voters. Mark my words, before you know it, you’ll be watching a TV news report from Downing Street and you’ll notice that sandbags have appeared outside the door of Number Ten and that the policeman on duty is wearing a tin hat and carrying a gas mask case. What next? Will these lying bastards start telling us that all those empty shelves in shops and fuel shortages are down to ‘the war’ and issue ration books? I wouldn’t put anything past these evil scumbags.
Yes, indeed – in no time at all it will be nothing but Vera Lynn and George Formby films on TV and nightly black outs to foil enemy bombers. The latter, of course, will be presented as a way for people to cut their energy bills – which are so high because so many tankers are being sunk by U-Boats while en route to the UK. Doubtless, the state of run down and half derelict housing estates will be blamed upon bombing raids and their occupants herded into underground sewers, sorry, bunkers, for their own safety, while their hovels above are demolished and the area redeveloped and gentrified by developers. It’ll be the same when it comes to the NHS: hospital waiting times are up because the Health Service has been overwhelmed with ‘war casualties’. Ultimately, they could use ‘the war’ as an excuse to round up all of the government’s critics and have them charged with ‘sedition’ or even ‘treason’, resulting in them all being locked up or shot.
These attempts by Johnson and the Tories to use the war in Ukraine as, first a distraction from his law-breaking and incompetence and secondly as a spurious excuse for him to cling to power, are hugely offensive. It also looks so desperate – the eagerness to get those photo opportunities in Kiev as soon as the Russian siege had been lifted, the attempts, at every juncture, to try and ‘big up’ the UK’s role in supplying Ukraine with weapons, the deluded claims of how Johnson has ‘led’ the rest of Europe in supporting Ukraine. All the while hoping that this will somehow divert attention from the fact that he is now a convicted criminal, not to mention all the increasingly repressive legislation, (most of which, ironically, puts on a par with Putin’s Russia when it comes to suppressing the right to protest), his government is enacting, not to mention morally bankrupt (and possibly illegal under international law), measures against refugees, (basically outsourcing them to Rwanda). I keep hoping against hope that Johnson and company might finally have committed one transgression too many, that a line might finally have been crossed where even their most ardent supporters can no no longer stomach them. Yet I’m constantly disappointed – their tenacity and desperation to stay in power sadly continues to defeat the forces of decency.
Doc Sleaze
