Boris Johnson is not The Man for the Moment

 

I have given up trying to understand what this Conservative Government stands for.  The heady days of the get Brexit done 80 seat majority are well behind us and in front of us we see a mediocre bunch of sycophants desperately buffeted by an increasingly effective opposition, the press and, of course, social media.

Today’s scandal of yet another shirt-lifting Tory will likely be “brushed aside” because, as the PM’s spokespeople will point out, “the public are far more concerned with the cost of living crisis (or was it crime or was it illegal immigration)?”

Boris is prone to brushing aside what he finds inconvenient.  Quite content to hand out nuclear guarantees like prizes at the school sports day, when told by people who know about these things that he really must spend more on defence, he “brushed their concerns aside.”

Meantime, the clamour for a windfall tax on the wicked profit hungry energy companies becomes politically irresistible, according to the press and the focus groups, that is.  But hang on a bit!  There is a lot that could come out in the potential unintended consequences of establishing the principle of retrospective taxation.  Why stop with fat cat industry?  What about all those who earn a bit more than the rest of us?  Imagine what a Labour Government would do once the principle of retrospective taxation had been conceded? 

Yet here we are, 6 years after the EU Referendum, and still negotiating the terms of departure.  Whilst we should be embracing our new freedoms to increase, for example, agricultural production through gene editing, using state aid to promote innovation and growth, and extracting the energy we need from indigenous resources, we are languishing in anguish, torn this way and that by focus groups and media campaigns.  And that is before the monstrous waste of HS2 and the economically emasculating, nay suicidal, agenda in pursuit of net zero.

We desperately need some leadership and sense of direction if we are to avoid some of the dire economic and social consequences of the current shocks to our cosy world.  But looking at the present front bench (and the opposition), I’m not sure I would trust any one of them to run a kebab franchise, let alone a sovereign nation with so much potential in the world.  The twin threats of Putin inspired nuclear destruction and potentially Weimar-like inflation ravaging the whole world, leave little room for optimism.  What we don’t want is the seriousness of our situation to be brushed aside in favour of some unrealistic cakeism - Boris Johnson is not the man for the moment.