TBH, even trying to argue the toss here, that somehow what Johnson has done is innocuous, or morally comparable to other PMs, is not only absurd but what can only be a wilful attempt at Bad Faith debate. It's a transparently hostile action by Johnson, using his time in journalism to apply an understood principle that a well-placed lie can do an incredible amount of damage. "I'm not saying you're a paedophile protector ..." would be bad enough, where just invoking the offence brings a conflation with its target. He would know full-well a wink and a nod will play within a certain demographic, while allowing plausible deniability through linguistic hand-waving.
However, in this instance, Johnson spoke an actual, demonstrable lie about Starmer's involvement in the Savile case, but. But. Why even pick that specific instance? I'm sure Starmer's legal career has had plenty of shady involvements prone for questioning - yet Johnson picked the one that involved a violently emotive issue - one that was bound to cause an uproar. Which it has. He invoked Jimmy Saville deliberately and with malaice. To argue otherwise is to be either naive or contrarian.
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We didn't need comparisons to PMs stoking far right tensions using loony conspiracy theories because they were not doing it.
Blair was compared to Bush due to the warmongering and Thatcher to Regan for ripping working class life to pieces to break the unions but we didn't need a Trump comparison.
What did people do before Trump when it comes to political comparisons?
There's always been political comparisons. The real question is "What did people do before Trump when it came to comparing disgusting, outrageous and deceitful behavior from political leaders?"
I don't even know. Trump, more than anyone in the modern era, has dragged the moral bar down so so far. He is now the yardstick to measure the very worst politicians by.
I suspect that Boris Johnson will be the British yardstick for morally bankrupt British Prime Ministers henceforth but for now the only person we can compare him to is Trump.
A similar or maybe the same group were driving a "freedom flotilla" up towards Westminster yesterday. Had all the proper out there bizarre conspiracy, NWO and anti-vaxx stuff but also stuff about saving the children with emergency aid which looked like it was deliberately trying to ape the pro Palestinian stuff. I assume it's some sort of in joke like people on here call the "left" and "woke" a religion.
He knows what hes doing, all he cares about is changing the narrative whatever it takes.
The Sun
Daily Express
Daily Mail
None of them have featured the news of Starmer being attacked on front page. This tells you all you need to know about those newspapers.
The fringe lunatics, the QAnon mentalists, the Pizzagate headcases, they're not just limited to US politics. Johnson may not be intending to unleash them but that's what he's doing.
This is what Boris has now tweeted ! Holly carp, does this amount to an apology for causing this in the first place ?
This is almost as bad as the original statement IMO. Next we will have Nadine Doris out saying she cannot see how they are related, or she doesnt know what they are talking about - it never happened
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No, it doesn't. This is the usual "both sides" false equivalence deployed whenever the right employ Trumpian tactics.
Don't try and draw moral equivalence between some unbecoming vulgarism from a MP and the PM (or anyone) trying to imply the leader of the opposition was complicit in letting a paedophile walk. Or play the tedious "both sides" argument. You know full well there's no line drawn, let alone thinking "an apology" somehow solves everything.
Anyway, Johnson's disgusting comment follows on from Angela Raynor's scumbag comment, which she eventually apologised for. Boris will have to do the same.
This is truly chilling. Until now, Johnson's never had to get any more Trumpian than he already has. Partly because the UK isn't as polarised as the US and partly because he doesn't need to. His problems aren't coming from Labour or its leader which says much. He now knows that he can unleash these conspiracy theorists on Starmer or anyone else on a whim and then make perfunctory attempts at condemnation after they've wrought their havoc. 2 MP's have been killed since the Brexit referendum of 2016. I'm actually shocked at this. Sir David Amess was of his party and yet he thought nothing of spreading this sort of toxic misinformation.
Either he goes now or his party is complicit. He's actually undermining what passes for democracy here at this stage.
Seemingly they were primarily anti-vaxxers. Probably just seizing on the Saville 'issue' as a (bogus) stick to beat Starmer with.
Johnson has whipped them up, no doubt about it. This is the real effect that Johnson's actions have at the the end of the day, he's stirred up the right wing conspiracy theorists and this is what happens, Trump style.
I was taking a stroll down Whitehall this afternoon with a friend and showing them the city and I was astonished by the number of police there around Downing Street and the cabinet office and how they couldn't know what was going on in the various parties.
There was a lorry parked up with a Union Jack draped on the front parked in front of the Cabinet Office around lunchtime and a few interesting exchanges seemed happening between the police and the lorry parked up. Also seemed to be far more skinheads than usual around.
Just in case it wasn't clear enough how Johnson was playing it straight out of the Trumpian playbook; now, I'd say those idiots already had pre-existing bias about Starmer, but as we know full well, an enticing lie will stick quicker than any truth. This absolutely has the stink of UK pizzagate about it, albeit with the conspiracy originating from the political leaders own lips.
Hopefully seeing disgusting scenes like this tip a few more Tories over the line into sending in their letters of No Confidence.
Yes! I remember him eviscerating Ned O'Keeffe as well.
I remember that, wasn’t it Dempsey and another FF politician shaking their heads unconvincingly that they hadn’t heard anything.
It is very telling the calibre of politician they are left with who are willing to go in front of the cameras to defend Johnson. Between Nadine Dorries, Michael Fabricant and that "ambushed with cake" guy they really seem to be scraping the bottom of the barrel. It reminds me of the tail end of the FF/Green government after the IMF had come in and the government had lost all credibility. It still dragged on for a couple of months and the likes of Vincent Browne were absolutely savaging TDs who were trying to defend the indefensible.
Even at that time though I cannot recall a collection of car-crash interviews in the manner that Nadine Dorries has given this week. I'm starting to wonder have the Tories decided to send her out, repeatedly, as some kind of elaborate "dead cat" strategy. I don't think it's working since any criticism of her is only one step removed from him Johnson. He, after all, is the one who promoted her well above her abilities.
Nadine Dorries seems to be trying to one up one utterly Bizarre interview after another and despite what she and others the Tory party might believe it’s not helping. And it took longer than I expected but the calls for Boris Johnson to resign is being linked to a “remainer plot” because of course it is.
It's not often you get that degree of brazen shamelessness, mixed with charmless belligerence, as you see here with Dorries. Pretty pathetic really, there's toadying and then there's this; but lacking the charisma to at least be breezy about the obvious hostility. Maybe she's a genuine, sunk cost infused True Believer. You'd wonder what her constituents feel about someone this ... I dunno how to describe it really.
Mod: Please refrain from ad hominems. Thanks.
I heard a clip of her defending Johnson on a podcast the other day and I genuinely thought it was a badly made spoof.
She's definitely not right to the point where putting her in front of the worlds media in her condition is exploiting someone with an obvious mental illness or addiction problem.
She's the Rudy Giuliani of UK politics.
Seems like whatever she's taking, she needs a higher dose. Something wrong with that woman. The head shaking stuff is bizarre, her body language extremely uncomfortable and twitchy. Withdrawal symptoms?
Utterly bizzare interview. Has to be one of the most uncomfortable things I've seen.
There is much in Irish politics that should not happen and there are more than a few absolute cabbages and chancers sticking their snouts in the trough but on the grand scale of things none of it really extends to the industrial-scale levels of ideologically driven, wanton cruelty on display from successive Tory MPs; Ian Duncan Smith laughing from the - then - front Tory benches at the prospect of people having to use food banks because of the latest cuts, or Rees Moggs with his crass comments about the Grenfell victims, or anything that Patel so much as looks at, etc. The unabashed DILLIGAF levels of pride over the universal credit scandal, the windrush scandal, etc. etc. etc.
As bad as they were I don't remember Aherns gang bringing in anti protest laws or trying to stoke tension in the North to score points never mind threatening to have journalists beat up.
Bertie would have certainly have an appreciation for a PM who knows how to get a free house renovation though.
Having to suffer the fools in No.10 and about to get slapped with 54% electric & gas bill hikes amongst all of the other 1001 price hikes, I would gladly vote for the likes of Messers Ahern & McCreevy in a heartbeat if given the option and considering the calibre of who is currently at the helm.
Irish politics is a paragon of virtue & competence by comparison to the last decade of Tory rule.
