Boris Johnson must get a grip or it’s end of the Tories
WHEN the history of this Government is written, the issue of misplaced loyalty could make a chapter of its own.
It raised its head last year, with the botched attempt to save Boris Brexit ally Owen Paterson over a lobbying scandal.
Fellow Tories could not stomach this rule-twisting so Paterson stormed out, triggering the cataclysmic loss of true blue North Shropshire — the first of many.
Now we have alleged serial crotch-grabber Chris Pincher — branded by Boris as “Pincher by name, Pincher by nature” — before his appointment as Deputy Chief Whip in charge of party discipline.
It was not until 24 hours after The Sun’s Noa Hoffman broke the story about this Boris ultra-loyalist’s drunken groping that the PM suspended him as a Conservative MP.
Another by-election melt-down, in otherwise safe Tamworth, is now on the cards.
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Sordid sex pests are a perpetual problem for all parties — Labour, Lib Dem and SNP as much as the Tories.
Usually, they make headlines for a few days and are quickly forgotten.
But they are coming in waves for a Prime Minister who already faces perhaps the most formidable flood of political challenges ever to lap the steps of Downing Street.
First, he is at war with at least 148 members of his own party. That problem is growing not slowing.
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His ministers look leaden-footed against public sector militants — rail workers, teachers, doctors, nurses, airport workers, lawyers — who threaten to bring the entire country to a standstill.
The Whitehall Blob is already working to rule.
And the BBC is openly competing with Sky as BoJo’s fiercest critic.
Airport carousels
To top it all off, No10 has been caught out by a cost-of-living crisis which promises to lay waste to the living stand-ards of almost everyone in the land.
All this as the productive economy implodes under the weight of taxes, labour short-ages and supply chain chaos.
Much of this was predictable — and predicted.
Yet nothing was done to brace the public for the ordeals ahead, including possible powercuts and food shortages. For many, this will be their first experience of real hardship.
So where was Boris’s “inner Churchill” as this drama began to unfold?
Why did he veto advice to address the nation in a speech about the looming threats to household budgets before they gathered pace?
Where was his statesmanlike vow to fight them at the petrol pumps, fight them at the passport offices, at the railway stations and on the airport carousels, never to surrender?
There are plenty of targets. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer needs no introduction.
But Starmer’s chief rival, Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, deserves a bucket-load for trying to revive what amounts to Labour’s 1970s prices-and-incomes policy which sent inflation rocketing out of control.
The long-lashed revolutionary demanded inflation-proof pay deals, a surefire recipe for the wage/price spiral which nearly bankrupted Britain back then.
“This Government is playing politics,” he ranted yesterday, with a straight face.
“It is absolutely right that workers should be protecting their incomes in this cost-of-living crisis.”
Maybe, but not at an inflation-busting 20 to 25 per cent, as some unions are demanding.
Meanwhile, two knights of the realm, silent Sir Keir and ghostly Sir Tony Blair, are circling over the clueless Labour Party.
Blair may be despised by many but he remains a beguiling figure for New Labour Long Marchers, the BBC and shadowy Common Purpose influencers who operate below the radar within the public service Blob.
Perpetual coalition
Blair thinks the time is ripe for a new political movement, perhaps under the Labour Party umbrella but with him-self as backseat driver.
This is a dagger aimed at the heart of the Conservative Party — and Brexit.
Blair already has the backing of Tory and Labour dissidents who might form an alliance with the Lib Dems at the next election.
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The price? Scrapping first-past-the-post elections and introducing proportional representation.
It is a lethal recipe for perpetual coalition — and the end of the Tories as the most successful political party in UK history.
Nato must step up too
SOME Tories are already moaning about the £1billion extra pledged for Ukraine by Boris Johnson last week.
They are probably the same Tories who demanded we back Volodymyr Zelensky’s brave regime to the hilt after Vladimir Putin invaded.
True, we don’t have a spare billion rattling round the cash-strapped Treasury. It is true, too, that other Nato states also need to step up to the plate.
But this is a conflict we backed with our eyes wide open because of the threat Russia presents to the whole Western alliance.
If we back off now, nobody will be safe from the Kremlin’s Mad Dog tyrant.