A year ago Boris Johnson secured a thumping election victory.
Boris Johnson said, “you know there may come a moment when we have to acknowledge that its time to draw stumps and that’s just the way it is.” He emphasized, “we will prosper mightily under any version and if we have to go for an Australian solution then that’s fine too.” Australia currently has no free trade agreement with EU.
“Draw stumps”! To this PM it’s just another game. “we will prosper mightily “! This flowery kind of speech makes the man sound even more ridiculous than he already appears.
After the year that Covid convulsed Britain, let’s have a look back at what happened to the biggest issues.
Labour’s Red Wall
“Buyers’ remorse” of voters in Labour ’s traditional Red Wall seats in Northern England could see most of the new Tory MPs losing their seats.
If a recent Channel 4 poll accurately predicted voters’ intentions, Labour would win back 36 of 45 red wall seats lost in the December 2019 general election.
Johnson’s star is no longer shining in the North due to confused Covid messages and the notorious lockdown trip to Barnard Castle made by his now departed top aide Dominic Cummings.
The dish Johnson served to clinch his election success has proved another of his many myths, emphasising the Con in Conservative.
High-wire talks and brinkmanship expose how much of his plan was half-baked at best. It is a prime example of the PM making it up as he goes along.
No wonder a clear majority now wish that at the 2016 referendum the country had decided to stay in the European Union. But that ship has sailed and now probably lies on the bottom of the Channel.
Pictures of sick children forced to sleep on hospital chairs waiting for beds put health firmly on the agenda.
Johnson’s promise of 40 new hospitals captured the public imagination but proved yet another figment of his imagination. A mere six projects received significant funding in an October plan.
The virus reinforced the value of the NHS. Johnson clapped carers and public service heroes then froze the pay of many frontline workers.
Levelling up
Levelling down more like when wage squeezes, benefit cuts and scythed public spending will entrench and widen inequalities.
The return of Tory austerity guarantees “levelling up” will never be more than another dishonest Johnson slogan after it appealed to a section of the working class vote a year ago.
Boris Johnson is deeply unpopular a year after winning an 80-seat majority.
Lies, incompetence, cronyism and wisecracks, unfunny when people are dying in their tens of thousands and losing jobs by the hundreds of thousands, have resulted in his authority haemorrhaging.
Johnson’s gross mishandling both of Brexit and coronavirus has led many Tory MPs to speculate whether he will be replaced before the next election.
Public sympathy when Johnson was seriously ill with the virus quickly vanished as the death toll mounted.
The power behind Boris Johnson, Cummings has endured a sudden and spectacular fall.
His ill-tempered departure from No 10 after losing a power struggle, showed a man in the middle of a nosedive from Tory hero to zero.
Arrogant and rude, his free pass to crash through virus lockdown rules by driving to Barnard Castle in Co Durham, claiming it was to test his eyesight shocked the public.
More significantly it wrecked public confidence in Johnson and the rules for combating Covid-19.
Tory MP fear weirdo misfit Cummings will seek revenge, urinating into the tent from outside after soaking it when inside. We live in hope.
