‘No peasants, please’: BoJo’s love-in with Invoice Gates on Twitter reveals simply how damaged UK democracy actually is

Incredible to have your assist Invoice. We are going to work with our associates all over the world to make sure vaccines attain the poorest and ship our 5 level plan to guard humanity in opposition to one other pandemic.

— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) September 28, 2020

Invoice and Boris, the Vaxx Brothers. Excessive-fiving one another on social media in an orgy of mutual congratulation. ‘You’re incredible, Boris!’ ‘Nicely, I feel you’re fairly incredible too, Invoice!’

If the alternate made you wish to attain for the sick bucket, after which depart a touch upon the Gates/Johnson lovefest – maybe to ask fairly fairly if BoJo had consulted with the British taxpayer first, earlier than pledging one other large quantity to a vaccine scheme – then neglect it.

Each Gates and Johnson turned off the ‘open to all replies’ to their tweets. How ‘democratic’ was that?

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For me, the Gates-Johnson Twitter alternate demonstrates fairly clearly the place we’re, democracy-wise, in 2020. An American multi-billionaire has higher entry to the UK prime minister than British residents have. It’s the American plutocrat who the PM rushes to answer on social media, not Joe Public, who elected him, lower than one 12 months in the past.

And nobody is allowed to reply both man again. We’re all a bunch of peasants, don’t you see? Davos Man solely ever engages with fellow Davos Man. Or, as George Carlin put it, “It’s an enormous membership, and also you ain’t in it. You and I will not be within the huge membership.”

Trying again, I don’t assume there’s been a major minister in British historical past who has handled the individuals who voted for him with such contempt as Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.

Take into account this: the ‘reward’ for Pink Wall working-class voters within the north of England for giving Bullingdon Boy Johnson the Christmas current of a parliamentary majority of 80 final December has been to be locked down, and their very own household festive seasons threatened with the nightmare prospect of police gatecrashing Christmas dinner to make arrests.

On the day that Johnson was drooling over Gates, his Well being Secretary Matt Hancock was banning two million individuals within the north-east from socialising wherever indoors.

All through 2020, such dystopian, anti-human guidelines have often been introduced, often late at evening, via leaks to the press. There has not been even probably the most cursory public debate.

So as to add insult to harm, rules, when revealed, have included new powers which weren’t even made public beforehand. For instance, the most recent diktat from Johnson’s more and more authoritarian regime consists of bans on singing (by clients in teams greater than six) and dancing in pubs. Folks solely knew about this as soon as the statutory instrument was revealed on-line. 

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A part of the issue is the place we’re within the electoral cycle. Dr. Johnson – no relation to Boris, I’m happy to say – famously stated that when a person is aware of he’s to be hanged in a fortnight it concentrates his thoughts splendidly; by the identical measure nothing concentrates a politician’s thoughts greater than the truth that she or he quickly has to face re-election.

MPs are jolly good to us when an election is looming, and so they desperately want our vote to maintain their £81,000 p.a. – plus beneficiant allowances – gig. However when there isn’t one due for an additional four-and-a-half years, they have a tendency to point out their true colors. That’s what’s occurred in 2020.

‘Bouncing Boris’, the cheerful, freedom-loving, Churchill-idolising libertarian has – with an 80-seat majority within the bag – morphed into Boris the dictator. They stated we’d all be laughing when BoJo the Jester turned prime minister: consider me, nobody’s laughing in Britain now.

After six months of seeing centuries-old freedoms taken away from us, some Tory backbenchers are, to their credit score, lastly stirring from their slumbers and making an attempt to drive a vote on an modification to the Coronavirus Act, which might give MPs the best to debate any extra restrictions.

However their trigger, and our trigger, would undoubtedly be stronger if all this was taking place in 2019, the 12 months earlier than an election, quite than the 12 months after one. This 12 months has uncovered various critical fault traces in the way in which Britain operates, not least the way in which the general public has such little affect over its politicians simply after a basic election. 

We urgently want higher mechanisms, not only for recalling MPs who don’t take heed to their constituents, however for sacking prime ministers – and governments – who overstep the mark, too, and neglect that they’re solely in energy as a result of voters put them there.

Or maybe all of us want to decorate up as Gates to get Johnson and his clique to pay us any consideration.

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