by Ralph Berry
‘Speak, hands for me’. Casca’s line as he is the first of the assassins to plunge his knife into Caesar sets off a frenzy of killing. Something similar has just been enacted in Westminster, where huge numbers of Government appointments resigned, 60-odd in a day. These hands spoke for a total failure of the Premier’s authority, and the beginning of what is in JULIUS CAESAR a civil war that tears the republic apart. The factions are already in the field: the Remainers see their chance to reverse Brexit. The one-time supporters of Boris Johnson still hew to his vision of Brexit, however poorly it has been managed. This will be a bitter war with no peace in sight, at all points subject to the depressing state of the economy and the cost of living.
For Zelensky, the fall of Boris is terrible news. He was the paladin who came to rescue Ukraine and went to Kiev when it was hardly out of the bombing zone. His own reputation was twinned with Zelensky’s.
Whoever succeeds Boris cannot have the same visceral attachment to the Ukrainian cause. Other voices will say that this has never been a vital interest of Britain’s, and that Ukraine is Russia’s business.
They will deal with it with their customary brutality, but it is after all their affair. Macron would agree. He is bent on retaining France’s historic relationship with Russia. What can be Britain’s future relationship with Russia?
Everything is in the air while the Conservative Party makes its arrangements to find a new leader. These will be swift and decisive, with the time factor an urgent consideration. The party at large in the country will have to be consulted for Conservative policies to have a genuine mandate. One imperative above all, then: Macbeth spoke it.
‘If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly’.
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One Response
Boris was a huge and entirely to be expected disappointment in all ways save commitment to Brexit, so good riddance save to ask what ghastly cretin will the Tories spit up this time.
Still the rationale for his going seems not to be that he is a spineless weasel unwilling to tackle serious problems, a witless machine for repeating left wing talking points, but rather that he is a hooray Henry type, which was always known, and too cavalier with lockdown practices and with his friends. I get the hooray Henry and lockdown objections, though the native and extreme censoriousness of the angered Briton is ever tiresome. It would have been better to demand apology for overzealous lockdown policing, noted the relative limits of Johnson’s apparent violations, and everyone been on their way. As to Pincher, based on what I’ve read so far it seems absurdly overblown, as so often, and the reported incidents trifles even if inappropriate, and that the ‘victims’ of the horror being men should have meant an end to it after they 20 years ago told him to bugger off.