Of course you could never vote Corbyn.
Of course. I mean who was that geography supply teacher with the wacky ideas. He made it sound like Christmas was coming all at once and he’d found some magic beans at the back of his allotment to grow money trees.
Besides, there was something off about him. And was he antisemitic? There seemed a lot in news about that at the time.
So you voted Boris Johnson, if anything it was because he had promised to get Brexit done and my God were you fed up hearing about it. I mean, it was bad enough in the lead up to the referendum, but after 2016 did it go mad or what? Somebody just needed to pull their finger out and get it done.
Boris, the blonde-haired buffoon, who got caught on that zip wire and was always game for a laugh, had come out and said it would all be sorted. All we had to do was put our foot down with the EU and say look messrs et mademoiselles, this is it; we voted for this and we’re having it. So deal with it.
Boris was an odd character, he always seemed to be doing something funny on the six o’clock news, but his cut accent and unusual vocabulary, even if it came with an affected stammer, was somehow reassuring. Somebody with an educational pedigree like his - Eton and Oxford - couldn’t be a silly bugger. I mean, yes, buffoon on top, but clever geezer underneath. After all, he had done an okay job as London Mayor, hadn’t he? And he’d worked at high profile newspapers beforehand.
So your cross went in his box.
But then it transpired he was boozing it up during lockdown. As you struggled at home, missing important family milestones or even having to say goodbye to a loved one via Zoom, Boris Johnson, who let’s face it always seemed to take forever to take any action during Covid, was apparently getting on it. And even if he wasn’t, even if he really was just ambushed by cake or popping in to have a swift half to say farewell to a beloved colleague, he was the boss. He was overseeing a Freshers university dorm in Number 10. Wine up the walls, partying till dawn and puke in the bins.
It left a sour taste in your mouth. And then he lied. Then he lied some more.
And as it unravelled that Brexit really hadn’t been taken care of, as the M2 filled with lorries and prices skyrocketed, as your weekly petrol bill looked more like your weekly rent or mortgage repayments, you started to realise the self-styled “big dawg” had not got the “big calls” right after all.
And then he was changing Britain’s unwritten constitution. He was riding roughshod over a system based on decency and honour, changing the ministerial code to avoid his own sacking.
And surely this was it? He had set the rules, broken the rules and then he was re-writing them to get away with lying about how he broke them/didn’t understand/didn’t know anything about it.
It left you wondering, okay, so did you not read the rules or were you too thick to understand them? Or, as was becoming more and more evident, did you think you were above them?
All were plausible. Johnson never went to Bernard Castle as far as we are aware, so his eyesight may have been too poor to read the rules. Did he write them? Well, who knows. He said he had an oven ready Brexit deal, but he seemed unaware of the issues in Northern Ireland.
Did he… does he think he is better than you? Well, you seem to recall this was the fella who belonged to a club that allegedly wafted burning £50 notes in front of homeless people.
Johnson has been asking you stop listening, stop seeing, stop feeling. He asked you to be a drone. It was enough.
So you have turned your back on the Tories… for now. But what do you see in the other parties. Are the Lib Dems a force yet? Who is their leader these days, it’s not Nick Clegg is it? No, he’s making the tea for Zuckerburg at Facebook now, sorry Meta. I wonder if David Cameron gave him a good reference. So who’s the other chap, who’s at the helm at Labour. Starmer? O yeah, Sir Keir. Captain Hindsight, that’s the fellow.
Well, what do you get if you vote for him? He’s obviously not the incumbent clown, he’s no showman, but what on earth does he stand for? He’s ditched Corbyn’s policies right? He’s like one of those younger teachers, the one’s that used to come in with LO’s - Learning Objectives. And he wouldn’t ramble in front of the class, but get down to it.
Starmer likes to point out what the government is doing wrong. The only issue being, you have no idea what he would do instead. What is his plan to fix the mess? A windfall tax. Yes. But that was a short term thing and the government are doing it now aren’t they. So what else, what else does Starmer’s Labour stand for? They got rid of the geography teacher ranting into the ether about this and that. But what is the new model school teacher offering?
Because it is one thing to criticise, but quite another to offer an alternative vision. An achievable and believable vision.
So, come on then Starmer, tell us what makes you different to Johnson? What makes you fit for PM? And answer us without referring to your predecessor.
Because the left of Labour will tell you Starmer is not above a lie either. He told Labour members he would keep Corbyn’s policies, but ditch the amateur look and purge the racism. Now he has purged the policies too, so what does his Labour offer? Is it enough to simply not be Conservative, simply not be Boris Johnson?
The Conservative Party rebels will certainly be hoping it is the latter. But what’s the truth of the matter?
