February 2022

By Helen Christopher

Despite seeming to teeter on the brink, it is entirely possible that, by the time you read this, Boris Johnson will still be Prime Minister. One thing is certain, even if he is not PM, then the person who is will be a Tory. So whatever the outcome of the “Partygate” drama there will be little change for the people of Britain.

What has been most revealing about the debacle has been the light it has shed on the workings of the state as different factions within the elite battle over Johnson’s future. This major split has its origins in the Brexit referendum between the dominant trend which supported (and still supports) EU membership and the successful minority trend which supported Britain’s exit. The Remainers continue to push back against the Leavers and are having some success – the ousting of Dominic Cummings, the resignation of Lord Frost and Liz Truss, erstwhile Remainer, established as Foreign Secretary and taking charge of the fraught negotiations over the Northern Ireland protocol. Truss has also made it clear that she is a candidate to replace Johnson. The pro-EU faction have never been happy with Johnson and, as his failures become harder to excuse or hide from, increased the pressure for him to go.

MEDIA AGENDA

People are right to be angry about the endless stream of parties at Number 10 during lockdown. However, while they are being invited to be angry about this by the media, they are not being invited to be angry about the many worse things the Tories and Johnson have done which, among other things, have led to at least 150,000 deaths from Covid. The media want us to be angry about what is portrayed as the character flaws of one man. This is relatively safe for capitalism as it doesn’t challenge any fundamentals and makes the transition to another Tory Prime Minister straightforward, without raising questions about in whose interests they govern. As friends got huge Covid related contracts – billions squandered on useless PPE, energy bills soar, benefits cut, inflation surges and people continue to die in the pandemic we are not asked to base our judgement of Johnson’s record on that, but on his personal fitness to lead.

All of this demonstrates the continued power of the traditional broadcast and print media to set the agenda, aided and abetted by a drip feed of emails, photos and whistle-blowers. The information about the Number 10 parties has clearly been around since they happened, but it is only now that it is being put into the public domain. It would be interesting to know the sources of these strategically planned leaks.

All of this was having considerable success, with newly elected Tory MPs representing working class constituencies suddenly finding that Johnson was no longer an asset and fearing for their seats. Letters were going in to the 1922 committee seeking a confidence vote. There were resignations and one Tory joined Labour, where Keir Starmer was glad to welcome him despite his record – dire even by Tory standards.

POLICE INTERVENE

Diversionary tactics were quickly employed by Johnson loyalists like the announcement of the abolition of the BBC licence fee, the unmasking of a Chinese “spy” and Britain war-mongering in Ukraine. But that didn’t make the story go away. The usual delaying tactic was then resorted to of ordering an investigation by Senior Civil Servant, Sue Gray. Unfortunately for Johnson it was turned round fairly quickly providing an insufficient time for the ball to reach the long grass. Step forward Dame Cressida Dick, (former) Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. She suddenly announced that the Met would now be launching investigations into the parties, having previously refused to do so. She then “requested” that sections of Sue Gray’s report be redacted. The report, whatever Gray’s initial intention, tells us no more than we knew before and no more than Johnson had already fessed up to. In addition the police involvement gave Johnson the opportunity to argue that judgement should be suspended until that was complete. Then the Met said that they would not release the names of anyone fined in relation to the parties.

Dick comes from an establishment background. She was privately educated and her parents were academics at Oxford University. Antecedents on her mother’s side include a Wing Commander in the Air Force, a banker and a Head of Rugby School. She was in charge of the operation when an entirely innocent man, Jean Charles de Menezes, was shot dead, which didn’t stop her promotion to Commissioner. (Prior to becoming Commissioner, she spent some time at the Foreign Office where she was in an unspecified role, believed to be security related. The Foreign Office has refused to release any details of her job there.) She presided over a force where officers’ behaviour led to questions about the culture within the police. This included the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving policeman and Dick’s response to that. She continued to defend “stop and search” tactics which disproportionately target black and minority ethnic people. She tried to obstruct the publication of a report in 2021 into the murder in 1987 of Daniel Morgan, an investigative journalist who exposed police corruption. The report found that there was “a form of institutional corruption” in the Met which had concealed or denied failings in the case.

So Dame Cressida had the right experience to provide cover for Johnson. She owes her position to Johnson’s Home Secretary, Priti Patel, who, despite, or perhaps because, of her record extended Dick’s contract as Commissioner. So they could call on her for support. However, now Dick appears to have been a further casualty the war over Boris Johnson. She was eventually forced to resign ostensibly over her inaction in relation to a nasty culture of highly discriminatory attitudes uncovered at one police station. Challenged publicly about this by Sadiq Khan the Labour Mayor of London, she eventually went. It seems reasonable to assume, however, that her intervention in “Partygate” to help take the pressure off Johnson also played its part.

INEFFECTIVE STARMER

Whilst the Tories’ rifts become more evident Keir Starmer continues to provide no opposition which might inspire people to actively oppose Tory policies and get out and fight. Partly that is because he is pretty ineffective and partly it is because that is the last thing on his mind. His strategy is straight from the New Labour playbook, but without the charisma and dynamism. Don’t say anything controversial or principled, position yourself very marginally to the left of the Tories and wait for them to fail. The exception to this is when he decides to loudly embrace British and US imperial interests and joins in war-mongering over Ukraine, also attacking the peace movement and the left. Of course, he was given a strong steer on this by the British establishment when another arm of the state, The Monarchy, let the country know what it finds acceptable in a Labour leader with the knighting by the Queen of Tony Blair. Millionaire war criminals good – socialists bad.

There has been improvement in Labour support vis-à-vis the Tories in opinion polls, but largely because the Tories and Johnson are performing so badly. A more competent pair of Tory hands in Number 10 could easily reverse that.

What Starmer and the partisans for Blairism seem not to have noticed is that that ultimately New Labour failed and one of the rocks it foundered on was Blair’s enthusiastic support for George W Bush and the disastrous war in Iraq. Over Ukraine Starmer is reprising tragedy as farce, believing that he can ingratiate himself with the establishment by imitating Blair and that that will be his route to power.

New Labour in common with many social democratic parties across Europe declined because it ceased to provide a radical vision for the electorate. This has been fertile ground for the far right as people want change, not more of the same. In Scotland disillusioned former Labour voters shifted their hopes to nationalism and the SNP. Sadly Starmer is offering as little as he can possibly manage dressed up in jingoism and attacks on the left. This will only be a recipe for success if the Tories fail to sort themselves out before the next general election and the media are deployed to support Labour and Starmer in their place.  The other route to power is to genuinely represent the interests of the British people, who face an onslaught on their living standards, and to provide leadership and support for trade union, peace and community struggles.

Boris Johnson

Cressida Dick photo by Katie Chan

Dick was eventually forced to resign ostensibly over her inaction in relation to a nasty culture of highly discriminatory attitudes uncovered at one police station.