Tories still rejecting honesty and decency

IS it true that a lot of the 160,000 Tory Party members who are now choosing our next PM will “spoil” their votes by putting Boris Johnson’s name on their voting papers?

The British people will not find out until after September 5 closing date for this “private” election. Parliament returns after its holiday on the 1st, 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 of food and energy prices 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 “stale, male and pale” – white male pensioners. Would the percentage of spoiled papers mean a re-run of the vote, ie 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?

These questions will loom destructively over our society for decades due to his

“achievements” to date. Since 2019 he has made the upper House 10% bigger so that his legislation could more easily pass through Parliament. He leaves a voting system with perhaps two million of us excluded – those who don’t have a photographic recognition document. 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.

Under his “leadership” we have certainly”taken back” our narrow-mindedness and ability at self-delusion and xenophobia. When we so desperately need attention on the NHS, education, the climate, we will probably have Ms Truss to “rule” us, the inheritor of the Johnson disease of rejection of honesty and sensitivity.

JEREMY HALL