Is there anyone who would like to see Al Johnson fall? I’m no friend of the Prime Minister and would gladly have seen him fall in March 2020 when he launched his Maoist plan to close the country, trash our liberty and wreck the economy.
I didn’t have any friends at that point, nor for many months thereafter. Gosh, if someone had called me in May 2020 and said ‘Downing Street is holding boozy parties while Johnson is ordering the nation into strict isolation’, I’d have welcomed the leak and used it to try to destroy a policy I always saw as wrong and out of proportion.
However, no one called me, even though many people knew then.
The leaks began when Johnson finally stood up against the panic-mongers, and started to free the country.
Is there anyone who would like to see Al Johnson fall? I’m no friend of the Prime Minister and would gladly have seen him fall in March 2020 when he launched his Maoist plan to close the country, trash our liberty and wreck the economy. But I was almost without any friends at the time and throughout my months following that.
This is the first time that there has been a real difference between Labour Party and Tories. It is all contained in one official Twitter tweet from the Labour Party.
It was tweeted by Labour Party, January 13, and attracted little attention.
This article should have been featured on all front pages and led bulletins. It takes you into Sir Keir’s head and gives insight to lockdown fans like Keir Starmer in a way that was never possible before.
It approvingly quotes a nurse, whose name is given as ‘Jenny, NHS nurse’. She says: ‘I remember May 20, 2020 vividly. A man in hospital’s carpark, desperate for his wife, called me hours ago.
‘He begged, wept, shouted to be let in but we said no – for the greater good of everyone else. She died unexpectedly and alone, as the Government had a party.’
This tweet, which was posted by Labour Party January 13, has attracted very little attention. It should have been in every bulletin.
I feel sorry for ‘Jenny’, because she was deluded by fear propaganda and did not really know what she was doing. She did a terrible thing.
If I had prevented a husband from seeing his dying wife ‘for the greater good of everyone else’, while the poor man begged and shouted for mercy, I might now keep quiet about it.
Perhaps I feel even more regretful and ashamed that my self-righteousness has so blinded to the human need for kindness.
While we all have the ability to commit horrific acts of cruelty, it is worse when we feel we are doing so for a valid reason. It is because idealists then arrest and execute those who refuse to accept the Utopia.
Fanaticism among the Covid authorityitarians is frenetic because they believe that their actions are unquestionably correct.
Because Johnson is now leaving them, it’s these zealots that want to ruin Johnson. Johnson is beginning to rediscover proportion and reason. Johnson is not alone in his desire to see his dying wife, but is given his wish.
For that simple difference between the two sides in this row, I back Johnson against Starmer – because I have to and if you are wise, you will too.
You don’t want people like Jenny running the Government.
This is how it works: Poke the bear
Vladimir Putin will invade Ukraine if he is a madman staring at the wall. He is not, but I don’t see any evidence of it. He is cruel, intolerant, sinister and a nasty man. If you’re a lunatic, you won’t be able to stay in Moscow as president for very long.
If there is one single action which would be bound to destroy his regime and wreck Russia’s long-term hopes of recovering its position in Eastern Europe, it is an invasion of Ukraine.
Why are people shouting that an invasion is imminent? It is often because they do not know the subject and cannot locate Odessa using a map. They are simply joining the crowd to feel secure. For these days, if you don’t join such crowds you will be accused of being a ‘Putin apologist’ and worse.
In other cases it is because of the tragic spread of ‘Munich Syndrome’. This incurable condition makes sufferers believe that every foreign crisis is a repeat of September 1938. A certain foreign despot has been chosen by Hitler, last time it was Saddam; now it’s Putin. Neville Chamberlain is the modern Neville Chamberlain. Anyone who offers a peaceful path out of this messiah problem is just that. Winston Churchill is a modern Winston Churchill. So simpleminded.
Ukraine isn’t Czechoslovakia. Putin isn’t Hitler nor Stalin. Putin has no social or racial ideology. He’s been calling for the extension of NATO into Eastern Europe since years. He asked quite reasonablely who the target was.
Nato was established to counter aggression from the USSR. This empire ceased to exist 31 year ago. Russia is not part of the USSR. Keeping Nato in existence is like maintaining an alliance against the Austro-Hungarian or Ottoman Empires, which vanished a century ago – a job-creation project.
He rightly points out that Moscow (mostly without violence) let go of vast tracts of Asia and Europe, and unwillingly permitted the reunification of Germany – something Margaret Thatcher was pretty reluctant about as well. The West’s leaders at the time said that they wouldn’t expand NATO to the East (a large archive of documents from George Washington University confirms this).
George Kennan (the greatest anti-Soviet diplomat ever), warned against any attempt to do such things. He said: ‘The expansion of Nato right up to the Russian borders is the greatest mistake of the post-Cold War period.’ So did Russian liberals of the sort we claim to support. Yegor Gaidar, admired in the West for his economic reforms, contacted Canada’s ambassador, Chris Westdal, in Moscow in 2004, to say he had come ‘to beg, to plead’ to advise Ottawa against further Nato expansion which would, he warned, ‘bring out the worst of Russian instincts’. So it was.
Bears will bite you if you are too harsh with your stick. If he does attack you, it is best to not blame him.
Have I got news for you… Nadine’s heart isn’t in BBC reform
I do wish people would stop calling the BBC ‘Auntie’. It hasn’t been Auntie for decades. It’s a grumpy, indifferent body that has a mental age around 22. It fights dirty and hard.
And I guess Nadine Dorries’s licence-fee freeze will not lead to very much. Her heart’s not in it, and nor is Johnson’s (remember, the BBC made him a star, on Have I Got News For You).
One of many reasons why the Tories don’t want to take on the Corporation is that they owe their revival in 2010 to the BBC. The BBC decided that David Cameron had accepted Blair’s revolution and would not reverse it. The Tories began to receive fair treatment in BBC news and current affairs, for the first times in many decades. On all the key issues – break-up of the country, sexual revolution, destruction of education in the name of equality and diversity – the Tory Party has stayed on the side of Blairism. The Tories were also more Blairite during the Corbyn Years than Labour.
The BBC is now supporting Starmer, only after the Blairites have been re-elected as Labour Party leaders.
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