The departure of Munira Mirza, Downing Street’s head of policy, suggests that time is running out for Boris Johnson’s government. Sliding in opinion polls and under investigation by the police over illegal lockdown parties in No 10, the administration has a fin de régime aura. Ms Mirza, reputed to be the prime minister’s most trusted and influential aide, said that she was quitting over a matter of principle – a rare thing in Mr Johnson’s shrinking circle. She was unwilling to stay silent over his scurrilous slur against Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer.

After working with Mr Johnson for 14 years, Ms Mirza must have been acquainted with his modus operandi. But his claim that Sir Keir spent “more time prosecuting journalists and failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile” from the dispatch box was a smear too far. Sir Keir had been director of public prosecutions when Savile was questioned under caution by police in 2009. But he was not involved in the decision not to pursue the case and there is nothing to suggest he knew that Savile was a serial sexual abuser and failed to prosecute him. A day after Mr Johnson’s deplorable attack, he was rebuked by the Commons Speaker, but refused to backtrack.

This appears to have been the final straw for Ms Mirza. Her resignation letter reveals that she understood the damage that peddling such conspiracy theories could do, even when her boss did not. Ms Mirza wrote that “this was not the usual cut and thrust of politics; it was an inappropriate and partisan reference to a horrendous case of child sex abuse”. She called on Mr Johnson to apologise: “I appreciate that our political culture is not forgiving when people say sorry, but regardless, it is the right thing to do.”

The departure of the prime minister’s most trusted aide does nothing to dispel the fin de régime aura of this Conservative government

This plea went unanswered. During a visit to Blackpool, Mr Johnson claimed that his comments were about Sir Keir’s “responsibility for the [CPS] as a whole”. This is a justification, not an apology. The prime minister is constitutionally incapable of expressing remorse for what he has done wrong.

The deliberate and intentional misleading of fellow lawmakers and the public is a serious matter. Parliamentary privilege confers immunity in respect of what MPs say. It can be a valuable tool. It is not an excuse for lying in parliament. Mr Johnson rose to the top by flouting such conventions, but his way of shaping taunts has come back to haunt him. While others were unable to see dying parents, he attended parties, then claimed shock that they were social events. The pain-free Brexit he promised cannot be delivered. Britain won’t be levelled up anytime soon.

Tellingly, Downing Street’s press chief also left on Thursday. As Tory MPs continue to pen letters demanding that the prime minister goes, these departures are evidence that he is running out of people to betray.

World Opinions By The Guardian View

L’article View on a Downing Street resignation: a smear too far est apparu en premier sur World Opinion | Alternative Média.

Acculé par le scandale des « booze parties » organisées en périodes de restrictions sanitaires, le premier ministre britannique multiplie les manœuvres grossières pour séduire les députés conservateurs, qui tiennent son destin entre leurs mains.

La fébrilité est à son comble à Downing Street, alors que le scandale des « booze parties » en série dans les locaux de l’exécutif britannique pendant les restrictions sanitaires de 2020 et de 2021 n’en finit plus de faire des dégâts et menace directement Boris Johnson. Ces derniers jours, les médias britanniques ont dévoilé les plans élaborés dans l’urgence par le dirigeant pour sauver son mandat.

Baptisés comiquement « Save Big Dog » (« sauver le gros chien ») et « Red Meat » (« viande rouge »), ces plans de la dernière chance alignent des mesures populistes destinées à flatter les instincts des députés conservateurs, qui tiennent le destin de M. Johnson entre leurs mains. Une demi-douzaine d’entre eux réclame publiquement sa démission et une vingtaine auraient déjà envoyé des lettres de défiance au puissant club d’élus

L’opération « Save Big Dog » consisterait à sacrifier quelques responsables – probablement Dan Rosenfield, le directeur du personnel de Downing Street, et Martin Reynolds, le secrétaire privé de Boris Johnson, celui-là même qui a lancé les invitations pour la BYOB party (« bring your own booze », « amenez votre propre bouteille ») du 20 mai 2020, en plein confinement.

Elle pourrait être déclenchée juste après la publication du rapport de Sue Gray, la haut fonctionnaire chargée (par M. Johnson) de faire la lumière sur les « booze parties » à Downing Street. M^me Gray pourrait avoir bouclé son enquête dès la fin de cette semaine. L’opposition travailliste et les médias, presque unanimes, considèrent déjà « Save Big Dog » comme une grossière manœuvre de M. Johnson visant à faire porter la responsabilité des infractions au confinement sur les autres plutôt que sur lui-même..

Par Cécile Ducourtieux – Le Monde

L’article Royaume-Uni : les plans de la dernière chance de Boris Johnson pour se maintenir à Downing Street est apparu en premier sur World Opinion | Alternative Média.

I was hunkered down with fiction and history books early in the pandemic, when I stumbled on The Churchill Factor, an entertaining tale of dramatised history, written by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to educate young minds about their English hero and remind the elders of British greatness.

Johnson, who likes to be seen as heir to Churchill, used the “spirited” 2014 bestseller to storm the national political arena, championing the cause of Brexit, joining the Conservative government as foreign secretary before finally replacing Theresa May as prime minister in 2019.

To suit his political ambition, Johnson may have offered a “barbarically simplified” Churchill take on Europe, in the words of American-Dutch historian Felix Klos, who wrote, Churchill’s Last Stand: The Struggle to Unite Europe.

Actually, Johnson did what the old sot himself said albeit half-jokingly, “give me the facts … and I will twist them the way I want to suit my argument”. Here, the facts are mere citations, and Churchill’s 43 books in 72 volumes, in addition to his countless articles, speeches and letters, provide plenty of, well, citations to choose from at will.

Johnson, who vows in his book to play the “devil’s advocate” from the outset, does not shy away from recalling a few of Churchill’s despicable racist beliefs, reckless decisions and wrong-headed policies, but he is quick to dismiss them with convoluted counter-arguments and linguistic acrobatics that he learned studying the classics at Oxford. He calls them “unpasteurised” Churchill.

For Boris, Churchill’s many “jolly little wars” in the colonies pale in comparison with his feat of “saving civilisation” during World War II, which has been idolised and popularised in countless books, articles, films, etc. The point being, one does not have to like Churchill to find him utterly fascinating, as I have.

As a self-appointed authority on b******t, I could easily detect the humbug in every other page, but as a student of British European history, I was unable to grasp the full extent of Johnson’s “barbaric simplification”, not until I read Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s new book, Churchill’s Shadow.

The British historian and journalist outlines a prosecutor’s case against Churchill, gathering and examining the evidence with forensic precision and highlighting some damning eye-witness accounts by those who knew him best, all of which culminates in a well-documented indictment of Johnson’s hero.

Wheatcroft surveys Churchill’s indifference to human suffering since he first served as a young officer hopping from Asia to Africa, his utter failure as the head of the British navy in World War I, and his opposition as the secretary of state for the colonies to all Indigenous self-determination and democracy.

Most pointedly, Wheatcroft trounces the prime minister’s wartime record in World War II, for which Churchill is so revered, ridicules his passion and pursuit for what was obviously a one-sided “special relationship” with the United States, and rubs his nose in the loss of the empire he so cherished.

He zeros in on Churchill’s “unpasteurised” belief in the myth of “racial superiority” of the Anglo-Saxon white race, pointing out, for example, that he advocated for the Tories to use the slogan “Keep England White” in the 1950s.

Wheatcroft argues that Churchill’s support for Zionism was driven by a combination of British imperialism, European colonialism, and “racial superiority”. Churchill believed the Palestinians should not be entrusted with their homeland, and the Jews are “a higher-grade race” than the Arabs.

Churchill’s vast historical record has long been misused, but current attempts to do so are particularly egregious.

Paradoxically, according to Wheatcroft, Churchill’s victory over the horrific Nazis who killed millions of Jews made the language he used in support of Zionism intolerable. That is perhaps overly optimistic.

At any rate, Churchill who had considered the establishment of a strong, free Jewish state of “immense advantage to the British Empire”, eagerly supported the Balfour Declaration in favour of such an entity in 1917 as a cabinet member.

For the record, and according to Churchill’s own son and grandson in their co-authored book, The Six Day War, “Britain sought to arouse World Jewry, and in particular Russian and American Jewry” to gain their support for the fight against the Central Powers (the German and Austro-Hungarian empires) in World War I. And it was in this pursuit that the Balfour Declaration was made public.

Admittedly, Churchill, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953, was an incredible orator and excellent rhetorician, who brilliantly and courageously “mobilised the English language and sent it to battle”, giving some of the most inspiring speeches ever made or heard.

His famous “never was so much owed by so many to so few” speech, reflecting the Royal Air Force (RAF) heroic defence of British civilians against Nazi bombardments, is indeed quite memorable.

Alas, the reality is messier and more complicated than any speech. Under Churchill’s leadership, the RAF was rather ineffective against the Nazi war machine, but did prove useful in “disciplining the empire” by bombing rebellious communities in Afghanistan, India, Iraq and Palestine throughout the first half of the 20th century.

In short, Wheatcroft’s 640-page book is “the best single indictment volume of Churchill yet written” to quote a New York Times review, where Churchill comes across as a greedy and cruel person, an opportunistic politician, racist imperialist and an impulsive failed strategist.

But it is more than that: It is a damning critique of the misuse of Churchill’s record since before his death, by British, American and Israeli politicians and its consequences for the rest of the world.https://cfdd521e4d73d14169e945cb6ab00ec4.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

Although he does not spell it out, Wheatcroft’s treatise is a teardown of Johnson’s “trite” biography. In an article titled, “Johnson as Churchill? History really does repeat as farce”, Wheatcroft does not hide his disdain for the current British prime minister’s attempts to draw an equivalence between himself and the man he promotes as the saviour of Britain.

But the farce is by no means limited to Johnson. The British right has also resurrected Churchill’s memory, often speaking of the European Union as if it were Nazi Germany.

Indeed, Churchill could be many things to many people, anything to anyone. Wheatcroft recounts for example, how John F Kennedy, Fidel Castro, Menachem Begin, Yasser Arafat and countless others were disposed to compare themselves with Churchill since before his death.

But it is in the United States, where Churchill proved a warped inspiration, especially for racists and warmongers during and after the Cold War.

The neoconservative movement embraced him as its historic guru and the “prophet of the Cold War”, while its mouthpiece, The Weekly Standard, named him “the man of the century”.

Long considered an honorary founder of the state of Israel, Churchill has been repeatedly cited by Israeli colonists to draw (false) equivalency between Nazi Germany and their Middle East foes, such as Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Palestine’s Yasser Arafat, or Iran’s Ali Khamenei.

These Churchillians reject any geopolitical compromise as an evil appeasement along the lines of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s “appeasement” of Adolf Hitler in the late 1930s.

Churchill himself would later remark that sometimes appeasement, especially one from a position of strength, is the best guarantor of peace. The Soviet Union, for example, collapsed not because of a war, but rather because of a degree of appeasement by the West which allowed it to implode under the pressure of its own contradictions and inadequacies.

Wheatcroft may be right about Churchill’s wrongs, or about his heirs on the right and left. But the mindset that underpinned Churchill’s support for Zionism is very much still tolerated where it counts, in Britain, the United States and Israel. As the signs of a new Cold War multiply and as the chances of a renewed Iran nuclear deal falter, the misuse of Churchill and the abuse of appeasement are back in fashion. And so is the racism that underlined his views about empire, Islam, human rights and immigration.

By Marwan Bishara – Senior political analyst at Al Jazeera

L’article Churchill, Johnson and the farcical nostalgia for empire est apparu en premier sur World Opinion | Alternative Média.

Johnson et Macron se sont rencontrés à Rome ce dimanche afin d’apaiser les tensions entre Londres et Paris autour de la pêche dans la Manche.

Le président français Emmanuel Macron s’est entretenu ce dimanche 31 octobre dans la matinée avec le Premier ministre britannique, Boris Johnson, en marge du G20 à Rome, en Italie, pour la première fois depuis la crise des sous-marins australiens, et dans un contexte de tensions entre Paris et Londres, notamment sur la pêche. Alors que les deux dirigeants ont décidé de travailler à « des mesures pratiques » dans « les tout prochains jours » pour favoriser « une désescalade » dans le conflit sur la pêche, a annoncé l’Élysée en fin de matinée, les désaccords ne sont pas encore complètement réglés.

« La balle est dans le camp des Britanniques » dans la crise sur la pêche entre la France et le Royaume-Uni, a déclaré Emmanuel Macron, en rappelant que des mesures de rétorsion s’appliqueraient mardi prochain si Londres n’acceptait pas la « désescalade » proposée par Paris. « Si les Britanniques ne font aucun mouvement, les mesures du 2 novembre devront se mettre en place, car ce sera une fin de non-recevoir », a prévenu le président français, en disant « espérer qu’il y aura demain une réponse positive », alors que Boris Johnson demandait une levée des menaces françaises.PUBLICITÉ

Le gouvernement britannique, lui, a affiché sa fermeté face à la France dans le conflit sur les licences de pêche post-Brexit et contesté le compte rendu français, affirmant que sa position « n’a pas changé ». « Si le gouvernement français veut se présenter avec des propositions pour une désescalade par rapport aux menaces qu’ils ont formulées, elles seront les bienvenues », a déclaré le porte-parole du Premier ministre britannique au sommet du G20 à Rome. « Notre position n’a pas changé », a ajouté le porte-parole du dirigeant conservateur.

Espoir de désescalade

Le porte-parole de Boris Johnson a ensuite indiqué que le Royaume-Uni continuerait à examiner les demandes des bateaux britanniques d’obtenir des licences de pêches sur la base de données, pas de menaces. « Nous sommes prêts à travailler avec le gouvernement français et les pêcheurs qui ont les données requises. Il n’y a aucun autre travail à faire », a déclaré le porte-parole de Boris Johnson. « Boris Johnson a exprimé son espoir d’une désescalade de la rhétorique du gouvernement français » et que celui-ci « retire ses menaces ».

Il s’agit donc de faire en sorte que « des mesures pratiques et opérationnelles soient prises le plus vite possible pour éviter une montée de la tension », a expliqué la présidence française. Un point sera fait mardi prochain sur la mise en œuvre ou non de mesures de rétorsion par Paris, a précisé la même source. Le différend porte sur « quelques dizaines de bateaux », donc « c’est parfaitement possible » de parvenir à une solution, a-t-elle précisé.

World Opinions Eco / AFP

L’article Pêche : « la balle est dans le camp des Britanniques », affirme Macron est apparu en premier sur World Opinion | Alternative Média.

The United Kingdom has become the first country in Europe to record more than 100,000 coronavirus-related deaths, according to official figures by the health department.

The UK has the fifth-highest toll globally – after the United States, Brazil, India and Mexico – and reported a further 1,631 deaths and 20,089 new cases on Tuesday, with critics accusing the government of an apparent slow initial response to the COVID-19 crisis.

The 100,162 deaths registered are more than the country’s civilian death toll in World War II and twice the number killed in the 1940-1941 Blitz bombing campaign, although the total population was smaller then.

“I am deeply sorry for every life that has been lost and, of course, as prime minister, I take full responsibility for everything that the government has done,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson said.

“What I can tell you is that we truly did everything we could, and continue to do everything we can, to minimise loss of life and to minimise suffering,” he added during a briefing.

Al Jazeera’s Andrew Simmons, reporting from Bradford, said Johnson’s comments were unlikely “to calm down those who feel he was too late every step of the way in taking action; he was behind the curve”.

Earlier this month, Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet, one of the oldest and most prestigious medical journals in the world, told Al Jazeera the UK was struggling to contain the pandemic because its government “has steadfastly refused to follow the science, despite claims that it is doing so”.

“The lessons from the science have been that when there is a rise in infections, you need to clamp down immediately to suppress transmission to reduce the prevalence of infection in the community. But at every stage, the government has delayed and delayed and delayed locking down, with the result that the virus has got out of control,” Horton said.

“The result of that is increased hospitalisations and deaths. This has been entirely preventable if the government had acted with more decisiveness, and sooner.”

Opposition Labour leader Keir Starmer, who has repeatedly accused Johnson of being too slow to respond to the pandemic, said the prime minister’s indecision had cost lives and worsened the economic effect.

Johnson, who contracted COVID-19 himself and ended up in intensive care, has defended his record, saying it is easy to find fault when looking back.

England, by far the most populous of the UK’s four nations, re-entered a national lockdown on January 5, which includes the closure of pubs, restaurants, non-essential shops and schools to most pupils. Further travel restrictions have been introduced as the government battles to speed up vaccination delivery and keep new, more transmissible variants of the virus at bay.

In December, the UK became the first country in the world to approve Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine and has set itself the task of offering jabs to everyone 70 and older, those who are clinically vulnerable, front-line health and social care workers and older adults in care homes by mid-February.

Up to Monday, a total of 6,853,327 people had received a first dose and 472,446 a second dose.

The government has said the vaccination rate and the success of the vaccinations are key to being able to ease restrictions as the UK battles with the highest number of deaths per 100,000 people in the world, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

“Unfortunately we’re going to see quite a lot more deaths over the next few weeks before the effects of the vaccines begin to be felt,” Chris Whitty, the UK’s chief medical officer said.

New variants have also alarmed scientists, and Johnson has warned the prospect of a “vaccine-busting” variant could mean lockdown measures are needed for longer.

The UK is due to announce whether it will also bring in mandatory quarantine in hotels for some or all arrivals and has warned the public not to book summer vacations.

“My thoughts are with each and every person who has lost a loved one – behind these heart-breaking figures are friends, families and neighbours,” Secretary of State for Health Matt Hancock said on Tuesday.

“I know how hard the last year has been, but I also know how strong the British public’s determination is and how much we have all pulled together to get through this.

SOURCE : AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

L’article UK passes grim milestone of 100,000 COVID deaths est apparu en premier sur World Opinion | Alternative Média.

Searching for the lesser ironies native to the UK, we might alight on the puzzle that Boris Johnson is beloved of many who can’t wait to point out that “facts don’t care about your feelings” – and yet is himself incapable of serving up difficult facts without endless reference to how it’s all making him feel. Is the prime minister in the business of making new year’s resolutions? If so he might consider trying to develop a stiff upper lip this year. It looks like we’re going to need it.

Should Johnson fail to toughen up and take himself in hand – a locked-on certainty, given the form book – then we are condemned to endure what might well be the worst months of the pandemic thus far, led by someone whose first thought seems always to be for his own emotions. “I hate having to take these decisions …”, “I deeply regret having to do this …”, “I do this with a heavy heart …” Once you’ve noticed the tic you can’t stop hearing it. If only he’d take back control of himself.

I can no longer remember any Boris Johnson podium address that wasn’t riven with subconscious invitations to consider the real victim in all this: him. No matter what you’ve been through this year, please do take more than a moment to consider the heartaches and ballaches visited upon a man who simply wanted to be world king, but would settle for being the kind of prime minister who smiled and drove diggers through polystyrene walls – yet now has to deal with all this shit in his in-tray instead. Of course, there is the odd bright spark. Johnson would have enjoyed being told by Bill Cash during Wednesday’s trade deal debate that he was like both Alexander the Great and Churchill. Even if that is like being told you make a lot of sense by Mrs Rochester.

His compassion for the public may be limited, but never let it be said that our leader is a man who neglects his own emotions

But mainly, we are forever being subjected to self-dramatising speeches about the latest virus measures he hates, to which the only dignified response is: I couldn’t care less how it all makes you feel. You’re the prime minister. The people listening are the ones you’re supposed to lead, not your psychotherapist.

Was this the way with the PM’s noted idol and supposed political lodestar, Winston Churchill? I’m afraid I haven’t Johnson’s Churchill biography to hand – though of course, I never permit myself to be more than four feet away from Sir Richard Evans’s majestic review of it. (Sample blast: “The Germans did not capture Stalingrad, though this book claims they did.”)

But even without this canonical text to check against, I think we can be sure that Churchill did not feel the need to deliver all his wartime announcements laced with frequent expressions of how he was handling the whole thing of having to deliver all these wartime announcements.

“I hate having to be the one who suggests we shall fight them on the beaches … I deeply regret having to indicate we may be required to fight them on the landing grounds … Nobody likes being the one whose job it is to announce we shall never surrender …” It is fair to say that Churchill was not unburdened by self-regard, yet he seems to have realised that what the people really needed to hear in their hour of need was not how it was all making HIM feel.

Inevitably, the prime minister’s needy vacillation has proved highly transmissible among his ministers. Gavin Williamson has spent much of the latter half of this week explaining his chaotic and belated actions on schools with the words “no one wants to be making these decisions”. And yet, I bet there are people who would quite want to be secretary of state for education, and to make those requisite decisions, so perhaps Gavin could stand aside for them? Perhaps Johnson will eventually steel himself to tell Williamson – with deep regret and a heavy heart, no doubt – that he is being moved on from a department he has turned into a full-spectrum clusterfuck for a year now. Until then, the self-dramatisation continues. As you may know, Williamson prominently displays a bullwhip on his desk. This is the version of Indiana Jones where our hero never beats the boulder hurtling down the tunnel behind him, and the mere act of reaching back for his hat causes the loss of both his arm and the educational prospects of an entire generation of children.

Speaking of touches of affectation, when the prime minister comes through the No 10 double doors to announce close to a thousand deaths, as he has twice this week, it can be seen that this 56-year-old man has nonetheless still taken the trouble to mess up his hair just before. What felt mildly excruciating in pre-corona times seems truly grotesque when persisted with today. The podium turns themselves betray even more weirdly skewed priorities. A couple of weeks ago, a shielding and frightened member of the public asked a question in which she said she had already lost two loved ones to Covid. Clearly incapable of feeling compassion for anyone other than himself, Johnson declined to express any, and handed the question over to Chris Whitty.

The reason all this is particularly important is because it tells us so much of why our pandemic story has unfolded the way it has. Time and again, Boris Johnson has so deeply regretted even the prospect of having to do difficult things that he hasn’t done them, meaning he has had to do even more regrettable things later. He seems most comfortable casting himself as forever the passive victim of events as opposed to someone who should be out in front of them, shaping them as decisively as possible. A fascinating article by the pollster James Johnson this week charted the PM’s descent in the focus groups over the course of the past year. “As yet another inevitable decision was finally made,” he reported, “people came to think more and more that the man who was meant to lead them was following them instead.”Advertisement

Buck up, toughen up, show a stiff upper lip – I’m sure there’s some archive Boris Johnson column out there lamenting that these are now deemed inappropriate responses by “the PC brigade”. Either way, I am happy to oblige him by considering them easily the most suitable exhortations in this particular case. For God’s sake, prime minister – do man up.

By Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

L’article With a heavy heart, Johnson will always remind us who the real victim is: him est apparu en premier sur World Opinion | Alternative Média.