““Harry and Meghan” are trending because people are happy to see them. “Boris and Carrie” are trending for the exact opposite reason. Sometimes, I really love this island.” - Submitted by Anonymous
“Cheers for Harry and Meghan, boos for Boris Johnson. Gosh - I don’t suppose the papers were expecting that” - Submitted by Anonymous
“My favourite part of Jubilee Day 2 is that the only ones who trended on Twitter were BoJo and his blonde mistress” - Submitted by Anonymous
“Nothing but cheers for the Royal Family whilst Britain Trump and his mistress wife are met with boos. I love this music ” - Submitted by Anonymous
“If the only thing people remember about this Jubilee is the crowds jeering the disaster PM then so be it.” - Submitted by Anonymous
“Not Dan Wootton living in make believe land where the crowds jeered at the Sussexes and Sadiq Khan whilst singing praise at BoJo ” - Submitted by Anonymous
“Guardian: Johnson booedIndependent: Johnson booedMetro: huge boos for JohnsonTimes: Johnson booedTelegraph: Johnson and Carrie booedEvening Std: booed by parts of crowdBBC: boos and cheers for JohnsonMail: Johnson and Carrie arriveGBNews: Meghan Markle booed” - Submitted by Anonymous
Alexander Boris Johnson is a British politician, author, and former journalist, who has served as the prime-minister of the United Kingdom and leader of the Conservative Party since July 2019, and a politician since 2001. He also served as mayor of London from 2008 to 2016 and foreign secretary from 2016 to 2018.
He was educated at Eton College and at Oxford University, where he was elected president of the Oxford Union in 1986. He began his career in journalism at The Times. He was an assistant editor of The Daily Telegraph from 1994 to 1999. He largely adhered to the Conservatives party line but adopted a socially liberal stance on issues such as LGBT rights in parliamentary votes. During his mayoralty, he banned alcohol drinking on much of London’s public transport, an oversaw the 2012 Summer Olympics, a new bus range and cycle hire scheme.
He identifies as a liberal-conservative. Supporters have praised him as an entertaining, humorous, and popular figure, with an appeal stretching beyond traditional Conservative voters. In a snap general election in December 2019, he led the Conservative Party to their biggest victory since 1987, and the biggest percentage vote share of any party since 1979.
I detest Boris Johnson. It’s partly because he’s a Tory and I’m not, and partly because he supported Brexit and I think that was a stupid idea, and also partly because he’s a Unionist and I support Scottish Independence. That gives me plenty of reasons to dislike the man, and his performance as Prime Minister gives me even more, but detest seems a bit strong. So why do I have such an abiding and…
I’m generally unsympathetic to claims that the social diseases we see in contemporary liberal democracies are somehow new phenomena, neatly marking out a bad present from a good past (the rhetoric around Trump being the epitome of that kind of thinking), but there is something to be said for these things being symptomatic of decay. The political superstructure of much of the world is simply no longer fit for purpose, and this leads to an ever-increasing reliance upon extraordinary leaders to overcome, and more often simply obscure, the underlying fractures.
Boris Johnson is an excellent example: a single-issue, single-policy premier, he has postponed a deep, chronic crisis for the British state and the Conservative Party by winning a large parliamentary majority (something unheard of in recent British politics), but he has not avoided it. Nevertheless, the reliance of the party on the person makes them hesitant to remove him. The Tories’ instinctual practice of serial regicide is, for the moment, apparently on hold. How long this hold will last is unclear. Thanks to the positively incestual relationship between the various state apparatuses in Britain, this time revealing itself in the form of glaring police corruption, it looks like it will last until after the next election. It’s difficult to put into words how disgusting that is, how rage-inducing. I am, as ever, left at a loss for words by the repugnance of British politics.
The lockdown parties do speak of a culture of impunity, arrogance, and knowing malfeasance—of a downright contemptuous attitude towards us on the part of our rulers—but that culture only exists because of a structure which promotes it. The British political system is fundamentally unaccountable and based upon the absolute right of the elite to govern and the maximum possible distance between the population and political power, complete with an all-too modern compliant client media that ensures an uninformed consent is won from the populace. Aaron Bastani makes this point semi-regularly; that Britain is not and has never really been a democracy, at most a place with democratic elements in its politics. The mixing of this backwards relic of Britain’s incomplete bourgeois revolution with modern populism is something the political system is unlikely to be able to survive and sustain, but it is forced into it because it acts as a stay of execution.
‘The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters’, as Gramsci famously said. Johnson is most certainly a monster. But one thing that cannot be denied is that he very much is the man of the hour; exactly the leader that a flailing ex-empire deserves at it gasps and splutters its way into oblivion. Our position as communists is simple: we refuse to let him drag us, laughing and self-assured to the last, into the abyss.
what is actually quite grim about this of course is that tory MPs were happy to excuse hundreds of thousands of avoidable covid-related deaths, but it’s boris johnson being booed at the jubilee that did it for them
what is actually quite grim about this of course is that tory MPs were happy to excuse hundreds of thousands of avoidable covid-related deaths, but it’s boris johnson being booed at the jubilee that did it for them
i’ve tried avoiding all jubilee-related content over the past couple of days, but that doesn’t mean that i won’t share this video of prime minister boris johnson getting booed on his way into saint paul’s
god the thing about all this mess with boris johnson is that i’ve been furious for ages but i haven’t really had much to say about it. of course it’s all appalling, he’s a bastard and a liar and spectacularly corrupt to boot, every single new piece of information is somehow more outrageous than the last, but we all know that. none of it’s a surprise. it’s not news to anyone who’d listen to me. i’ve followed it so closely more out a sense of obligation to bear witness than anything else.
but hearing him today, listening to him set out the context in which these god damn parties were held … he said of the leaving dos held for departing members of staff that “it was appropriate to recognise them and thank them for the work they have done.” that is an exact quote, that is precisely what he said in his official statement in the house of commons in response to the sue gray report, that is what had me weeping on my couch today and those are the words that i will never, ever forgive anyone for nodding along to.
do you know another time when it is appropriate to recognise people and what they have done? the most appropriate time? their fucking funerals. you know, the funerals that we were barely allowed to have, the funerals many of us didn’t even get to attend. when my grandmother died i was trapped two hours away from the funeral i did not attend. i was in quarantine. i grieved her completely alone and knew that my father was having to do the same because we were in different countries. i didn’t get to see him for the next four months while we both struggled through that loss alone.
congratulations to boris i guess because i am out of anger, there is no more outrage left in me, i am just utterly, utterly heartbroken, grieving all over again, sobbing on my couch and gasping out into my mother’s shoulder the question of how anyone, anyonecouldpossiblysay those words, much less the prime fucking minister of great fucking britain to the people he has so horrendously let down and claims to be humbly apologising to.
