Time for an end to this lot’s corrupt shambles

IS it true that a lot of the 160,000 Tory Party members now choosing our next PM will “spoil” their votes by putting Boris Johnson’s name on their voting papers? We will not find out until after September 5.

Parliament returns on September 1 so there will be another five days when our “world-beating” democratic system shambles on with no replacement for the Pied Piper of Eton. At this crisis time, decisions will again be delayed.

Will the organisers of the Tory vote tell us if papers have been spoiled? Could it be that the new PM will be chosen by half of the 160,000 minus the spoiling voters which could be around 70,000 people or less, the majority of whom are white male pensioners. Would the percentage of spoiled papers mean a rerun of the vote – i.e. no new PM until mid-autumn?

How destructive of our justabout-surviving political system can one man’s fortunately brief dominance be? Why can people not see beyond the hair, the “boosterism” and the buffoonery? Have we lost our common sense? How can we recover? These questions will loom destructively over our society for decades due to his “achievements”. Since 2019 he has made the upper House 10 per cent bigger so that his legislation could more easily pass through Parliament. He leaves a voting system with perhaps two million of us – those who don’t have a photographic recognition document – excluded. He leaves enormously reduced demonstration rights whereby the police can stipulate the start and end time of any street meeting. He leaves the inhumanity of the small-boat people declared criminal and perhaps electronically tagged often after they have just escaped real deprivation or genocide.

Johnson’s ravaging of the obligation of Government ministers to face Parliamentary scrutiny means that cronyism and incompetent decisions will remain a festering sore. And there’s the proposal that journalists from organisations that the Government doesn’t like will have to pay £125 each to attend party conferences, whereas journalists from supportive organisations pay only £5. What an Eton prank to deprive citizens who are critical of the Government of solid information; almost as “funny” as lecturing the CBI about Peppa Pig World. There is also proposed legislation which will reduce our courts’ ability to examine future Government actions and further reductions of the financial independence of the BBC. Is he really out to move us towards a semi-dictatorship?

Not content with the above, he wants to stuff the House of Lords with up to 50 chums/lords who would promise to support Tory party legislation. And who’s on the promotion list? Why, Johnson’s dad, of course.

Then there’s Nadine Dorries, Minister of Culture and Johnson’s most die-hard supporter, who recently stated that “loyalty and decency” were the two factors most valued by the Tory Party.

Under his “leadership” we have certainly ”taken back” our narrowmindedness and ability at selfdelusion and xenophobia. When we so desperately need attention on the NHS, education, the climate, etc. we will probably have Ms Truss.

We so profoundly need better than a Johnson II and the entrails of the Tory Party to “govern” for maybe another seven years.

Jeremy Hall Crockernwell