There have been so many turns in Boris Johnson’s prime ministership in the UK that it seems as though the action has been staged, perhaps a test script for a Netflix political drama, as a tale of a government and a country’s decline. rather than. A few months ago, there was a serious investigation that showed the prime minister had attended a party of staff while the UK was in lockdown and allegedly misled parliament about it. June witnessed a Commonwealth summit in Rwanda; Instead of what would normally be an uplifting bit of historical theatre, the UK government’s strangely inhumane plan was announced this year to deport illegal immigrants to Rwanda.
The action has intensified in the last fortnight. The chairman of the ruling Conservative Party resigned after the Liberal Democrats, Britain’s second opposition party, received nearly a third of the vote in the by-election. Then it was revealed that the prime minister had used an official plane to go on holiday off the coast of Cornwall with his family. By the standards of the Johnson regime, which has also been heavily criticized for the involvement of a major party donor in funding the renovation of the Downing Street flat, this indiscretion seemed minor. Expectations of justification are now so low that it is difficult to define what exactly is a political scandal. As Guardian columnist Nesreen Malik observed, “Political norms are being dispensed with. Dishonesty and malpractices in high office begin to lose hope of the outcome.”
An open letter from a respected former senior Foreign Office bureaucrat on Tuesday, revealing that the prime minister was fully informed of the sexual misconduct allegations against Chris Pincher, who was later appointed deputy chief whip of the Conservative Party was appointed, in the end it may be unfair that Johnson cannot wave away. His strategy of using well-crafted half-truths and plagiarism in the manner of Sir Humphrey Appleby, the senior civil servant at Yes Minister, is now likely to fail. The allegation against Pincher is that he groped male members of the Tory parliament. The bureaucrat’s letter revealed that such allegations against Pincher are not new. Worse, it shows that the government and the prime minister were aware of the earlier investigation into Pincher’s behavior. Downing Street’s spin doctors may have had the wiggle room over. On Tuesday, his new position was that the prime minister had forgotten about giving information about that investigation.
For Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak and Health Minister Sajid Javid, it was too much. Both resigned, other resignations broke out. In his resignation letter, Sunak said, “The public rightly expects the government to be operated properly, competently and seriously. I agree this may be my last ministerial job but I believe That those standards are worth fighting for.” Speaking to the BBC, Michael Heseltine, whose challenge to leadership of the Conservative Party in 1990 led to the ouster of Margaret Thatcher following his election debacle, compared the episode to Sunak and Javid’s resignation. done. Hesseltine described the Brexit campaign led by Johnson as “a pack of lies” and criticized his government for devaluing Britain’s reputation in the eyes of the world.
Empty promises from the Brexit campaign included long tales of hundreds of millions of pounds on London buses being returned from the EU to the UK if it broke, and that money being used to fund the National Health Service. was. Now these hoaxes hang in the heat of discontent in Britain. The Confederation of British Industry recently forecast that the next year could see economic growth of only 1% and possibly a slowdown. Meanwhile, inflation has hit double digits with the most recent reading of core inflation (excluding fuel and food) at over 8%. Britain’s economy is slowing faster than its developed-world peers in large part because it is reaping the downside of such a graceful exit from the world’s largest trading bloc. The Johnson government’s longing for bilateral free trade agreements with far-flung countries such as India and Japan implied either a further victory of 21st century supply chain networks regionally focused or cynical real politics over real economics. shows a deficiency.
At street level, the consequences of high inflation eating into disposable income are very real, however. This summer has seen a wave of industrial action. Regional rail attacks have alternated with attacks on the London Tube. Protests have also started against the hike in fuel prices. Staff shortages are visible throughout the hotel industry. And yet, as any visitor to the UK will tell you, its ‘keep calm and move on’ spirit still lingers.
Flying British Airways again after more than a decade in the wake of a few thousand staff cuts during the pandemic, I was surprised at how well-humored and competent the flight crew remained. Conversely, deal with a British bank, and India begins to sympathize with those misbehaving with state-run banks. Meanwhile, the capital has been dubbed Londongrad because successive governments, Labor and the Conservatives have made it all too easy to launder money through the city. The expectation expressed several times over the past few months and again on Tuesday is that this time the British prime minister will have to resign. Even if Johnson eventually calls for the Netflix script to be scrapped, the problems his government has determined for the UK to be poor trade competition and inflation controls are set to last for at least a decade.
Rahul Jacob is a Mint columnist and a former foreign correspondent for the Financial Times.