While the Prime Minister suffered what was referred to as “a bruising rebellion” in the House of Commons today on the subject of his new Lockdown, it will I think concentrate most minds to discover that his majority was 516 votes to 38.
The answer to “Why?” is of course very simple: the Opposition Parties voted solidly with Boris Johnson to support a policy almost entirely lacking in international comparatives, or sound epidemiological support.
Given the hopelessly confusing, blasé and generally inept display of arrogance put on by Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance before the Science and Technology Committee on the subject of Covid19 strategy yesterday, one might have hoped for more than 5.5% of our legislators to oppose their Lockdown advice.
But no: nobody in the House of Commons outside the Cabinet wants (a) to have 72 million fingers pointed at them as mass murderers (b) give The Other Lot a chance to challenge Tory power (c) attract the ire of the ever-watchful Whips or (d) be seen to contradict that science so dear to the media….and thus wind up being branded a nut, a Covid Denier, a dangerous purveyor of wild disinformation etc etc.
I would love to know how many of the gallant 516 had actually watched their fellow mediocrities trying to gum Whitty and Vallance into submission. However, at the same time I do fear that the resultant findings would simply depress me further.
Far from having MPs that will stand up for us, we don’t even have MPs capable of standing up for themselves any more. I’d be driven to ask what the point of them is, were it not for my prior knowledge of their function – viz, to sign letters that get them media coverage and shuffle into the lobbies in order to say Yea or Nay to a Bill they haven’t even read.
The few exceptions to this rule find themselves venomously interrogated by Channel Four’s radical chic set. I watched the searingly honest but much disliked MP John Redwood assaulted in this manner by the disgusting Krishnan Guru-Murthy a few days ago.
I would call Guru-Murthy a lightweight were it not for his advancing paunch. So I shall have to fall back on his arrogant, foul-mannered, bullying and yet oddly smug liberal Establishment style of interviewing. He bombarded Redwood with corrective statistics, up to but not including those clearly showing that, as a nation, we voted for Brexit.
The West is full of Krishnan Guru-Murthys, keen as mustard to promote mad liberal agendas and rip into real liberal democrats he despises. In 2009, I was on the receiving end of a remote interview where he promised in advance that I’d be given a countdown to live. He phoned 20 minutes early and went straight into a rant – Live on-Air – about what I had against Gordon Brown.
His sister, Geeta Guru-Murthy, is a news presenter and journalist with BBC News.
*Sighs*
The Slog 