Contempt for the rules
Many in the Conservative Party are currently rallying behind our beleaguered prime minister but the plan fact is the Johnson age is characterised by presidential imposture and the abolition of accountability (No time for blind faith in the man in number 10, The News, April 22).
In an era where fact and fiction often blend into one, what could be more seductive to his fan base than his brand of matey nationalism which conceals the emptiness behind the masquerade.
The plain fact is that Britain is now ruled by a government called Conservative but is nothing of the kind. Its mastery was derived from his personal popularity and the opportunity afforded by a referendum characterised by misinformation and lies to smooth his path to number 10.
It succeeded not just by a rejection of Europe, but a willingness to embrace any other policy that pleased his fan base, and the brutal suppression of dissent. Backed by a front bench of inadequates relying for their bread upon his patronage, they continue to recoil from the aspiration to displace him with someone lacking in his generous but contrived star quality.
He has borrowed from the Trump playbook a contempt for rules and precedents, side-lining the crucial challenges of inadequate infrastructure, incompetent policing, lack of health and social care, and rampant inequality.
His pledges on levelling up, 40 new hospitals, improving education, reforming the railways etc all lack substantive policies for any of these things, but are a reflection on simply what he does best - telling every audience what it wants to hear.
As a nation we are cursed by selfimportance, and an unwarranted belief in our exceptionalism. The unmodified 18th century British constitution is at the root of the problem.
The infusion of parliament into both a law-making body and the source of government means there is little effective sanction or scrutiny of government policy, and the electoral first-past-thepost system of voting not only disenfranchises millions of voters but only serves the governing party rather than the public interest.
Your editorial flags up the weirdness of the man in number
10’s imposture and abolition of accountability that characterises the current government and our grip on reality.
Honesty and moral authority have evaporated, and to quote the words of Oliver Cromwell to the 1653 rump parliament – ‘It is high time to put an end to your sitting in this place.
For God’s sake, go!’