Tories Partied Like There Was No Tomorrow...

...and for Boris Badhair, there might not be a tomorrow the rate the current scandals are overtaking his UK government.

When last we left the United Kingdom/Brexit news (my last full comment on it was 2019): Boris Johnson had pulled off an electoral stunner over Labour in spite of his unpopularity, and was poised to make a hard No-Deal exit from the EU to fulfill his dream of an economically-independent UK happen. 

What happened since then got a little overwhelmed by this minor inconvenience of a COVID-19 PANDEMIC, but since then the news about the UK's economic hardships piled up fast and often. Some of it tied to the overall economic hardships of surviving a global pandemic, but a lot of tied to Johnson's and his fellow Conservatives' (Tories) delusions about how to pull off their Brexit policy changes without hassles. (P.S. If you want better details, please follow Chris Grey's excellent blog updates for more)

The biggest problem has been their nation's supply chain woes: As predicted by several pro-EU critics, Brexit created a staffing shortage with truck (or lorry, in their terminology) drivers that the existing UK population can't sustain. 

Overall economic growth has been sluggish, even against what the pandemic did to bring a lot of business to a temporary halt: It is all well below the promises Johnson and other Leave advocates made from 2016 onward.

And now piling onto that is an energy crisis during a hard winter where energy bills for many residents are skyrocketing, creating conflict over Brexit ideology that Johnson's intraparty factions can't resolve.

So speaking of parties... Guess what it is that's pulling Boris Johnson and his political allies downward to the brink of resignation/no-confidence votes/all-out government collapse?

If you hadn't heard - and I think there's two ensigns on Deck 39 who haven't heard yet - Johnson is facing harsh scrutiny for allowing office parties to take place at 10 Downing Street and elsewhere back in 2020/2021 during the COVID Pandemic when rules were issued to the whole United Kingdom to disallow such gatherings. In short, the Tories - and Boris himself, who got caught on camera indulging in the shenanigans, oh Boris no, not with a LIGHTSABER - partied like the rules didn't apply to them.

From this Guardian opinion essay from Andrew Rawnsley:

The defenestration of a prime minister between elections is usually triggered by a seismic event. Neville Chamberlain was forced out after Norway was gobbled up by Hitler. The national humiliation of the Suez debacle did for Anthony Eden. The epic unpopularity of the riot-provoking poll tax impelled Margaret Thatcher towards her unwilling exit. David Cameron felt compelled to quit when he lost his gamble on the Brexit referendum. If Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson soon joins the gallery of toppled PMs, it will be because he attended a “bring your own booze” party in the back garden of Number 10 and his aides had a lockdown-busting piss-up in Downing Street the night before the Queen buried her husband...

True, the optics of that - Queen Elizabeth II, the human symbol of Great Britain's storied history and global importance, the Crown, beloved mother figure to an entire kingdom, and Doctor Who Number One Fan, sitting alone at her husband's grave while Rome burned Tories partied - should have caused mass resignations out of sheer British decency, but I digress. Back to Rawnsley:

No other premiership has had such a pathetically shabby ending. No finale to his slummy reign would be more appropriate. It has always been highly likely that cavalier and blatant rule-breaking, and then lying about it, would be the undoing of a prime minister with a career history of casual contempt for truth and integrity.

In its relatively short life, his premiership has been splattered with scandal. There was the “crony express” that sped lucrative Covid contracts to Tory mates down a “VIP lane”, which the high court has just ruled unlawful. There was the decanting of infected elderly patients from hospitals into vulnerable care homes at the height of the pandemic. Nor should we forget the multiple-sourced accounts that Mr Johnson callously declared that he would let the bodies “pile high in their thousands” in the winter of last year rather than take timely action to contain a resurgence of Covid, an appalling choice that resulted in many avoidable fatalities and has left Britain with the highest death toll in Europe.

These and other outrages ought to have deeply troubled Tories, but many in his parliamentary party responded to scandal after scandal with a dismissive shrug... When previous charges of moral turpitude bounced off him, Tories told themselves that their leader was coated with a lacquer of Teflon so thick that nothing could stick. Some cynically opined that voters knew that Mr Johnson was a mendacious scoundrel when he won the election in 2019 and so appalling behaviour was expected and – ghastly phrase – “in the price”. It was often averred that a substantial chunk of the public enjoyed having a “lovable rogue” at Number 10. “Everyone loves a sinner.” So one senior Tory chortled to me last autumn when his party was still sitting on a poll lead even as Wallpapergate and several other scandals were on the boil. He went on: “If Boris was caught shagging a goat in Downing Street, people would immediately make a goat beer and drink to his health...”

If this all sounds familiar, to a certain person's claim in the States that he could "shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and I wouldn't lose voters," you wouldn't be wrong. What you are reading/hearing/seeing is the arrogance of a political elite that holds themselves above all rules even their own, at the expense of any ethics or integrity we should expect from our elected leaders. Again, I digress:

It is hard to say which is the more jaw-dropping. The flagrancy of the rule-breaking. The arrogant stupidity of it. Or the stunning frequency with which the denizens of Number 10 behaved as if laws did not apply to them. The prime minister’s feeble plea in mitigation for the garden party that he admits to attending is that he thought it was a “work event”. This laughable excuse asks us to believe that he failed to notice that alcohol was flowing and that his wife and her chums were present. He had to fall back on such a risible defence because the alternative is to confess that he flouted his government’s regulations and afterwards sought to dupe the public and deceive parliament...

Even if he (Boris) was not physically present for all the parties, he was at every one in spirit. What possessed Number 10 staffers to think that it was sensible or decent to turn Downing Street into a drinking den while people were dying? As I like to remark from time to time, the culture of organizations is greatly shaped by the character of the person at the top. The most egregious rule-breaking became habitual at Number 10 and that is surely directly connected to the fact that the most senior person in the building is a compulsively shameless rule-trasher. “Fish stink from the head,” remarks one former Tory cabinet minister. “So does Number 10...”

It seems a bit off that with all of the chaos afflicting the United Kingdom right now it would be a set of ill-advised drunken bacchanals that would drive out a sitting Prime Minister, one of the most politically powerful figures across the world.

Under other circumstances, such rule-breaking would likely involve the civil workers caught partying to quit or get fired, a shake-up of the lesser Cabinet seats of expendable party members to bring in more "reform-minded" replacements, and then brush it all under the rug of "I apologize, lesson learned."

But it seems Boris and his ilk are receiving the full force of national outrage, with 63 percent of the general UK population calling for his resignation. While the intraparty support isn't wavering - it never will until the party faithful are told it's okay to support someone else - the Conservative Party itself is under serious threat. Two recent by-elections to fill seats vacated by this scandal both went Liberal-Democratic (a staunch pro-EU party) in what were heavily-Conservative gerrymandered districts (well, not rotten boroughs but along the same lines).

From where I'm sitting, the PartyGate situation has less to do with the rule-breaking and more to do with the general outrage most Brits were feeling after several years of Brexit follies and COVID mishandles. Unable to express full anger over the supply woes, unable to express outrage over rising costs both Brexit and COVID related, all because a strong plurality of the population are Conservative-leaning (what we'd call Center-Right) and couldn't complain about a Brexit process they supported, these party scandals seem like an outlet granting the citizenry their chance and their right to vent at bad leadership caught lying to them over and over again. And not just the leadership under the clownish Boris Johnson, but a decade or more of questionable leadership from the likes of Theresa May and David Cameron who held onto hard-line Conservative values that left the UK unprepared for the crises happening today.

Yes, leadership ought to be held accountable. Yes, leadership needs reminding that they themselves are not above the laws. But this outrage is a rupture of scope and anger somewhat disproportionate to the damage actually caused by these reckless parties the Tories sought to indulge in.

Not that I'm complaining. I'm breaking out the popcorn - well, okay, the Nestle Buncha Crunches because I got out of eating popcorn as a teenager, damn you braces! - watching all of this just like everybody else who's Center-Left enjoying the schadenfreude of the Right-leaning wingnuts crash and burn.

There's supposed to be an official government report investigating these parties due next week. Thing is, as Prime Minister Boris will get the first look at it, and God knows if he'll try to redact it or suppress it in some way. Of course, something this big will be bound to leak out, so any suppression effort will hurt him anyway.

(keeps munching on those Buncha Crunches) Would it be tacky of us to throw a Farewell/"GET THE FOOK OUT" party if/when Boris is forced to resign...?

Bring on that tomorrow, Tories. It's the bill for decades of mismanagement and self-entitled bullshit come due.