It’s easy for pundits and journalists with an agenda to make yesterday’s incident involving Keir Starmer and anti-Lockdown Protestors, all about Boris and the Jimmy Savile ‘slur’.
The story has been part of the headlines for the better part of a week. And the fact that an angry looking mob were using the story that Johnson had hypocritically conjured up in PMQs to attack the Labour Leader makes it all very easy, if not lazy headline news.
There is a rich irony involved in the way that Journalists and establishment stooges grab anything negative with an element of truth to create a narrative that suits their needs but will nonetheless be misleading in the majority of ways. After all, that’s exactly what Boris did when he was trying to use the Savile story as a get out of jail free card when Starmer had him under the cosh.
Mainstream Journalists don’t look for the real story anymore. They look for the one that will sell, ideally within the framework of the narrative that their establishment bosses want sold.
What doesn’t sit well with the establishment today, are the protests now germinating around the World. Set into being or inspired by Truckers in Canada laying siege to Ottawa. Normal working people who are being bullied by their PM, Justin Trudeau.
Whilst it would be foolish to equate the specifics of the rules that have accompanied each and every National Lockdown, the commonality of all of them – right around the World – does equate to just one thing: Massive, unnecessary and avoidable overreach by an out-of-touch and fearful elite. Totalitarian diktats from political ‘leaders’ who are too scared of their own shadow to have the decency to step back from the damaging narratives and destructive measures that they have all created.
This is the point that many of those in charge of this Country and the institutions and businesses that support this form of leadership clearly don’t appreciate or want to understand: There are a lot of very unhappy people in the UK – unhappy about everything that has happened in the past two years – and that number is growing by the day.
The appreciation and understanding that something is very wrong with the way this Country is governed is manifesting at a visceral and sensory level for increasing numbers. People understand that the rot and disease that has engulfed the British Political system is a long way from being only Tory deep.
They know and remember well – contrary to the short memories of the People that Politicians have been able to rely on as ways out of a problem before – that the Labour Party and in fact all of our MPs are up to their bloody necks in either helping to facilitate Lockdowns by doing nothing or by enthusiastically supporting and championing both the restrictions and the ill-conceived Covid Measures that quickly accompanied as each of them was born.
Starmer was an easy target for the Protesters in London yesterday, because thanks to Johnson, he carries a cross very clearly across his back, drawn with a story that is much easier to make sense of and therefore to explain.
The attacks, whether verbal or otherwise, don’t make the wrongs of Starmer, Johnson or any of our MPs, right. And those protesting now or who choose to join them in future, should be aware that by intimidating these moralistically vacuous people in any way, their targets will just see another excuse to award themselves further protections which will be added to the list of draconian measures that are already hurting or have hurt all of us in some way.
That said, there simply are no excuses for what the Johnson Government has done and what the Starmer-led Opposition has encouraged them to do.
The Lockdowns and the restriction of our freedoms were always wrong and unnecessary. But they were also just the start.
The Covid Measures themselves are a major contributory factor in every problem, challenge and difficulty that is on its way.
And as the cost-of-living crisis and the fall in living standards really start to bite, made worse by the financial crash that is also set to come, the chances are that the protests we are witnessing in the UK today, are just a very small taste of what is about to come.
It would, therefore, be prudent for all of our MPs to think clearly and very carefully about the part they have played in all of this; take the responsibility they have been entrusted with to at least begin trying to mitigate some of the growing issues in a meaningful way.
Above all, it’s time for all of our existing MPs to stop pretending that any of this is going to change with just the removal of the PM from his job.
Adam Tugwell 