If the PM had any decency, he’d resign
TO all intents and purposes, Mr Johnson’s prosecutions are over. He has been found guilty and fined for one offence and it seems he will have further fines to pay for other similar offences.
In the prosecution of the law, many people, if found guilty, are subjected to a fine. I got one
for going fast through a 30mph restricted area. Some crimes might be a little more serious and it can mean loss of employment.
The fines for breach of Covid restrictions should not incur loss of employment, unless some additional misdemeanour happened that could cause an employer to dismiss an employee.
Mr Johnson is no ordinary employee. The circumstances of his prosecution do cause the question of his employment to be considered, but not his dismissal. But the fact he accepts what he did suggests... requires... that he should resign.
Members of the House of Commons – our Parliament – should draw his attention to the facts, that as the country’s leading public figure he should see that his behaviour was such that decency and honour demands he should resign.
A UK Prime Minister convicted of breaking the law should resign. Honour demands it. After all, as a Minister of the Crown he carries the title The Right Honourable Boris Johnson. I am not too interested in who said what about who. I am interested in the Prime Minister’s responses to questions which invariable ended with the question: “Will you now resign?” He has never once answered that question. Ten times 10, he humbly, and with great contrition, apologised for what happened and the anger it caused.
The contrition bit was not believable. He then repeated and reverted back to his use of the royal ‘We’... ‘We’ did not get everything right. ‘We’ made mistakes. ‘We’ must make changes to practices. ‘We’ have learned that what we thought was OK was not OK.
Who were all these other people who constituted the ‘We’? Working in the garden on different tables, some with wine bottle and glasses on them; little sign of paper or files, no one holding a writing instrument... that’s socialising, not working. ‘I accept full responsibility’, he says; how noble. Responsibility ends at his desk.
He has never for one sentence, one word even, suggested that he actually considered thinking about resigning. On a previous occasion he did decide he was indispensable to the nation to ‘get things done’.
Not for one moment does he now reconsider that his behaviour and actions during the course of a number of identified breaches of the law over a number of weeks – one that included attending a drinks party the night before HM The
Queen attended the funeral of her husband and diligently sat alone – should lead to his resignation. None of this suggested to him that he had gone a little bit too far down a wrong road. That “sorry” was not quite enough.
Such is the self-obsession, the arrogance, the denigration of the office of Prime Minister. When people were sick and dying alone and adhered to every letter of the law. When doctors, nurses, ambulance people and hospital trolley pushers were all willingly exposing themselves to infection from infected patients. And many died. This Prime Minister repeatedly broke the isolation laws instituted by the Government he leads.
The word hypocrite is inadequate. He shames us all, with his miserable failure to do the honourable thing and leave the office he holds; the man is beyond contempt.
Don Frampton Newton Abbot, Devon