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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Many of Britain's most vocal 'anti-establishment' voices attended some of the most expensive schools on earth.
These broken boys masquerade as 'anti-elite' while serving the interests of the ultrarich by turning working class people against each other using 'Divide & Rule'.
Moscow born Konstantin Vadimovich Kisin came to the UK aged 11 & was sent to Clifton College boarding school (current fees: up to £18,360/term).
He recently said about Rishi Sunak "He’s a brown Hindu; how is he English?" He's a regular speaker at Paul Marshall's ARC conference.
Rupert James Graham Lowe was sent to Radley College, an all-boys independent boarding school (current fees: up to £19,200/term).
Lowe worked in the City of London for companies such as Morgan Grenfell, Deutsche Bank and Barings Bank.
My own summary is above, but journalist @gilduran76 - of the brilliant #FrameLab - has now written his own summary, review and interpretation of it, which I reproduce with a few links and commentary, below.
To fully understand Silicon Valley’s project to destroy democracy, read 'The Sovereign Individual: How to Survive and Thrive During the Collapse of the Welfare State.'
In 1999, it was rebranded as 'The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age.'
Life was demonstrably worse in the 1979 than it is today.
Zymunt Bauman calls this yearning for an imagined past, ‘retrotopia’, in which the ‘Volk’ (the ‘simple folk’, who Reform UK claim to represent) are constructed as homogenous, Christian, white, & ‘indigenous’.
Life was demonstrably inferior in the 1970s compared to today for almost everyone in England.
Life expectancy in the UK in 1980 was 71 for men and 77 for women. By 2019, life expectancy at birth in England had increased to 79 years for men & 83.5 for women.
1. Economic Hardship
In 1979, the UK economy was struggling with high inflation, unemployment, and a budget deficit. This eroded purchasing power, making essentials like food, clothing, and housing more expensive relative to wages. "Stagflation" was a significant problem.
'Anti-elite man of the people' Nigel Farage, educated at one of the most expensive private schools on earth, is now the highest paid MP in the UK. His basic annual MP salary is £91,346 plus expenses.
The UK National Living Wage for people aged 21+ is just £12.21/hour.
Let's take a look at some of Nigel Farage's additional earnings that he's legally obliged to declare in the MPs Register of interests - and which contains a few surprises - starting with GB "News".
Between 16th July 2024 and 15th January 2025, Farage decalred earnings of £264,790 for his work as a presenter on Reform UK Ltd's 24/7 propaganda channel, GB "News", co-owned by Islamophobic billionaire hedge-funder, Paul Marshall.
The front-page article, published in the Daily Telegraph, claiming “London is home to as many as 585,000 illegal migrants, equivalent to one in 12 of the city’s population” was covered across the media and widely discussed by politicians and others.
The claim that “One in 12 in London is illegal immigrant” is based on this report, commissioned by Thames Water, conducted by the research company Edge Analytics in February 2023, which the Telegraph says it obtained “under freedom of information-style laws for the environment”.
The EDL is an Islamophobic protest movement aimed at preserving UK identity and culture in the face of a perceived Islamization of the UK and Europe.
So is Reform UK.
The EDL reinforce the notion of the “nationalist subject” - a fallacious conception of citizenship - that wrongly assumes members of the majoritarian culture are possessed of certain core values, beliefs, and traits that embody the true essence of the nation.