This is true.
“In a democracy, every citizen has an equal say in who governs them.” Discuss.
As I’ve said before, Johnson does not have any sort of cult following like Trump seems to have. There is no groundswell of support that he can use to pressure his own party into staying loyal. The British public (at least those who weren’t paying close attention which is a majority) were quite warm to him and felt he was in some way relatable. All that has evaporated now. Johnson does not have some sort of clear ideology that people want to queue up behind. Even his support for Brexit seemed opportunistic and inconsistent.
This is why he’s on limited time. And he won’t be making any comebacks.
His key policy was to ‘get Brexit done’. He claims to have done that despite all the loose ends and piffling details.
He was quite big on the environment, looking for the UK to lead the world towards a Net Zero carbon economy. But now he has a group of Conservative MPs who are saying we cannot afford all of this Net Zero business if we are going to have to pay extra money to clear the NHS backlog and the rising cost of living and fuel poverty crisis. The big Oil and Gas companies are busy lobbying MPs to defend their incomes and ensure their businesses are not impacted by this Net Zero policy. So support that is being undermined within his own party.
So really, what else has he got to give the UK as a leader? I see has given Rees Mogg the job of pursuing Brexit opportunities.
The prospect of the Minister for the 19th century trying to persuade the world that British Empire is back and ready to do business will no doubt provoke a lot of amusement in diplomatic circles worldwide.
Boris Johnson is the Brexit Prime Minister and will be remembered for the mess it has made of the countries international trading relationship for many years to come. He may try to take credit for the Covid vaccine rollout. But the early delays and the UK death toll from Covid and the monumental debt, the PPE contracts awarded to party cronies and the lockdowns. These may reflect Churchill’s many screw ups rather than his wartime spirit.
Boris Johnson is probably the worst Prime Minister the UK has had. Though he has some strong competition from the ineffectual Theresa May and monumental mistakes of David Cameron - who in fact started the slide into this awful Brexit quagmire.
The Conservative party seem to be incapable of selecting a leader that does anything more than look inwards at fractious internal party politics rather than the more important business of running the country.
Cameron, May and Johnson were the kind of leaders keen to ‘just mind the shop’ and stay on top of party intrigues. They had no vision for the country that bore any examination.
If Johnson does not go soon, the next PM will not have enough time to repair all the damage in time for the next election. The Labour party is no longer led by a bogey man radical. Starmer is ‘captain sensible’ and with some inspired policies he could win.
UK political parties, be they Labour or Conservative, tend to run out of steam and policies after two terms and need some time in opposition so they can have all their internal wrangles when out of power and not wreck the country.
I am not confident that the Conservatives have got anyone who could gather enough support to fix the party after all the damage that has been done by Boris Johnson…and have time to lead the country.
How’s Lord North’s reputation these days?
That is going back a ways.
Who was the worst UK Prime Minister probably deserves it is own debate.
Just don say “Lord Palmerston” or Barney’s going to punch you in the face.
The Met Chief, Dame Dick, has just quit. Will that have any effect on the Met investigation into No. 10 parties?
Cressida Dick’s main disagreements were with the London mayor, Sadiq Khan. Khan is the one who ousted her, although she’ll remain in office for at least a short while.
Dame Cressida, who served in the role for four years, has agreed with the mayor that she will continue to serve for a short time period to enable an orderly handover.
Dick was probably pro-Conservative although it’s questionable if she was pro-Johnson. The current home secretary will have a say in the appointment of the next Metropolitan Police Commissioner. So while Khan would probably push for a pro-union Labour leaning commissioner, who is ultimately appointed is likely to be more neutral. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was someone with a minority ethnic background. However, I don’t think it will be a quick appointment, and probably won’t occur until after the police report on the Downing Street parties is released. I expect that will be just after the May local elections, but that’s totally a guess on my part.
Whoever is actually doing the work of writing the report could continue.
Cressida Dick should have been sacked after the Menendes case in 2005.
She has presided over some serious deficiencies in policing London over the intervening years.
Sadly the UK seems to have a habit of protecting those in power, especially if they are in public service. It is assumed they are the best person to put right any deficiencies further down the food chain. So the head man or woman keeps their job and few low level ‘bad apples’ are removed.
However, the latest scandal regarding mysogynist and racist attitudes in the police are widely regarded as a ‘systemic’ problem. Everyone knew there was a problem, but no-one at a senior level took action. This has undermined the public trust in the London Metropolitan Police force. That is something that is a very important part of policing in the UK. The UK police rely a great deal on the support of the public and this sets it apart from the other police forces around the world. The recent murder of a woman walking alone at night, arrested then raped and murder by a serving police officer did untold damage. Revelations since then have shown patterns of bad behaviour across the London police. Many officers, especially female officers have had to suffer in silence. The British public have high expectations of the police and they get very upset when they hear about bad behaviour and crimes committed by officers going bad.
Cressida Dick simply did not do enough to fix these problems and win back public trust. Hopefully her replacement will be able to reform the service to remove the bad apples and toxic culture.
Is he even likely to find a candidate that meets those criteria? In the Met?
They’ve brought in Commissioners from forces (sorry, services) in other parts of the country before. Depends on who’s interested in applying. Party affiliations per se don’t really apply, but finding a candidate who’s acceptable to both Patel and Khan, and a wide range (to put it mildly) of public attitudes on crime and ingrained social prejudices… Best of luck, is all I can say.
Here’s some potential new Commissioners:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/feb/10/who-might-replace-cressida-dick-as-met-commissioner
The London Metropolitian Police are unusual in that they report to the Home Office. So at the top they are politicised in way that does not apply in the rest of the country.
I’m not clear how it works with the London Mayor. I guess the Mayor has some control over budgets so the Commissioner needs to get along Mayor.
As for unions. The police have their own union, which has a history of giving Home Secretaries a hard time over pay and conditions. But they are, of course, not allowed to go on strike. Labour unions are a spent force in UK politics and have been for quite some time.
Cressida Dick seemed to have had a lot of political support that enabled her to survive several scandals over poor policing. Pritti Patel and Boris Johnson could certainly have supported her again if she was under pressure from the Mayor. But they did not.
The reform of the Metropolitan police as an institution is a regular issue. To her credit, Cressida Dick did encourage more women and ethnic minorities to join the police force to make it more inclusive. But that does not seem to addressed the pockets of bad behavior that have brought such shame on the service.
The broader perspective is the Metropolitan Police is a very socially conservative institution that is slow to change to match public expectations. Institutional reform is often a slow process, it takes many years to recruit and train officers. It is also very high profile institution and eveyone has an opinion. When there is a failure or scandal it becomes something the politicians have to deal with. Cressida Dick did not deal with these scandal well. The police were perceived as closing ranks and protecting the institution rather than prioritising the protection of the public. Cressida Dick did a lot of that and had political support at the highest levels. Presumably she had run out of road and they pulled the rug. They are now trying to blame the mayor for her resignation, it is politically convenient. But I have no doubt if Boris Johnson wanted her to remain in office, he could have put budget pressure on the Mayor. Boris has been London Mayor, and I am sure he knows what strings to pull.
I guess it provides a useful distraction away from all the scandals surround Johnson.
Here’s the position about money:
The Mayor is ipso facto the police and crime commissioner for the Metropolitan Police area, and the Greater London Assembly has a scrutiny and oversight role (hence the document above). But the Home Office holds the bulk of the purse-strings, and the top appointment has to be approved by both the Home Secretary and the Mayor as PCC, as elsewhere in England.
The London Mayor relies on central government funding for several other responsibilities, especially transport. The mayors arm can be twisted. If Greg wanted to protect Cressida Dick, they could have done. Ultimately the greater political power rests with Boris Johnson.
The Home Secretary, Pritti Patel, is now pointing at the Mayor as being mainly responsible for Cressida Dick’s departure. She is also demanding that a new Police commissioner to more to tackle the mysoginistic culture.
The rest of the time, I guess, she is working on how to make life more difficult for immigrants and refugees. A ‘red meat’ policy, that the Home Office is expected to deliver.
Populism means having a policy that fits in with the current anxieties of the moment. The public want nice, responsible, trustworthy police and also bogus refugees and asylum seekers to be deterred or deported. Pritti Patel has a hard nosed reputation and is reputed to bully her staff. She wants to persuade some other country to house refugees - presumably something similar to the Australian immigration policy that is widely admired in Conservative circles.
On the one hand she wants laughing policemen that are fair in their treatment of women and minorities, for the UK public. On the other hand she wants Robocops to throw a ring around the UK and guard this island from bad foreign criminals amongst the refugees coming over the channel in rubber boats.
This kind of thing does not go down well in the London politics that elected Sadiq Khan as mayor. The votes from Londoners with an immigrant heritage are very important and the do not like the Home Office policies.
I’d like to see more separation between the London Metropolitan Police and national politicians.
Yeah, the idea that you have one organisation which is both a localised police service and a national counter-terrorism organisation is just silly and only justified by accidents of tradition - which is no justification at all, of course.
We need one force policing London and reporting to the Mayor, and one national counter-terrorism force reporting to national government, with no blurred lines. That won’t solve everything at a stroke, but it would get the accountability right which helps enormously.
Most people don’t realize that London MPS cops also guard the Queen, the PM and other top officials no matter where they go: Protection Command - Wikipedia
This week in Tory is back!