Nothing To Coup Over

Imagine that Chancellor John McDonnell had been found to have been an Irish non-dom. Imagine that Prime Minister Jeremy Corbyn had been found to have broken the Covid-19 regulations that would have had to have been imposed by any Government. Imagine that they had remained the Shadow Chancellor and the Leader of the Opposition, and that these things had then been found. Imagine that these things had been found even after they had returned to the backbenches. Imagine that they were to be reported a front page tomorrow morning.

Yet unless we wanted the hardline neoliberal and neoconservative Liz Truss to become Prime Minister, then we must be extremely wary of this coup. Someone would have to become Prime Minister immediately upon the resignation of Boris Johnson, there would then almost certainly be no Leadership Election even among Conservative MPs, and if there were then the incumbent Prime Minister would of course win.

All three main parties in England, all four in Scotland, and three out of four in Wales (the fourth being objectionable for other reasons) would then be purely and simply vehicles for the economic and social liberalism that heavy force had made unquestionable at home, so that very heavy force indeed could spread it across the whole wide world by means of an unquestionable alliance between the European Union and the United States, an alliance with Britain at its heart.

We tell ourselves that corruption only happens abroad, so that we call it "sleaze" or what have you when it happens here, as it does routinely. And we tell us that coups only happen abroad, so that we do not even have a word for them when they happen here, as they do routinely. Next month, it will be 25 years since anyone last became, rather than remained, Prime Minister by winning an overall majority at a General Election. We are in the midst of yet another coup at the moment. Whatever the faults and failings of Johnson and of Rishi Sunak, it should give no pleasure to, nor gain any support from, the advocates of economic equality and of international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends.