Taking Ol' Yeller Outside...

Watched the House of Commons debate today, not something I often do. But today was Prime Minister Big Dog's reaction to the Gray report, so I thought I'd give it a look. Of course, it wasn't the Gray report proper: it was a 12 page dossier, two of the pages purposefully blank, and put together in this way because the Metropolitan Police investigation into the Prime Minister - I know, yeah? - compromised the report. In fact, it didn't matter: what there was was enough to utterly condemn the Prime Minister, something which he heroically refused to accept, in the face of actual, printed, black and white evidence. When he said sorry, it was always with that weasel "we". He was apologising on behalf of the guys - they fucked up, you know what they're like, the fucking wingnuts. One of the things Johnson clung to in the report, like a drowning man on a mote of flotsam, was the Downing Street civil service being described as large, amorphous and unwieldy, things that while they perfectly describe the Prime Minister's personal style, were not specific to him. It was his best chance to blame other people for things, and he went straight to it. He will be firing anything that moves over the next few weeks, like Jack Douglas at a rifle range, twitching, yelping, and shooting prizes, ducks, kewpie dolls and raffle tickets alike. It'll be carnage. 

The plan seems to be to just sit it out. He's counting on people getting bored. The two things he said in answer to every question today were "wait until the Met report comes out" and "people are bored of talking about cakes. They're more interested in still getting Brexit done, a successful vaccination program and sabre rattling in the Ukraine." He was waiting for the Gray Report, it arrived, shortened but still damning, but now we all need to forget about all that, and wait for the Met report now. He knows that people are bored of this shit every day - which is why he is repeatedly saying they are. The tabloids are being mean at the moment but they'll come round. Same with the BBC. The Tories are still ahead in the poles, there's no obvious successor, and the next election is comfortably far off. If he sits it out, it'll be fine. It's always worked in the past. 

But I've never seen so many Tories criticizing him as brutally as they did today. Aaron Bell, in particular, tore into Johnson, by describing how he had been unable to grieve with his family when his Grandmother died during the pandemic, because he was obeying the rules. His white lipped fury when Johnson wombled his way through another cut and paste apology, was clear to see. Nor have I seen Le Grand Chien unravel quite so obviously as more and more MPs asked him to resign. His attack on Kier Starmer for failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile was stunningly crass. His later assertion that the entire Labour front bench were drug addicts received gasps of disbelief, not something I've ever heard in the chamber before. 

The most surreal spectacle of the day was the SNP leader, Ian Blackford, being escorted from the Commons by a man with a sword, for refusing to say that the Prime Minister, a proven liar, was not a liar. A ludicrous spectacle. Even then, the Prime Minister couldn't find it within himself to look embarrassed. It's just not in him. There's not much in him at all, beyond venality, spite, one-up-man-ship, small Latin and less Greek.    

He won't resign. He'll keep lingering on for as long as he can. The back-benchers won't go for a vote of no confidence. He's still the Big Dog and who else is there? Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough. 

I've gone odd. I know I've gone odd. I've been in the house too long. Or rather I'm less relaxed than other people about "just getting on with it". I have my reasons - my partner is a health care professional working primarily with the elderly. We have conditioned ourselves to be very careful. We don't want to kill your Granny. I'm also middle-aged and boring and increasingly stand-offish and unfriendly. I don't have any children and I work from home anyway, so I have no reason not to be vacuum sealed into my cosy little oubliette. 

Nevertheless, I'm making a concerted effort to join in. I did a podcast last week, and allowed boyish Joe Nawaz into my home: like opening a sluice of social malignancy into my pristine cell. And I emerged unscathed. I even had a good time. I was emboldened enough by this to go to a pub, a week later. I got on a bus, where practically nobody but me was wearing a mask. I drank beer in the pub, chatted. It was almost like the before times. This week I may go to the theatre, though that remains to be seen. I mean...

Each time is a wrench. I've become unused to the proximity of other people, their loudness, their lurching movements, their terrible ideas. That awful noise they make. God, what is that? 

I've spent two years staring down the wrong end of a telescope. I may need to get some people stink on me again, become used to how horribly human they all are. I know it's me. They haven't changed. I'm just hypersensitive to their brutishness. I've had two years of only hanging out with my favourite person. Other people pale in comparison.