Earlier this week, referring to some of
the comments which Dominic Cummings alleges to have been made by the Prime
Minister about coronavirus only killing the over-80s, Nicola Sturgeon said that
any leader 'glib about human life' should consider whether they are fit for
office. She’s right in principle, but there is a problem with her suggestion in
practice, as this simple Venn diagram demonstrates.
B: Narcissistic sociopaths
It’s not a fully scientific assessment of
course, given that it’s based on such a small sample, but the lack of any
overlap appears likely to hold true in general. And it also highlights a
serious problem with the UK constitution. There is no provision for dealing
with a PM who shows himself utterly unfit for office, even when the result of
that unfitness is manifested in tens of thousands of unnecessary and avoidable
premature deaths. Instead, the political system hands absolute power to the
leader of the party which gains the highest number of seats, even when they are
won on the basis of a minority of votes. And he or she then holds that absolute
power until either a new election is called or until his or her own party’s
members turn against the incumbent. The US has the twenty-fifth
amendment which, although very imperfect and with serious difficulties around
invoking it, shows that there has at least been some thought given to the
possibility of a rogue president. Other countries fall back, ultimately, on military
coups to remove failing politicians from power. The UK, on the other hand, not
only has no mechanism for removing a failing PM who "lies so blatantly,
so naturally, so regularly" (© D. Cummings), but
insists that members of the legislature must always refer to him as ‘honourable',
even when he is patently anything but, and that any MP
who directly points out an untruth must be excluded. A system which punishes
the witnesses and repeatedly exonerates the perpetrator deserves only contempt.
Trump famously said
that he “…could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and [he]
wouldn't lose voters”. It’s the sort of blind loyalty which is expected of
Tory MPs towards their leader, no matter how egregious that leader’s behaviour
becomes. And whilst they may mount an occasional minor rebellion over some
detail or other of policy, it’s the sort of blind loyalty that Johnson is
currently getting, to the extent that his MPs and ministers are willing to appear on the media
defending something he’s said or done, only to find – just a few hours later –
that he’s performed another U-turn. They learn nothing, feel no embarrassment or shame, and repeat the process over and over. A political system which
depends on finding a spark of decency and a fragment of backbone amongst the
current crop of Tory MPs is broken, and badly so. And the consequences are
being felt by the oldest and most vulnerable citizens. Those who tell Wales and
Scotland that we should stay and fight for a reformed UK rather than opt out
and build better systems for ourselves need to point to a credible mechanism which
can allow that to happen, because at the moment there doesn't seem to be one.
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