So one liar gets a come-uppance: but Boris Johnson had already kicked himself out of the Commons. He resigned on 9 June, well before Monday’s debate and well before the vote over his “deliberate misleading of Parliament”.
Hardly any MPs even attended the sitting. In the end, 354 supported the verdict of the Commons’ Privileges Committee. Just 7 didn’t. And 225 MPs abstained. Maybe they were right not to bother - after all, no-one thinks Johnson was truthful and, as everyone knows, all politicians lie.
But one has to go even further. The “democracy” which MPs sanctimoniously claimed to be defending on Monday - admiringly quoting their bloody-butcher predecessor Winston Churchill - is not “our” democracy. It is the democracy of the ruling class, which sits atop a political system designed precisely to maintain “privilege”. In fact it’s nothing more than a protection racket for profit and profiteers. And all MPs buy into it, whichever party they belong to.
Bliar’s lie continues to kill
So yes, what a wonderful “democracy”! Did any member of the public manage to prevent Tony Blair from joining Bush to bomb Iraq in 2003? That’s how democratic the system is for the rest of us!
Indeed, on Monday, Tory MPs got up to remind Labour of Blair’s big lie over Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction. They said that unlike the Iraq war, eating cake didn’t kill anyone. Maybe so. But Johnson didn’t just eat cake, either. His ”too little too late” policy during the pandemic, and predating that, the huge Brexit subterfuge - and before and after, the xenophobic, racist, anti-migrant policies which he (and his predecessor May) promoted (and which Sunak enthusiastically continues), these did kill and his immigration policy goes on killing.
In fact the two wars - in Afghanistan and Iraq which Labour’s Blair launched alongside the US, lit sparks which set alight the whole Middle East and beyond. It’s a fire which the politicians continue to fuel. It wasn’t enough to cause hundreds of thousands of deaths: they’ve ensured that life is intolerable for the populations.
Opposition to the West’s “shock and awe” in 2003 and its repression of dissent spread to the Far East and to Africa where today, wars are constantly ignited and reignited due to the divisions sown and the privation caused.
So yes, the hacking to death of 21 Ugandan school children last Friday, by a warlord militia called the “Allied Democratic Force”, is traceable back to the US/British Iraq war which provoked among the poor the building of religious fundamentalist “armies” against the “western enemy”.
The policies of the “democratic” rich countries’ governments still mean death and destruction for the peoples of former colonies - the whole eastern region of Democratic Republic of Congo is occupied by rival militias who’d not be warring if it was not for the poverty and division into rival camps for survival, to which the imperialist system relegates them. Who would not flee this terror, if given half a chance?
5 rich lost at sea versus 650 poor
Which brings us to the question of refugees lost at sea, and the disastrous crisis caused by closed borders. British newscasters chose to lead yesterday with the search for 5 rich tourists whose submarine disappeared while on in its way to visit the Titanic.
That allowed them simply to “forget” the ongoing search for drowned refugees - impoverished victims of the worst-ever migrant-boat shipwreck in the Mediterranean. Out of 750 on board, only 104 have been rescued. It means the death of over 640.
And worse, this happened in direct sight of the Greek coastguard. It could have been prevented, just like every other refugee-boat-sinking could be prevented. In this case it was physically possible for the coastguard to save the ship: they’d been monitoring it since it set off from Libya on 10 June. They saw that it was dangerously overcrowded and knew its engines had failed.
Yes, and let us all remember lies about refugees at this point: the big Brexit lie was framed by the lie about a refugee “threat” - migrant workers who’ve always, throughout history, formed the backbone of the British working class!
But the deceptive hypocrisy of the politicians knows no bounds: as recently as 2016 Theresa May deported black workers whose Caribbean parents/grandparents arrived on the Empire Windrush to work in the NHS and on the buses. Today a commemorative coin has been minted to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the arrival of this same Windrush! Never mind that at the very same time, Braverman is promoting her “deport them” Illegal Migration Bill! So yes, we condemn their lying words, their murderous policies and their wars... their “democracy”! We shall have to build our own.