Sunday 20 March 2022

Opposing tyranny

 

What a difference a day makes. Just when some journalists were (rather foolishly and prematurely, given his past record) beginning to argue that Boris Johnson’s leadership at a time of crisis had saved his premiership in the eyes of the only people who matter, Tory MPs, he goes out of his way to show what a complete buffoon he is, and how utterly unfit he is to represent the UK on the world stage, by comparing the bloody and desperate struggle of Ukrainians against a Russian invasion with the UK’s vote to leave the EU. It’s a poor comparison in so many ways – not least because, on one interpretation, Putin is actually trying to ‘help’ Ukrainians avoid choosing to join what Johnson and Putin both apparently see as the evil and tyrannical EU. Johnson sees Brexit as his victory and is determined to celebrate it – but it was actually more of a victory for Putin who did so much to assist and fund the leave campaign in his aim of sowing division amongst his perceived enemies. Brexit is on course to do almost as much damage to the UK economy as sanctions will do to the Russian economy, just a little more gradually. Who needs sanctions when your opponent can be persuaded with a relatively small amount of cash to shoot his own foot?

When it comes to opposing tyranny, the PM has had a bad week all round. Repaying the UK’s debt to heavily-sanctioned Iran, something which has been ‘impossible’ for decades, sucking up to the United Arab Emirates the day before a company owned by the government of Dubai sacked 800 British seamen with a flagrant disregard for the law, and pleading for help to a Saudi government which is daily using the same tactics of bombing civilians in Yemen as Russia is using in Ukraine, all in pursuit of their oil, doesn’t exactly burnish his credentials as a supporter of freedom and democracy. Going on to warn the rest of the world not to make any deal with Putin, saying, “I know there are some others around the world who say it’s better to make accommodation with tyranny,” when that’s exactly what he’s spent the week trying to do with three other tyrants is just the hypocritical icing on the hollowed-out cake.

There is a very clear message from Johnson to Putin in all this: No matter how much we sanction you now, when a crisis arises somewhere else in the future and we need your help, we will reach an accommodation, just as we are now seeking to do with Iran. We will then turn a blind eye to your atrocities, just as we are doing with the Saudis, to whom we are even selling the weapons. Oil and money trump everything ultimately. It’s just a matter of time. Ethics don’t enter into the equation at all.

And it’s a message being delivered in our name for as long as we allow ourselves to be governed by a man demonstrably devoid of any sense of ethics or morality.

1 comment:

dafis said...

"We will then turn a blind eye to your atrocities, just as we are doing with the Saudis, to whom we are even selling the weapons. Oil and money trump everything ultimately. It’s just a matter of time. Ethics don’t enter into the equation at all."

That's how it's been since early in the 20th century or even earlier. Maybe hidden in plain sight but certainly not a matter hidden from the public when people are sufficiently motivated to see it. Great Power(including our over rated UK) interference in the affairs of most countries in the wider middle east has been evident since First World War and continues apace. Much of the allegiance with dodgy theocratic/monarchist regimes is now driven by a fear that "if we don't get in there some other equally dodgy power will". Such thinking becomes even more embedded when other risks like the Ukraine crisis gets introduced into the equation.