By-election defeats prove that many are done with Johnson So much for ‘levelling up’
■■1717: The Grand Lodge of English Freemasons was formed in London.
■■1825: William Henry Smith, English newsagent and bookseller, was born. He joined his father’s newsagent business and took full control in 1846, building WHSmith, the biggest chain of newsagents in Britain, before going into politics.
■■1840: The Birmingham and Gloucester Railway between Cheltenham and Bromsgrove was opened, a stretch that includes the Lickey incline, one of the severest gradients on a British main line.
■■1859: Henri Dunant, a Swiss businessman travelling through Italy, saw the aftermath of the Battle of Solferino and was inspired to found the International Red Cross. ■■1878: St John Ambulance was formed.
■■1895: Jack Dempsey, US world heavyweight boxing champion from 1919 to 1926, was born. Known as the Manassa Mauler, he was the most popular boxer of his time. ■■1947: The series of “flying saucer” stories started when a pilot, Kenneth Arnold, reported seeing nine disc-shaped objects over Mount Rainier,
Washington.
■■1948: The Berlin Airlift began when the USSR blockaded Berlin, requiring the Allies to fly in food and other essential supplies.
■■1981: The bridge over the Humber Estuary opened to traffic - its official opening by the Queen took place on July
17.
WHAT does a populist government do when it isn’t popular any more? Answers on a postcard to 10 Downing Street. My postcard is going to simply say ‘Dump Boris Johnson!’
Whilst it is often dangerous to read too much into by-election results, the two which took place yesterday suggest the country is at least beginning to come to its political senses – and the Tiverton and Honiton result in particular is a real lesson for all progressives like me who think that any kind of sensible progressive government has got to be far better than this dishonest, and self-entitled excuse for a government.
Changing subjects, it really does seem to be scandal after scandal with Boris Johnson.
There have been lots of reports in the media this week over claims Johnson tried to get his current wife Carrie appointed as his highly paid, tax-payer funded chief of staff when Johnson was foreign secretary and still married to his previous wife Marina Wheeler.
Significantly, Johnson did not deny this when it was raised in the House of Commons.
Lord Geidt, who was Johnson’s ethics adviser until his very recent resignation, has been reported as saying this matter is ‘ripe for investigation’ to determine whether the ministerial code of conduct was broken.
The sooner Johnson is gone the better.
Steve Shackleton, via email
AT first glance barristers and railway workers may seem to have little in common. But both have been the victim of more than a decade of
Tory austerity and both have been moved to take industrial action.
Railway workers have begun a series of strikes to secure a wage increase in the era of rising inflation following years when their wages declined in real terms. They are also resisting job losses as plans emerge to close booking offices.
Defence lawyers will refuse to take on new cases after June 27 because cuts to legal aid funding has made it impossible for them to make a living.
And these workers are not the only ones coming to terms with years of declining real pay – teachers and NHS staff, including junior doctors, are among those expecting pay offers well below the double-digit price increases of food and energy.
The government’s response? Workers must not ask for realistic pay awards but put up with falling living standards.
So much for Johnson’s promise of a high-wage economy, the end of austerity and ‘levelling up.’
Wages have not been responsible for the rate of inflation but yet again working people have to pay the price.
But not all salaries will have to take a hit. It has been reported that No.10 wants the rules governing the size of bosses salaries and bonuses in the financial sector – in place since they crashed the economy in 2008 – scrapped.
This way, it its argued, more financial companies can be lured to London. Bankers, unlike ordinary workers, must be rewarded with high pay.
It’s not difficult to guess where many Tory MPs will end up working when voters finally see through their hypocrisy.