From time to time, I remember my beloved mother-in-law who was taken by Covid-19 back in the dark days of 2020. She had not been well for some time, but there is no question the virus took her before her time. She was a wonderfully warm, funny and wise woman and we will remember her always. I remember her, too, at a socially distanced funeral at the Memorial Woodlands at Earthcott Green, near Bristol. Few people were allowed to be there because of the fear of spreading Covid, something we accepted for the greater good. It was the lowest point of the pandemic.
A year later, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh died. Who can forget the sight of his widow, Queen Elizabeth II, forced to sit alone at his funeral, on what must have been one of the darkest days of her life? By instinct, I’m a republican, but that does not mean I have a heart of stone and don’t feel the pain of others. Whatever you make of her bizarre day job, she carried it out it out faithfully and to the best of her ability. It was public service of the highest order. The country mourned the lives of those who died from Covid, whether they were royals or ordinary folk. And most of us did as we were asked by the government to slow the spread of a deadly virus. Yet those days seem a lifetime ago, or at least they did until today when it was confirmed that the prime minister of the time, Boris Johnson was partying and then lied about it to parliament.
Let us be crystal clear about Johnson. He is an habitual and career liar, a narcissist whose only aim in life has been to further his own aims and career. Only other liars and sycophantic creeps surrounding him pretend this is not the case. Over 200,000 people in the UK have died from Covid – and let’s not even mention, at the moment, the emotional and economic angles to the crisis – and all Johnson cares about, as ever, is Johnson.
I lost friends and acquaintances during the pandemic and know of many others who did, too. I marvelled at those who worked on the frontline in the health and care sectors, in particular, but generally everyone who helped us get through. Today, all we hear are the pathetic bleatings of someone who was always unfit to hold any form of public office finally being held to account. And he just can’t take it.
I shouldn’t even be blogging about Johnson. He’s not a victim. The little people are the victims, particularly the sick and vulnerable, many of whom were sent to their death in care homes which were plainly unable to cope with them. The night before Prince Philip’s funeral, Number 10 was partying. So, I’m wrong, there. Johnson’s contempt for human life went everywhere.
Doubtless, Johnson and his cronies will blame the so-called ‘establishment’ for his tribulations, but we aren’t fooled, are we? Old Etonian, Oxford educated Johnson literally is the establishment. Theirs is the wealth, privilege and power, not ours, and the reaction to blame others is truth-twisting desperation, gaslighting on an industrial scale.
It was not that long ago that much of the country was in thrall to ‘Boris’. He was ‘different’ to other politicians, you’d want to have a pint with him. Well, he was different, a liar and an opportunist who, for example, didn’t believe in Brexit but supported it publicly to advance his own career, dividing and almost wrecking the country at the same time. It was a trick that worked for a time – long enough to see him reach the top job but the more we saw of him, the less there was to see.
Meanwhile, we still mourn those we lost, unable to be with family members as they died, unable to attend funerals. I am beyond anger now and the passage of time eases the pain of loss as one recalls the happy memories.
Johnson will remain in public life because for the likes of him, there will always be money-making opportunities by way of speaking engagements, book deals and the like because that’s what the establishment does: it looks after its own. Indeed, some will still ‘love Boris’ and imagine that somehow he was undone by a powerful ruling elite or some such invention. No. Johnson is what he has always been and his political career lies in ruins not despite it, but because of it. History may be kind to him for a short while but in the end facts will speak for themself.
As the right wing MP Enoch Powell once put it: “all political lives end in failure”. In the case of Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, we can be grateful that he was right.
