Lies, damned lies and Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson
The most recent in a long list of embarrassing episodes perpetrated by the Prime Minister, is the scandal that has been dubbed Partygate. When the rest of us were told by the UK government we couldn’t visit dying relatives and we couldn’t attend funerals, it was party central at number 10 Downing Street. The culture within was one of entitlement and arrogance. But we should not be surprised because this is not something new. Throughout his rise to the top of the Conservative and Unionist Party, bumbling Boris has been guilty of many serious faux pas. While he was a journalist, he was sacked for making up quotes. Two years later he provided his friend, Darius Guppy with the home address of a reporter that Guppy was arranging to have violently assaulted. Three years later he was forced to apologise for an article about the Hillsborough disaster in which he said, Liverpudlians were wallowing in their ‘victim status’. None of this has harmed his political career even though it has also been less than impressive. He was dismissed as shadow arts minister by then-Conservative leader Michael Howard in 2004, resigned as Foreign Secretary before he could be sacked, described Muslim women wearing burkas as looking like letter boxes. During the Vote Leave campaign, he backed the infamous advert on a bus which claimed, that the UK was sending £350m a week to the EU that could instead be spent on the NHS. The UK Statistics Authority said Mr Johnson’s claims were “a clear misuse of official statistics”. And then there was the investigation over the refurbishment of his Downing Street flat, for which the Conservative and Unionist Party was fined nearly £18,000. And all that was before we even heard of Partygate. After initially denying that he knew of any parties, he then said he did but he wasn’t at them and now we know both were lies. The Metropolitan Police have fined him and are investigating other parties that it is believed he attended. The burning questions are why does this man keep his job and how did he get it in the first place? And the answer is simple, people within his own party make excuses for his behaviour and facilitate his continuation. Without his party he will be nothing and while he remains in office it’s not just the Prime Minister that should be held responsible it is those that stand by him and in doing so are mocking the sacrifices made by so many others.
Ronnie Cowan MP 