Reflections on a year of PM Johnson: A person whom I wouldn’t have chose to be Conservative leader, yet leader and PM he is, so....
Positives:
Election victory. Like I said I’m not a Boris fan, but when the alternative is labour under Jeremy Corbyn? Thank goodness the messages cut through, a mandate was conferred, the dither and delay and obfuscation could be ended and we get some sense of direction.
Brexit delivery (tax in post). Finally some of the shower of contemptible shysters who utterly failed as our elected representatives during 2016-2019 were elbowed aside for a new majority government. Finally setting us on the path to leaving the EU.
Covid: I have been so heartened to see that if necessary our government (any colour) can intervene in such a major way. Of course, such intervention isn’t really desirable IMO and shouldn’t really be necessary. Once the danger to public health became clear, business should simply have shut down, without being told to, people should have simply stayed away without being told to. In the face of some non compliance I am pleased the government could and did act. Like some others I was also pleased to see a commitment to personal liberty holding some of this back, but more pleased to see it overriden when the scale of threat became clearer. Govt support to jobs has been good.
Negatives:
“Back to business as usual”: the COVID crisis afford us an opportunity to refashion our economy and society which the Johnson government are squandering because they want to get “back to normal”. Tax payer support for sectors of our economy where personal consumption is damaging to the environment, e.g. passenger air travel, fast fashion, fast food, ‘single use’ basically anything, should be stopped. A plan should be being developed now to drastically reduce transit of commuters by rail, cars, and any other means of transport that are polluting, i.e. everything apart from walking or cycling.
The government have intervened in the economy yes to protect jobs (which they should do) but also to protect large business, which unless those businesses are critical to our ability to defend ourselves, they shouldn’t. We shouldn’t go back to mass personal consumption. Publicly supporting risk while privatising profit making is wrong.
Contempt of parliament: for as long as Parliament held the electorate in contempt I was more relaxed about this. Now Brexit is finally being delivered I am less so. The intel committee, etc, Johnson has to do better here.
Covid: from the above, I am pleased the government did act, but there is so, so much more to be done. What if there had been mass non compliance, what would the response have been? the evidence of Bournemouth beach says to me “woefully inadequate”. Government needs to ensure that agencies charged with protecting the public have the tools necessary to ensure they can fulfil that role. Our health system will get the resources it needs, but we must have a conversation about what it does. Slowness of response on some things has cost people their lives. Now not all of the resp for that attaches to Johnson, public health is of course a local responsibility but enough does that he should be chastened, and he shows no sign of that.