A great article on Boris Johnson's resignation, by German journalist @annettedittert - who since 2008 has worked in London as senior correspondent & bureau chief for ARD German TV, & in 2019 was awarded "political journalist of the year" for her reporting on #Brexit.
Johnson's departure is a victory for democracy over Britain's declining political culture. And it shows that even a prime minister must not lie to parliament.
A commentary by Annette Dittert.
Johnson's political career ends as it began: with brazen lies.
In his farewell statement, which is more like the heated tantrum of a five-year-old than that of a former PM, Johnson explained his departure as the result of a "witch hunt" called for by anti-Brexit, pro-Europeans & other members of the "establishment". None of this is true.
He is solely to blame for his case. The parliamentary committee of inquiry, which after months of deliberations has now clearly come to the conclusion that Johnson lied to parliament, consists of a majority of Tories, the chairman, Bernard Jenkin, is even an arch-Brexiteer.
And even if Johnson leaves open a possible return to politics in his statement, the truth is different. Even if he'll definitely continue to haunt behind the political stage and occasionally set fire to one or the other backdrop - the party's over for him. And that's good.
The so-called Privileges Committee, the parliamentary investigative committee whose report is expected to be published in the next few days, has restored one of the essential principles of parliamentary democracy, that the parliament must not be lied to, even by its PM.
The exact text is not yet known, but it is clear from Johnson's statement that the report does not let him get off as a minor case. The consequence of such a finding would have been a ten-day expulsion from the House of Commons, followed by a by-election, which he may have lost.
Johnson's resignation is nothing more than a last-ditch effort to make the headlines again.
At least in Great Britain he should succeed in the next few days. But that shouldn't detract from what the Privileges Committee has achieved here:
a victory for democracy over Britain's increasingly deteriorating political culture. Even a prime minister is not allowed to lie to parliament, so the factual truth remains a valuable asset and the crucial foundation for holding politicians accountable in a democracy.
The extraordinarily strong position of the executive in the British parliamentary system has often been criticized in the past, & rightly so. A PM with a clear majority can do more or less whatever he wants on the island - if necessary, even disregard basic rules of parliament.
Johnson repeatedly took this to the extreme during his time as prime minister, the most extreme case being the illegal suspension of parliament in the middle of the legislative period in 2019 because Johnson did not like its attitude critical of Brexit.
But there are checks & balances in the British system. Weeks after overturning Parliament, the Supreme Court reinstated it in autumn 2019. The current decision of the Parliamentary Inquiry Committee is a similarly important event for British political culture in this respect.
It is not surprising that in his statement Johnson angrily insulted this committee as ridiculous and denounced it as an undemocratic "kangaroo court".
He leaves the political arena exactly as he came: with a lot of noise and full of contempt for the democratic institutions of Great Britain, which he used for a while but just couldn't completely destroy.
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Just two opinion polling companies have put Reform UK on 20% or more: People Polling (owned by Legatum Snr Fellow Matt Goodwin) & Whitestone Insight (CEO Andrew Hawkins).
The links to Reform UK, the Evangelical Christian Right & fossil fuel interests are concerning.
On 18 June, a poll commissioned by GB "News" (co-owned by Legatum), conducted by Snr Fellow at Legatum Matt Goodwin, put Reform on 24%
The average of all polls since is just 16%.
Only two other outlier polls have put Reform on 20% or more - both conducted by Whitestone Insight.
Before revealing the connections between the two outlier polls & Reform UK & fossil fuel interests, some important context.
In 1997, all the polls correctly predicted Blair’s landslide. That most polls significantly overstated the size of his victory passed virtually unnoticed.
Nowhere in the world have private equity firms found a more welcoming playground than in the UK: the volumes of buyouts have over the past two decades weighed more in the overall economy than in any other advanced market, including the US.
Private equity firms have snapped up high street names from grocers Asda and Morrisons to sandwich chain Pret A Manger, and invested in sectors ranging from insurance to nursing homes and infrastructure.
Now their record, and relatively lower taxation, are once again coming under heightened scrutiny ahead of the election. Labour wants to increase taxes on the performance fees that fund managers receive from asset sales, so these 'dealmakers' may be tempted to relocate elsewhere.
Why did they hold a joint event with barking Clare Fox's Battle of Ideas on “Indoctrination in Education” with barking Frank Furedi of Spiked Online as a speaker?
Britain is NOT America. Not yet.
The term 'Judeo-Christian' became widely used in the US during the Cold War to suggest a unified American identity opposed to communism.
The “Judeo-Christian tradition” was a political invention: an ecumenical marketing meme for combating godless commies.
The term 'Judeo-Christian' is now widely & misleadingly mobilised by the far-right to divide people, mainly by demonising 'Others' (especially Muslims).
"My beliefs are based on a Judeo-Christian worldview that’s thousands of years old" - Miriam Cates.
Danny, a leading expert on housing, health, employment, education & poverty, has published with colleagues more than a dozen books on issues related to UK social inequalities, & several hundred journal papers - which is probably why he's so rarely on TV.
Middle England has been hit hard by the #costoflivingcrisis. Even people doing comparatively well are struggling.
Across Britain, opportunity has been replaced by food banks. Pre-COVID, life expectancy dropped as a result of poverty for the first time since the 1930s.
The hateful anonymous @X account @benonwine constantly tweets out divisive, inflammatory far-right pro-Farage tweets.
Because it's impossible to find out who is behind the grotesque account, we cannot know who, or what, is behind it. It's the same for @UKUpdates_co_uk.
Now that all the main parties have published their manifestos, rather than actually read them, the overwhelming majority of voters will rely on (almost invariably partisan) third-party accounts to summarise and/or interpret them.
But how accurate & reliable is their analysis?
In 2019, in 'The explosion of the public sphere', Dr Martin Moore (Centre for the Study of Media Communication & Power at Kings College) & Dr Gordon Ramsay (University of Westminster) outlined recent developments in our insufficiently regulated UK media.