If the issues inflicting damage were small they could be termed death by a thousand cuts. But when Prime Minister Boris Johnson creates a fiasco he goes all out. Each of the gigantic and seemingly never-ending creations is mounting so to further force the door for his exit from 10 Downing Street.
This weekend a Conservative Cabinet minister called for an investigation into allegations that a Muslim Conservative MP was told she had lost her job because of her faith.
Nusrat Ghani, who was sacked as a transport minister in early 2020, claimed in the Sunday Times that a party whip, appointed by Johnson to organize MPs and keep discipline in parliament, told her that her “Muslim woman minister status was making colleagues feel uncomfortable.”
She said she was told “there were concerns ‘that I wasn’t loyal to the party as I didn’t do enough to defend the party against Islamophobia allegations.’
“It was very clear to me that the whips and No. 10 (Downing St.) were holding me to a higher threshold of loyalty than others because of my background and faith,” Ghani said.
Education secretary Nadhim Zahawi called for the allegations to be “investigated properly” and “racism routed [sic] out”. He wrote on Twitter with a hashtag #standwithNus, “there is no place for Islamophobia or any form of racism in our Conservatives party”.
Oh, but there is and long has been a stain of racism with Britain’s Conservative Party. One can not just hashtag their way from their own story. The gravity of this latest episode, timed as it is with the drinking party during the pandemic at the PM’s residence, does now make it a political necessity for Conservatives to act. And act publically.
It was less than a year ago Johnson was roundly condemned, and correctly so, for his refusal to speak out concerning the crowds who booed England’s national soccer team for kneeling to protest racial injustice. Then when several of the teams Black players were targets of racist language following a team defeat Johnson could not find his tongue. Nor could he find that allusive barber and comb. Some of the Conservative MPs also provided racist remarks at that time, also not worthy of Johnson’s rebuke.
Johnson has long been aligned with racism. As has the Conservative Party.
Let us not forget Winston Churchill stated his support for the slogan “Keep England White” with regard to immigration from the West Indies.
Writing in the Telegraph in 2002, Johnson referred to a visit to Africa by the then prime minister Tony Blair.
“What a relief it must be for Blair to get out of England. It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies,” he wrote, referring to African people as having “watermelon smiles.”
The issue now for the Conservative Party is how to pull away from Johnson and not have his toxic mess further damage their national aims.
The door at 10 Downing is going to open and Boris Johnson will leave permanently. Days or weeks?
But the hour is nearing.
And so it goes.
CAFFEINATED POLITICS 