Yesterday was a dark day for British liberty. With passage of the government’s plans to introduce Vaccine passports the UK is now is “paper please” society to do basic everyday transactions. Government sycophants (which now include the “opposition” Labour party) will claim this measure is “only temporary” and that one can still show a negative test and that this is all about measures to avoid another lockdown. If you believe that, I got a bridge to sell you.
This government are proven liars. They said COVID restrictions were needed for “three weeks to flatten the curve” – it has been nearly two years with no end in sight. They promised no vaccine passports. They exist now. They said there would be freedom (Matt Hancock would “cry freedom“) when the nation got vaccinated (15 million jabs to freedom – we are on nearly 340 million currently – and now being double vaccinated isn’t enough. They claimed their road map to ending of lock down restrictions was irreversible – and now the UK is heading backwards into vaccine restrictions and likely soon to be another lock down (rumours have it starting January 5, 2022 the day the current measures are up for review). Boris Johnson tells the nation that reports that the Omicron virus are less virulent can be “put to one side” when the WHO and South African data shows it is proven to be less virulent. The government has supposedly ruled out mandatory vaccination after Boris Johnson said maybe it is time to have a conversation about them – if I was a betting man I would bet on mandatory vaccination next year if he is still Prime Minister.
The problem with Boris Johnson’s government is it fundamentally amoral to be kind, or more accurately immoral. Besides lying, it imposes lockdowns at Christmas but throws parties while families are separated and people are all alone. It had a Health Secretary that was committing adultery while telling the nation it could not snog. It constantly shifts the goal posts on COVID and has no discernible ideological compass. This supposedly “Conservative” government has raised taxes on businesses and individuals after spending wildly with crazy big state programmes. It is implementing a radical and expensive extremist green energy plan (“net zero”) that will make the cost of living for every man, woman and child more expensive and less free. It has been especially cruel to young people, where it has abandoned plans to reform Britain’s Byzantine and cruel housing laws and raise how much they pay in national insurance. For the young, Conservativism will be associated with high taxes and no chance at property. Why has Conservatives treated them like this? Because older people who own property vote Conservative and young people do not. For Johnson’s party, power is all that matters.
The problem with this government is ultimately the man at the top. Boris Johnson is a liar who lacks an ideological compass. Boris was famously a liberty lover – until it suited him to be a COVID authoritarian which he is now. He was a free marketeer until he was told he might have to pay for some of his ridiculous promises – in which case tax people into poverty. He was against the extremist green agenda, until a married a hard core environmentalist and he is now its biggest advocate. His turn is sad and shameless. After all, we at the Daily Globe were once massive Boris Johnson fans – and we still credit and thank him for Brexit. But maybe his lack of a mission, Brexit, has turned his premiership into the disastrous liberty destroying shopping trolley (as Dominic Cummings aptly calls him) it has become today.
It would be ideal for the Conservatives to lose the North Shropshire by-election and for Boris Johnson to then face a leadership challenge he either loses or causes him to resign (as an added bonus, for all their numerous faults, the Liberal Democrats oppose vaccine passports). Luckily, the parliamentary party and the British people have finally woken up to the rot at the heart of the government – with over 100 Conservative MPs rebelling against vaccine passports and Johnson’s approval ratings being the lowest of any Prime Minister at this stage. The deception and slippery slope towards making the nation a horror show love child of Greta Thunberg and Neil Ferguson (another one who broke down laws he strenuously advocated for) has to stop.
There is hope. The one bright spot of the government has been the magnificent freedom advocate Foreign Secretary Liz Truss. A woman who signed a record number of trade deals in her two years as International Trade Secretary and who is now advocating for a network of liberty across the world. Another man of vision is backbencher Steve Baker – who has been a tireless advocate for liberty- whether it is leading the rebellion against vaccine passports, campaigning on the cost of net zero and re-launching the Thatcherite Conservative Way Forward. There are other great and admirable backbenchers as well – such as Mark Harper and Chairman of the 1922 Committee Graham Brady- among many others. Whoever is the next leader, it must be someone, like Truss and Baker, who believes in liberty and has a conservative ideological compass. It must be someone who has a goal and dream for Britain – and not just for himself.