Thread by @AndrewGodsell

The failures of #BorisJohnson.

A thread.

#JohnsonOut #WhyNOTTrusttheTories andrewgodsell.wordpress.com/2022/06/12/the…

The 2019 Conservative Party leadership contest saw Boris Johnson emerge as the winner, a year after he resigned as Foreign Secretary – in a disagreement with Cabinet colleagues over Brexit strategy.

Johnson was appointed Prime Minister by Elizabeth II on July 24, having given an untested assurance that he commanded a majority in the House of Commons. Johnson was widely distrusted, due to his serial dishonesty and incompetence, plus racist, sexist, and homophobic comments.

May had failed to deliver an exit from the EU, more than three years after the referendum, but Johnson claimed departure would happen on October 31, a date just over three months away.

In August, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Leader of the House of Commons, obtained agreement from the monarch to prorogue Parliament, for five weeks, leading up to a planned Queen’s Speech in mid-October.

It was generally believed that Johnson and the government were seeking to prevent Parliament scrutinising Brexit plans, and legal challenges began.

In early September, Parliament passed what became known as the Benn Act – introduced by Hilary Benn, a Labour MP, and son of Tony – requiring the Prime Minister to seek a further extension to Brexit if, by October 19, Parliament had not approved either a withdrawal agreement or…

…a no deal departure. The combined Conservative and DUP MPs were now in a minority position in the Commons, and the government was defeated on several substantive votes.

Johnson, acting with increasing irrationality, said “I’d rather be dead in a ditch” when asked if he would seek an extension.

In late September, after Parliament had been prorogued for two weeks, the Supreme Court ruled the government’s action unlawful, and the legislature resumed sitting.

On October 19, Parliament met on a Saturday (for the first time since the Falklands War, 37 years earlier), to consider an amended agreement, which the government had reached with the EU. The Commons voted to delay any approval until the necessary legislation had been passed.

Johnson sent the letter to the EU required by the Benn Act, but petulantly refused to sign it, and also sent a contradictory letter, arguing against an extension.

Three days later, the Commons gave a second reading to the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, but rejected a government attempt to rush it through Parliament.

Johnson announced a pause in this legislative process, and was forced to agree with the EU that Brexit would be delayed for a third time, probably until the end of January 2020.

With the extension in place, Johnson got the agreement of the House of Commons, at the fourth attempt, to an early General Election.

With polling date set as December 12 2019, Britain entered its first Winter Election since February 1974 – and the first such contest in December since 1923.

The campaign opened with the government preventing release of a report, from the House of Commons Intelligence and Security Committee, on growing interference in British politics by Russia. This included large scale funding of the Conservative Party by Russian Oligarchs.

The report finally arrived the following Summer. The Conservatives sought to make Brexit the main Election issue, and were helped by the Brexit Party, set up by Nigel Farage (previously leader of the now rapidly declining UKIP), not opposing sitting Conservative MPs.

Labour proposed a programme that would end austerity, and rebuild the NHS plus other public services. They aimed to negotiate an improved deal with the EU, and put this to a second referendum, with an option to remain rather than leave.

When the results were announced, the Conservatives had 365 MPs, and an 80 seat majority. Labour were reduced to 202 MPs, their lowest total since 1935, largely due to the loss of support in areas that voted to leave the EU.

Despite great proclamations from Farage, who lacked the courage to actually stand as a candidate, the Brexit Party failed to win any seats.

At the start of the new Parliament, Johnson’s government reintroduced the EU Withdrawal Agreement Bill. It became law eight days before the UK left the European Union, the latter event taking place on January 31 2020.

This ended the era of EEC / EU membership, which had lasted 47 years, and the UK entered a transition period, due to expire at the end of 2020.

Across the centuries, Britain has been influenced by the arrival of people from many nationalities, including Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Normans, Dutch, and Germans.

In recent decades, people from Commonwealth states, and the rest of Europe, have added to the process, as Britain has become an increasingly diverse, multicultural, society.

In uncertain times, the positive elements of British history offer cause for celebration, and hope for the future.

The first UK cases of the Covid-19 Coronavirus pandemic were diagnosed on the day that Brexit took place. The government, particularly Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, took little action to alert the public to the scale of the danger.

Pressure from NHS staff, opposition parties, scientists, and the wider public, prompted action, as the death toll rose. The government belatedly started to recommend social distancing, and closed schools, but Johnson did not announce a national lockdown until March 23.

In the following months, testimony from NHS staff, and patients, showed that hospitals – already struggling, due to underfunding during a decade of austerity – suddenly had to deal with additional admissions of Covid patients.

There was a shortage of ventilators, despite claims by the government that they were urgently arranging to increase production and acquisition, while many frontline health workers lacked the required Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).

The UK rapidly suffered one of the largest Covid death totals, per head of population, in the world, and this continued to be the case for many months.

In late May, it was revealed that Dominic Cummings, the chief advisor to Johnson, plus the former’s wife, Mary Wakefield, had deliberately broken lockdown, while they were both ill with Covid, taking a trip from London to Durham.

Wakefield and Cummings had also published a false account, claiming that they stayed in London, self-isolating, while unwell. Despite widespread public anger, and political pressure, Johnson refused to dismiss Cummings.

A few months later, Cummings departed from his role, having upset Carrie Symonds, who was Johnson’s partner, and a person with a disproportionately large influence in a power struggle within Downing Street.

Lockdown eased over the late Spring and Summer, with pubs and restaurants re-opening, and schools returned to normal in September.

This all caused a rise in Covid cases, to which the government reacted with a delayed second lockdown, lasting four weeks, from early November to the start of December.

Post-Brexit negotiations, between the UK government and the EU, took place at intervals during the transition period.

An agreement was finally announced onChristmas Eve, following which Parliament approved legislation on December 30, and the European Union (Future Relationship) Act 2020 received Royal Assent on the last day of a tumultuous year.

Johnson announced a third lockdown, on January 4 2021, as the numbers of Covid cases, and deaths, moved towards a peak higher than in the first wave, the previous Spring. Throughout the pandemic, the government displayed a grotesque combination of incompetence and corruption.

Co-ordination of the national test and trace system was outsourced to Serco, a private company with links to the Conservative Party, rather than being led by the NHS. Edward Argar, a government Health minister, was a former executive at Serco.

The current chief executive of the company, Rupert Soames, was the brother of Nicholas Soames, a recently-retired Conservative MP. The Serco system failed to be effective, despite a massive budget, increased to £37 billion in March 2021.

The government also awarded hundreds of multi-million pound contracts to private companies, for the procurement of PPE. Many deals were agreed with organisations, lacking experience with PPE, run by people who were donors to the Conservatives, or friends of the party’s MPs.

In an attempt to conceal the extent of the PPE scandal, Matt Hancock delayed publication of the contracts, which led to a High Court ruling, during February 2021, that he had acted unlawfully.

A year on from the initial fatalities, the Covid death total in the UK reached 126,000 people during March, based on the government’s preferred measure, which was a death within 28 days of a positive test.

A more realistic record showed a higher figure, as over 149,000 people had Covid recorded as a cause on their death certificate.

Covid restrictions were gradually eased in the Spring, while the government continued to give mixed messages.

Border control had been haphazard throughout the pandemic, and there was now a delay of several weeks in limiting travel from India, where cases were particularly high, as Johnson sought a trade deal with the authoritarian government of that state.

This led to a large number of British cases of the Delta Variant, first identified in India.

At the end of June, it emerged that Matt Hancock was having an affair with Gina Coladangelo, a long-term friend, who had been appointed a director at the Department of Health and Social Care a few months earlier.

Johnson accepted Hancock’s apology for breaking workplace social distancing rules, with security video from Hancock’s office showing him kissing Coladangelo. Amidst much criticism, Hancock resigned from the government, the day after Johnson failed to dismiss him.

On July 5, Johnson announced the end of Covid protections would happen a fortnight later.

Covid cases rose sharply during the final weeks of 2021, with the arrival of the Omicron variant, and the government reintroduced some public health measures.

Reports surfaced of multiple parties in Downing Street, during the course of the pandemic, which had broken restrictions on social gatherings. A video from a year earlier, in which members of Johnson’s staff joked about a Christmas party, was broadcast on television.

On the following day, December 8 2021, Johnson told Parliament “I have been repeatedly assured since these allegations emerged that there was no party, and that no Covid rules were broken”. Johnson announced that the Cabinet Secretary, Simon Case, would investigate.

Ten days later, Case was taken off the case, as he had attended one of a growing number of Whitehall parties being probed. The inquiry was passed to Sue Gray, another senior civil servant.

The Metropolitan Police refused several times to open a criminal investigation, but changed their mind in late January 2022, saying they thought 12 of the 16 events identified by Gray, across 2020 and 2021, might have broken the law.

With the police persuading Gray to limit the detail in her report, an interim summary was published, on January 31.

It was clear there had been multiple breaches of Covid rules in Downing Street, which meant the Prime Minister, who attended several parties, lied to Parliament in his attempted denial.

Johnson, characteristically claiming he had not done anything wrong, refused calls for his resignation.

On April 12, it was announced that Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, had been fined for breaking Covid laws, along with Carrie Johnson, the wife of the premier.

This was due to their attending a birthday celebration for Boris Johnson, at Downing Street, in 2020.

This was the first time a sitting Prime Minister had been found to have broken the criminal law (less than three years after Johnson’s prorogation of Parliament was ruled unlawful).

The Metropolitan Police concluded their investigation the following month, with 126 fines having been issued to 83 people, in respect of eight events. Although Johnson attended several of the illegal parties, he was not given any further fines.

A revised report from Sue Gray was released on May 25. Gray was very critical of the political, and civil service, leadership in Downing Street, for allowing numerous law-breaking parties to be held.

Johnson dishonestly claimed the report vindicated his explanation that he had been attending work events, to thank colleagues, as part of his leadership role. In the next few days, a growing number of Conservative MPs called for a vote of no confidence in Johnson as party leader.

A vote was held on June 6, with Johnson winning by a margin of 211 votes to 148. The size of the rebellion was larger than that experienced by Theresa May in a 2018 vote, but Johnson’s supporters were willing to keep an obviously weak Prime Minister in power.

With the Conservative government having abandoned measures to counter the pandemic, during February, the number of people who had died from Covid, based on death certificates, had now tragically risen to nearly 196,000.

The United Kingdom had the highest Covid death total in Europe.

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