I do not know how many of my readers watched the Lords debate on the Internal Market Bill yesterday – it went on long into the night – but those that didn’t missed a treat.  There were outstanding contributions from many,  peers of all political persuasions, including, in no particular order:

• Lady Boothroyd
• Lord Pannnick
• The Archbishop of Canterbury
• Lord Judge
• Lord Stirrup
• Lord Kerr of Kinlochard
• Lord Bowness

In addition to the debate itself, their Lordships provided an eloquent argument – as good as any I’ve heard – in favour of a non-elected second chamber.  Those who spoke came not only from left and right, but a wide variety of backgrounds from which – for the most part – they excelled.  Lords Spiritual, Temporal, Political, Legal, and Combative.

It is an enormous benefit to this country to be able to draw on such a bank of experience, and that those who speak do so without fear or favour: a stark contrast to the House of Commons, a point emphasised by the current administration shambles.

And, so far as I could hear,  their Lordships were of one mind:  Johnson’s behaviour is without precedent, explanation, or reason.  It is dishonourable and it brings his government and our country into disrepute. It damages our reputation and our influence.

Starmer “IN” No 10 and Britain “IN” Europe

“Once you deprive people of the right to go to court to challenge the government, you are in a dictatorship, you are in a tyranny.”  The words of Lord Neuberger, former President of the Supreme Court. Serious enough in and of themselves, but truly chilling when coupled with the comment of a former Conservative cabinet minister: “Conservatives believe in parliament, they don’t try to bypass it.  Conservatives believe in the rule of law, they don’t announce to the House of Commons and the world that they are going to break the law.  Conservatives believe in the Union and in trying to hold on to the best aspects of diplomacy like the Good Friday Agreement. This is a bad English nationalist government with no idea of where it is going.”

It is no secret that I do not like the prime minister, I despise him.   But I do not think the situation in which we find ourselves is entirely of his making.  He is, in point of fact, the organ grinder’s monkey, dancing the tune of those behind the scene. The two who are, I fear, truly responsible for our destiny are Piggling Bland (Gove) and his unelected, unpalatable, unsackable henchman, Cummings.  They are driven men.

Men do not spring into being in full maturity. They – we – are the product of our genes and our upbringing: in Gove’s case he was adopted, and, by all accounts, his adopted parents did not have a particularly easy time of it, either financially or personally.   The result of this, I think, is that he is out for revenge: he wants to destroy the system that gave rise to his feelings of insecurity and inadequacy, and the way he has chosen to do so in the manner of every family runt from King John onward, is from within.

And while Piggling presents himself as the polite and superficially decent face of government, his man Cummings – for Cummings is Piggling’s man make no mistake about it – is a psychopath.

What a tide of woes
Comes rushing on this woeful land at once!
I know not what to do

These words, spoken by the Duke of York in Act II of Shakespeare’s Richard II summarise Johnson’s  predicament as well as anything I have read.

I do not mean this to be rude, but I find myself wondering whether Piggling Bland is actually sane.  Maybe his intake of cocaine has addled his brain.

The very idea of putting a border (to be policed, note – one might have thought there could be better uses for the Boys in Blue in these days of covid restrictions) around Kent is absurd. Absurd and unmentioned in any Brexit briefing I remember before people were asked to vote on it.

I wonder if any reader knows what is it that Gove – for it seems to be he who is the true driving force behind this government of all the failures – is really trying to achieve ?  In all honesty, I have no idea; and I wonder whether he has.

Kier Starmer is a decent hard working politician, clever and determined.  No doubt about any of that: but the question in my mind has for some time been, is he nasty enough.

Today he showed the razor’s edge beneath the velvet glove.  Referring to the Flatulent Leader, that is our prime minister,  he said “while he was writing about bendy bananas, I was defending victims and prosecuting terrorists.”  Talk about “pin the tale on the donkey.”

By all accounts Piggling Bland (Gove) was tied in knots in an interview on the Today programme this morning.  One important question keeps going through my mind: has Mike been on the coke again ?

The antidote to our Flatulent Leader was, by common consent, Clement Attlee; modest, taciturn, humane and efficient.  Oh yes, and honest too. Stories about Clem are legion: one of my favourites is when he arrived at Buckingham Palace following his victory.  For a few moments Attlee and the King stood silent.   Finally Attlee remarked “they’ve made me prime minister.”  To which the King replied, “I know.  I heard it on the wireless.”  It is said that he used to get around the country in a Morris Minor driven by his wife, while he sat beside her doing the crossword.  While he went in to attend whatever meeting it was had driven him to, she picked up her knitting.

But Attlee may have been a lone figure, but he was not alone in triumph. The Attlee government was successful beyond any successor administration because he included, and kept in check, the big beasts of the day: Bevin, Bevan, Morrison, Greenwood, Dalton, Cripps etc..   I do not recall the name of his “special adviser,” if he had one.  I am sure I do not need to stress the contrast his ministers provide to scheming and incompetent yes-men-and-women with whom Johnson has surrounded barricaded himself.

Rumours are afoot concerning the prime minister’s younger sibling, Max Johnson.

More to follow, I dare say

A second wave of the virus looks as if it could be on the way, and the government’s chosen cure, “test and trace,” has failed.  The economy is plunging, unemployment set to soar.  The UK’s international reputation in tatters.   Taken individually, certainly together, this is disaster.

Disaster it may be, unpredictable it was not.  Let me remind you of Max Hastin’s words, taken from an article in The Guardian headed “I was Boris Johnson’s boss: he is utterly unfit to be prime minister.” He wrote: “he is unfit for national office, because it seems he cares for no interest save his own fame and gratification…. We can’t predict what a Johnson government will do, because its prospective leader has not got around to thinking about this. But his premiership will almost certainly reveal a contempt for rules, precedent, order and stability…. Dignity still matters in public office, and Johnson will never have it. Yet his graver vice is cowardice, reflected in a willingness to tell any audience, whatever he thinks most likely to please, heedless of the inevitability of its contradiction an hour later.”

How long will this débâcle last and what damage will it do ?  Hastings had something to say on that, too: “the Johnson premiership could survive for three or four years, shambling from one embarrassment and debacle to another, of which Brexit may prove the least…. For many of us, his elevation will signal Britain’s abandonment of any claim to be a serious country. It can be claimed that few people realised what a poor prime minister Theresa May would prove until they saw her in Downing Street. With Boris, however, what you see now is almost assuredly what we shall get from him as ruler of Britain.”