Pomp and circumstance interrupted
“Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way” or so goes the lyric in Pink Floyd’s fabulous ode to England - Time.
I can’t think of a better description of a leadership coup stared down but so significant in number that you just know they’ll regroup and come again, chipping away at your credibility as leader.
“Hanging on in quiet desperation” Boris Johnson won the vote of confidence in himself 211 votes for to 148 votes against, in other words over 40% of his own caucus does not have confidence in him as the leader of the country.
Not 40% of the general public, that would be considerably higher, not 40% of MPs in the house, but fully 40% of his own MPs do not support him as leader of the party and of the country. That is quite a performance review.
It gets even worse in some areas, Nicola Sturgeon tweeting:
“That result is surely the worst of all worlds for the Tories. But much more importantly: at a time of huge challenge, it saddles the UK with an utterly lame duck PM. And for Scotland, it just underlines the democratic deficit - only 2 of 59 MPs have confidence in the PM.”
In fact the Scots were somewhat optimistic ahead of the result with Mhairi Hunter tweeting:
“Scotland may not have fully engaged with the Platinum Jubilee but we're fully on board with Vote of No Confidence Day. I wouldn't rule out street parties if it goes the right way.”
Some people here in NZ commented on news posts of the challenge speculating that the same thing could, should, happen with our leader here. Such is their hatred for our PM they genuinely seemed to believe there was a likelihood of this happening here.
How about find one member in the Labour caucus, just one, that isn’t confident in Jacinda Ardern’s leadership let alone over 40% - it’s not going to happen is it?
Whereas Christopher Luxon is probably thinking that having almost 60% of your caucus wanting you as leader would be great. All reports of the leadership challenge between he and Simon Bridges were that it was considerably closer that 60/40.
So Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson has held on from this initial challenge, albeit with less support than Teresa May had eight months before her resignation.
Teresa is probably quite enjoying this in the same way Judith Collins will when Nicola Willis inevitably knifes Christopher Luxon. James Felton tweeted:
“Haven’t seen Theresa May this happy since she had the power to break apart families”
I’m guessing Boris isn’t much of a Pink Floyd fan, Money aside, but he is a renowned fan of Winston Churchill who he sees himself emulating. Best take up cigars Boris, or for popularity perhaps marmalade sandwiches and a blue duffel coat might be a more viable and timely image to re-create at this stage.
Perhaps that is unfair, I could actually imagine him standing before the media now and giving one of Churchill’s famous speeches “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
Like many of you I grew up in a country where much of the culture was straight from Britain, the tv shows, children’s books, music, even the sports we played. And like many of you spent time living there.
I have a passion for many things British, they punch above their weight in many ways. The country of Lennon and McCartney, Orwell and Tolkien, Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson, of Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl, Frankie Boyle and Russell Howard, Roger Waters and Johnny Rotten.
I even have a bit of a soft spot for the Queen and a few of her family. One thing I’m not keen on though is their electoral system.
The British electoral system is antiquated, remaining with a First Past The Post system which means the composition of parliament doesn’t actually reflect the parties that people voted for and makes it almost impossible to launch a new party.
It’s hard enough to launch a new party with our political system, imagine trying to do so in a system where you can get hundreds of thousands of votes but maybe just a handful of MPs, or even no MPs at all.
Their electoral system is so undemocratic if you go to the Wikipedia page for their last election in 2019 it describes the result as “the Conservative Party receiving a landslide majority of 80 seats” despite the fact that Labour/SNP/Lib Dems/Greens received 51% of the vote between them and the Tories only 43.6%.
If that election had been held with proportional representation then the Tories would have lost. The system so distorts things they actually have a large majority with far fewer than half of the votes. Under an MMP system Jeremy Corbyn would be the leader of a coalition government.
Boris Johnson is such an absurd, only-in-England, leader sometimes you watch him speak and you think for sure a giant foot is going to come down and crush him and a sign “and now for something completely different” will appear.
What has Boris done for the UK? Well there is the triumph that is Brexit – so maybe crowns on pint glasses? Obviously Brexit has delivered some of what it’s sponsors wanted – distrust of foreigners, or perhaps that was just a handy delivery vehicle.
I imagine the removal of regulations, terms and conditions must be well under way to increase profits and reduce workers rights - hurrah. It certainly seems to have impacted the availability and price of imported goods, English wine anyone?
He did of course show his people during Covid lockdowns that most British trait of “keeping calm and carrying on”, unfortunately it was the “carry on” partying part that has proven somewhat problematic.
Perhaps to look at it in a brighter way nearly 60% of his caucus don’t care that he held parties while telling the rest of the country to lockdown, and that he clearly broke the law repeatedly as Prime Minister, so that is something.
I think comedian Frankie Boyle described him best “a cross between an unmade bed and a head injury.”
Although I also like some of his other descriptions:
· A malevolent baked Alaska
· The interface of the public school system and foetal alcohol syndrome
· What happens when Pixar is infiltrated by the last surviving Nazi war criminal
· Oswald Moseley’s soul trapped in a Furby
Poor Boris - He thought he was Winston Churchill whereas he was actually Mr Bean the whole time.
Ah well Mr Bean is quite entertaining, for a while.