Originally published at: Boris Johnson is getting away with it, somehow | Boing Boing
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Only not cool.
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Trump didn’t get away with it and neither will Johnson. Even an 80-seat majority will be inadequate - the Tories are already down to their bedrock (which, in the UK, is around 33%) and the last time that happened, in 1997, it really didn’t go well for them.
But in the short term? Yes, he’s “getting away with it” and, because there is no plausible successor (the two current front-runners have their own issues), the Tories are stuck with ‘better the devil you know’ and hoping that attempts to fix elections will be enough. It won’t. It really won’t.
For the rest of us trapped in this farce, sure, it’s not going to be great. But that’s not actually really due to Johnson’s general ineptitude - it’s due to the catastrofuck that is Brexit and the system shock that is Covid. “Boris” is just the icing on the shit sandwich, really.
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Absolutely.
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Until trump is in prison, he got away with it. Until his traitorous mouth is silent, his crimes and destruction continue.
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The link in the post doesn’t work for me, so here it is, in case it doesn’t work for others, too:
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Vote that degenerate privileged white boy out, if the USA can dump tRump the orange shit-stick, you Britts can dump Boris.
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One interpretaion of the Gray report was that it was a “shocking indictment” of drinking on the job, which as scandals go, isn’t that shocking, really.
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Look, it’s quite simple: like the Republicans in the USA, the Tories are too deeply authoritarian to be able to reject a parasite once it captures the party leadership. I think it’s because they have gotten used to the idea of aristocrats ruling, despite the fact that most of the upper crust are incompetent idiots whose only claim to power is that some long dead ancestor swung a mean sword.
May those spineless boot lickers be recognised for what they are, and tossed along with the tousle-haired numpty who rules them like a fungi rules a zombified ant.
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For non-Brits who need bringing up to speed - Jonathan Pie is your man:
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I keep thinking of John Rogers talking, some years back, about how some Republicans had weaponized their shamelessness (it’s now standard in the post-Trump party); apparently others have now realized how effective a strategy it is, as it seems to be a core part of the worldwide right-wing movement going on right now. Perhaps it’s just a symptom of the authoritarian right, generally.
Yeah, exactly. I mean, even the lack of prison aside, he has gotten away with it, by any reasonable measure. He’s not only not in jail, he didn’t even manage to get convicted in either impeachment trial, despite a large number of serious crimes and obvious guilt. His grift very much continues, more profitably than ever. He could still very well be re-elected, even, ffs. If this is what “not getting away with it” looks like, the UK is in serious trouble.
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Perhaps everyone is afraid of political chaos getting even worse just as Russia invades Ukraine. I know I am. In fact, the more I think about it, the more the chaos in the US, Canada, the EU & the UK starts to look like a long plan by Putin building to just this moment.
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I think there is definitely Russian propaganda campaigns that contributed to it, but Boris Johnson being a hypocritical asshole (like Trump) is completely on him. There are very real problems with our right leaning parties, but it’s not all outside interference… it’s very home grown.
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I have no idea how you can think this. Sure, he didn’t get reelected. But he then tried to execute a coup, which failed partly due to his own incompetence and partly due to a handful of Republicans deciding to not go along with it. He has not been held accountable for that. He can still run again in 2024, and probably will. He may even win. The Republican Party is still his. The number of Republican Party elected officials speaking out against Trump, on the record, is disturbingly small, and the RNC has even officially censured some of those who did speak out. I see no indication of charges coming against Trump in the future. Most of the leadership of both parties just want to forget any of that ever happened, rather than try to prevent it from happening again. Trump unambiguously has gotten away with it, and I don’t see that changing.
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Its no different than trump. Simply deny everything and then evade when evidence makes clear you are lying, but by no means ever exhibit any shame, remorse, or hint that any consequence is warranted. Resign - HA!
It worked a charm for trump - why wouldn’t it for this jackass.
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Hmmm. It’s clear that this is being slightly misinterpreted, which is fair enough because it deserves to have been! Speaking from the point of view of someone who believes in democracy, what I saw in 2020 in the US was a ludicrously incompetent incumbent who had somehow won an impossible victory unceremoniously thrown out by a margin that wasn’t even particularly close, even in those states which changed. That’s what I meant. The subsequent actions of the orange buffoon were proof that he hadn’t gotten away with it - a succession of failed court cases and an attempted coup. And yes, I agree that Trump belongs in jail, but he should have been in jail long before he even began to run as a candidate; his inadequacies as a leader were already visible. But once he had achieved high office, it turned out that this didn’t protect him from external investigations; indeed one might argue that state prosecutors suddenly couldn’t pretend to look the other way.
My contention here is thus not that Trump is still a free man - and therefore ‘got away with it’ - it’s that he joins that short list of US Presidents who were unable to retain the position. “Boris” is heading the same way at speed right now. He achieved what seemed like an impossible feat in 2019; it turns out that reality is coming back to bite him, in a similar way to Trump.
(I am in complete agreement with the observation that both the current UK Tory party and the current US Republican party have been almost entirely eaten alive from the inside by the authoritarian parasite - and unfortunately, it’s not clear that the electorate really care.)
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