This week, we saw the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, being bundled into a police car after being swamped by protesters shouting ‘Jimmy Savile’ and ‘traitor’.
It is no surprise to me and many others that these thugs crawled out of the woodwork just a week after Johnson falsely accused Sir Keir Starmer of failing to prosecute Savile when he was Director of Public Prosecutions.
No apology
Despite universal condemnation, Downing Street has said that Boris Johnson will not apologise for using a discredited idea that Johnson no doubt read whilst flicking through his favourite far-right pages on social media. Where else would he get it from? The claim has long circulated on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere. This week, I have reported many posts and memes which have sprung up again since the Prime Minister’s performance in the House of Commons. Coincidence? It seems unlikely.
Don’t care
But the Prime Minister is not the only one. Spreading disinformation is a habit that seems to go right from the top to the bottom of the cesspit that is now the Tory Party and our own region does not escape. Keith Girling is the deputy leader of Newark and Sherwood District Council and also chairs Nottinghamshire County Council’s economic development committee. He is now facing a misconduct probe. Why? For allegedly sharing fake pictures of Savile sitting next to Keir in the House of Commons.
As a public servant, will Mr Girling apologise? Well, no. His only comment was that he “didn’t care really.” As if that wasn’t the bleeding obvious. This was no accident by either Johnson or whoever this little jumped up brown shirt from Nottinghamshire is. They are two peas in a pod and epitomise the current Tory party.
Like Girling, Johnson seems not to care one bit for those that have been subjected to child abuse. His words that police funding was being “spaffed up the wall” and that “an awful lot of police time” was used looking at “historic offences and all this malarkey” have become infamous.
If Boris Johnson feels free to set the brown shirts onto the leader of the opposition, then who will pick up the bill for the inevitable extra policing costs? I imagine it will cost £100,000s a year more now to protect Sir Keir Starmer. Will the Conservative party cough up for that? Johnson’s dog-whistles, perhaps ironically, are diverting police resources away from the front line, reducing the capacity to deal with genuine abuse and real offenders. I, for one, do not want my taxes being used up because Johnson can’t stop spreading right-wing lies that he finds on social media.
Gutter politics
The Prime Minister certainly has form for digging through the gutter. Check out this tweet from Peter Jukes, co-founder and executive editor of Byline Times.
Only last week, Johnson said it would take a tank division to remove him from Number 10. If he is serious, like some kind of right-wing dictator, then it is not the first time that he has been complicit in threats of violence.
Who remembers 1990? Johnson was secretly filmed offering to give the private address of reporter Stuart Collier to Johnson’s pal Darius Guppy.
Collier was at the time investigating Guppy’s activities and Guppy explained to Johnson that he needed Collier’s address because he was going give him “a couple of black eyes and a cracked rib or something like that.” Johnson agreed to provide the address. His only concern was that he shouldn’t be publicly associated to anything that happened.
Should he stay or should he go?
Prime Minister, people are clamouring for you to resign but personally, I’d rather you stay. You are single-handedly turning the country against your unique brand of utter lies and the far-right rubbish that you nick from social media.
Just like Trump, your days as Prime Minister are numbered.
I’ll leave you with the thoughts of soldier-turned-singer, James Blunt.
