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.
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