Commenting on the Syria vote in the Commons, our Chancellor George said, ‘Look, I think Parliament has spoken.’
Now so has our mayor Boris. The motion should be re-submitted to Parliament, he declared, because “to use gas for mass murder is a crime that we cannot allow to go unpunished.”
It’s clear that Boris is taking lessons in democracy from the EU: if at first you don’t succeed, skydiving isn’t for you – but voting is. If the vote goes against you, keep’em voting until they get it right.
At a time when Presidents Barack Hussein and even François (!) have decided to seek legislative approval for military action, Boris is sorry his old Bullingdon Club friend Dave didn’t act as a dictator.
Boris certainly would have done, and that’s the whole point of his Telegraph article. Give me the chance, he seems to be imploring. I won’t wimp out like Dave. I’ll deliver “a calibrated and limited response to a grotesque war crime”.
No, thanks, mate. One Bullingdon cabinet is enough.
It’s clear to Boris, if not to the rest of us, that Assad has “killed hundreds of civilians in an act of utter savagery.” Hence the proper response is to kill a few hundred more by launching a ‘calibrated’ laser-guided response, with its predictable collateral damage.
I think Boris has got it wrong. He’s a member of the Conservative party, not a neoconservative one. Those chaps operate on the ancient wisdom ‘spare the bomb and spoil a land’.
Serbia? Of course. Libya? Naturally. Iraq? Definitely – the best way to introduce democracy is to attach it to laser-guided missiles. Now of course the democratically controlled Iraqi army has massacred Camp Ashraf, so what should we do? Bomb them again? But hey, we’re the ones who put them there.
Dave has been saved from having to grapple with such dilemmas by Parliament, but Boris can rely only on his flaming conscience, fluent pen and flatulent mouth. As a mayor, he’s accountable to Londoners. As a columnist, he’s accountable to no one.
As if to allay the suspicions of cynics like me, Boris gave a sop to his erstwhile friend, now his competitor, Dave. I’m not angling for Dave’s job, he pretends to be saying. On the contrary, “I predict that by the end of this episode it will be Labour that looks divided, and David Cameron who looks the statesman.”
Nothing, and certainly not an attempt to trick Parliament into another vote, will ever make Dave look the statesman – for the simple reason that he isn’t one. What’s more, Boris knows this perfectly well – and he knows that everybody knows he knows.
In other words, while indignantly accusing Labour of playing politics, Boris is trying to show the Milibandits how the game should be played for real. Morality doesn’t even come into it.
In our post-Christian world it never does. “But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint,” warned Edmund Burke. The warning wasn’t heeded.
In the absence of virtue (which to Burke meant specifically Christian virtue), real politik has to mean really amoral politics. Under such conditions, democracy manifestly can’t elevate to government those fit to govern.
Instead democracy turns into spivocracy, the rule of those driven exclusively by self-interest and specifically by lust for power. On second thoughts, one has to be careful when using the word ‘lust’ in the context of Boris Johnson. Perhaps ‘striving’ would be safer.
Since these days every assertion has to be supported by forensics, this comment on democracy must also demand evidential proof. By way of such I suggest a little experiment you can conduct yourself.
Take any four consecutive British prime ministers during Burke’s lifetime (1729-1797) and compare them to our last four ‘leaders’ (John, Tony, Gordon and Dave). See what I mean?
It’s clear that a time when neither ‘Christianity’ nor ‘constitutional monarchy’ was a figure of speech in the UK, politics attracted an infinitely better grade of human material.
That’s what enabled England to civilise half the world, after a fashion, and Britannia to rule the waves, and not those of the electronic variety.
And Boris? He’d be well-advised to stay within his remit, that of the mayor of London. The city doesn’t conduct an independent foreign policy, though some of its boroughs do. Lambeth, for example, declares itself to be a ‘nuclear-free zone’, perhaps in the hope of avoiding direct hits from enemy missiles, should it come to that.
Boris really ought to curb his impatience: he may eventually get there in the end, but he should watch his step. He may be popular with some Tories, but Dave won’t be supplanted without a fight.
And you don’t ride into such battles armed with ideas that 75 percent of the people and most of your party reject. It’s best to contain your impatience and wait for Dave to stab himself in the back once too often. He’s bound to oblige.