In Shakespeare's Henry V, at the height of the Battle of Agincourt, the King, on learning that the French had attacked and killed the boys and women attached to his army to carry baggage, cook and so on, loses his temper and famously says: "I was not angry since I came to France......" he then threatens to overwhelm and destroy the French army for their "arrant knavery" which was "expressly against the law of arms" (the Mediaeval rules of war). Well, that's how I feel this morning having read Boris Johnson's latest dreadful piece of theatre and "arrant knavery" in his speech to the Tory Party Conference yesterday.
I have learned to live with and expect no less from Johnson that he will hitch his wagon to any crackpot idea or to any individual who will, knowingly or unknowingly, assist him to rise up the ladder. I am well versed in Johnson's casual lying, his unreliability, his penchant for making promises that he has no intention whatsoever of keeping, and his total lack of any moral scruple; in short, he is a man with no moral compass, unfit for any office, let alone high office. It is a sign of what contemporary Britain has become that we have allowed this man to rise to the top of our political life. But yesterday, even by Johnson's low standards he excelled himself.
In suggesting that he and his rag bag, ethically challenged party and its supporters will bring about "a new Jerusalem" in the aftermath of Covid - a disaster much of which is attributable to his own inadequate handling of the situation - he has gone too far. Having tried hitching his wagon to the Churchill mantra and suggesting that, to use Churchill's words (as Johnson so often does), we Brits would easily overcome Covid by our "Dunkirk Spirit" where, to again quote Churchill, we will "fight [it] on the beaches, on the landing grounds, on the streets......" he has now moved onto Clement Attlee for some new inspiration. Fighting Covid on the beaches with our Churchillian Dunkirk Spirit appears to have been a signal failure so in true Johnson fashion he now moves the goalposts and find a new "hero" - Clement Attlee, who truly did build the "new Jerusalem" for this country - to emulate, quote and to fraudulently model himself and his party upon. Johnson will do anything, quote anyone and adopt and idea to further and ingratiate himself; he is a charlatan, a man who thieves ideas and policies, a man who will always sink one step lower than it can ever be thought possible. But in trying to take on the garb of Attlee Johnson has overstepped common decency by some considerable degree.
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| Attlee: Unassuming, humble, unimpeachable integrity - and Britain's greatest Prime Minister |
Attlee was, unarguably, this country's greatest Prime Minister and left a legacy from which we all benefit today and which Johnson and his party have, over recent years, made every effort to run down, defund and destroy as privatisation, austerity, a free market culture and cynical criticism from Tories like Johnson, Gove or Duncan Smith have eaten in to our NHS, education service, welfare arrangements, emergency services and the like - all the things that were part of Attlee's "new Jerusalem" and his great legacy to us. It is beyond contempt that Johnson should quote Attlee by using the phrase "new Jerusalem"- when his party have spent so much time and effort destroying the very real "new Jerusalem" that Attlee gave us. When Attlee used those words in the late 1940s and quoted from William Blake's great poem he did so from a spirit of making the world a better place; today when Johnson uses them he does so from a position of his own self aggrandisement; as I said above he is a charlatan.
Kipling's great poem "If", for me, sums up all that Attlee was and all that Johnson isn't; perhaps it is worth all of us reflecting, in these dark times, which may well get a lot darker yet, on the sort of leadership - and indeed the sort of GB, we want:
"If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
Has Johnson not a shred of decency in his body? I believe not. For him to try to steal the cloak of Attlee is, for me, unforgivable; to paraphrase Henry V, it is "arrant knavery" and like King Henry "I was not angry until this day".
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