This Government

Well oldie, you are correct in trying to scrutinise, hold and highlight the faults of this government. That always needs to be done, whatever the persuasion of the government of the day. And whilst individuals will do this I’m not sure where else any effective scrutiny will come from. The BBC is obviously walking a tightrope over their criticism of the government. Laura K and other political commentators can talk strongly in podcasts and news items but have little opportunity to really question BJ and the ministers. He just avoids it, says no and sends out his ministers. Most questions are returned with an answer that isn't a real answer to the question posed but fills in a few minutes until their time is up and few get any opportunities to follow up. When Emily M on Newsnight gave, perhaps unwisely ultimately, her views on this government she was unceremoniously told off by her masters. The BBC are aware of their vulnerabilities with these people in power just when the new licence is coming up. Sky appear to do more scrutiny but with a more limited audience. ITV, I don’t really know, rarely listening to them.

Parliament, well PMQs will get interesting now with a credible alternative questioning BJ and someone who is more adroit linguistically against frankly, a fairly slow-witted PM who turns around to get support from his own side too often without having the intelligence or wits to combat his opponents himself. There is plenty of scrutiny out there on the internet with academics, journalists and the written media all endeavouring to hold him to account but in the end these methods have a very small circulation, and is a narrow community which rarely reaches a wider audience.

In the interests of balance although i consider BJ to be not the most articulate nor intelligent of politicians he does have a very good political radar of what people want. He has distilled what people want into a simple political mo. He will provide jobs, housing, not tax too much, keep the EU as a high-profile bogeyman, the cause of many of our problems, provide national jingoism when needed and feed the fears of many people. He will invoke the spirit of Churchill when it’s needed and try and show that the Conservatives are the party of law and order. By doing all these things he will, has, appealed to enough people to get himself elected. So whilst not overly intelligent he is very politically-savvy.

Consequently, I think this government will concentrate on the ends that they have been advocating: Brexit, large infrastructure projects (railways, roads housing), full employment, new trade agreements with the world. The means of how they are achieved won’t matter and I’m not even sure BJ will worry if he has to mislead (or worse) to achieve the ends he’s seeking. He will, of course be mightily “annoyed” when he or his ministers are caught out, such as Cummings, Jenrick or Raab, but he won’t worry too much imo. This is a PM without much of a conscience who wants to say the right thing to assuage his supporters or his critics but I doubt you’ll hear much detail coming from him, it will be largely generalities, platitudes and ideas which could be interpreted any which way. The detail of Brexit, trade agreements and the rest could be brushed over and signed off without any real consideration of how advantageous they are for the UK. Their existence will be enough I suspect.

We heard about the Nixon Tapes at Watergate I suspect the Johnson Tapes detailing his methods of armchair government would be equally damning.