Boris Coup: Day 19

Nineteen days into the Boris coup. It struck me that this was the time for a tribute to that seminal experience that made BoJo the man he is today. Him and one of his successor, David Cameron.

Boris ‘The Law's for You’ Johnson and 
David ‘It's not my fault’ Cameron

I speak, of course, of the Bullingdon Club in Oxford. This, for anyone not familiar with that fine institution, is a club for the wealthiest students of the university. They engage in activities as charming as they are entertaining, such as trashing the rooms of new members, booking whole restaurants where they get uproariously drunk over an expensive meal and then wreck everything, or throwing potted plants through the windows of an Indian restaurant on their way home.

Ah, boys will be boys, won’t they? Of course, if their parents didn’t rally round and settle all the damages, if indeed they were from deprived backgrounds, respectable Tory voters would be up in arms. 

“To jail with them, and throw away the key,” they’d say.

But when it’s the sons of the wealthy causing criminal damage, Tories don’t want them chucked in jail, they want them to lead their Party. And, indeed, become Prime Minister. Which both Cameron and Johnson have done.

You have to have some sympathy with the poor lads. Well, poor rich lads. With that kind of background, how could they possibly be anything other than what they are? Taught from the earliest age that they are entitled to anything they want, and then having it proved to them by being given it, how can they possibly think themselves subject to the same standards as the rest of us?

David Cameron has been giving interviews to try to boost the sales of his newly published memoirs, which by all accounts they badly need. He’s happy to denounce Boris and his sidekick Michael Gove for the lying campaign they ran for the referendum, and the way they’re trashing the UK Constitution and undermining its democracy today.

But what is beyond him is to admit that he was in any way responsible for this mess. And yet there was no need to call the referendum. Once called, an intelligent cross-party campaign could have been run to prevent a vote for Brexit. He, instead, called it to try to mollify his far right (and look how that’s worked out for him) and then ran a dismal campaign, which was defeated.

According to him, none of that is his fault. How could it be? He lives in a world in which you can trash a restaurant and not be held to account for it. Taking responsibility for things that go wrong just isn’t something he’s been trained to do.

BoJo’s gone still further. He knows that the law simply doesn’t apply to him.

He started his coup by flouting convention and suspending Parliament for an inordinately long time, so that he wouldn’t be subject to any kind of scrutiny or opposition as he prepared for a hard Brexit. We’re now into that period of suspension when he’s working in the shadows where we can’t see him.

Anyone who’s been a parent will remember calling to kids they couldn’t see, “whatever you’re up to, stop it”.

That would be the thing to say to BoJo right now. Except that he’d ignore us. We’re in the extraordinary position of having to ask whether the Prime Minister will obey the law. This may seem odd, since he’s promising us a new law and order initiative in the near future. It seems that’s law and order for us, but not for him.

Look at where we stand these days. Just before it was suspended, Parliament passed legislation obliging the Prime Minister to extend the Brexit process if he didn’t have a deal in place by 19 October, and couldn’t get Parliamentary support for a hard Brexit.

He’s repeatedly said he won’t ask for an extension.

So is he going to break the law?

No one knows. All that we know is that, as another unfortunate whose life was blighted by the Bullingdon Club, all his training tells him that he’s above all that kind of thing. Breaking the law? He makes it, he doesn’t have to follow it. He knows what’s best, and if that means acting illegally, so be it. That makes him a champion of the people, not a common criminal.

After all, at Oxford no one held him to account for failing to respect the law. Why should he now?

So sad. Poor Cameron and Johnson. Ruined by their upbringing. Although, it won’t be them that pays the price, it’ll be us.

Just as in the Bullingdon Club, someone else always pays.