getting shot<\/a>\u00a0and replacing Johnson with someone a bit more in tune with the wider interests of their class would be a better outcome than letting him continue.<\/p>\nBut these arguments only go so far. Given the numbers of people invited to the parties and how leading journalists and editorial offices must have known about the extent of Johnson\u2019s flagrant contempt for the rules, why have they chosen now to report on partygate? Why have they belatedly discovered the chief rule-maker was also the chief rule-breaker? Are they in cahoots with behind-the-scenes shadowy forces who have it in for the prime minister? Occam\u2019s razor suggests not.<\/p>\n
The Westminster media game overlaps with but is not identical to the politics it reports on and influences. In the first place, its commentary on who\u2019s in and who\u2019s out is dependent on access to the leading personalities of the day. If one\u2019s criticisms have to be tempered by the desire to keep their contact list current, the lobby has an incentive to muzzle itself<\/u>. The leaks will keep coming provided the boat isn\u2019t rocked too much.<\/p>\n
Additionally, for almost the entirety of the pandemic, the Tories have been well ahead in the polls, partly because they\u2019ve been the undeserving repository of a spirit of national solidarity that was particularly prominent in the early phase of COVID and has had a lingering effect among some layers of voters. For journalists, reporting on Johnson\u2019s partying a year ago, and especially not long into the restrictive period in 2020, might have had knock-on effects on confidence in the government\u2019s competency in managing the pandemic and the rollout of the vaccine program. This would undoubtedly have had career implications for any reporter or editor who blew the whistle, with the threat of action by the Tories against any programming that stuck its head above the parapet.<\/p>\n
With this immediate danger passed, and thanks to movement in the polls, it\u2019s significant it was the\u00a0Mirror<\/em>\u2019s Pippa Crerar \u2014 the paper least compromised by associations with the government \u2014 that broke the initial story and opened the floodgates. The initial revelations were a hot story that captured the public\u2019s attention, and as the media are in the business of competing for attention, the rest have now followed suit \u2014 some of them in tune with the growing Tory hostility to the prime minister and getting egged on for their own purposes, but all of it to be relevant to audiences old and new.<\/p>\nJohnson\u2019s difficulties are entirely of his own making. His hubris has brought him low, as it was always going to do. This episode reminds us that our opponents are not a monolithic bloc, and divisions among their ranks can open up political opportunities for the labor movement. This is such a moment.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n\n \n
\n \n\n\nThis post was originally published on Jacobin<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ambling around unconvincingly in a police outfit to promote his\u00a0new war on drugs, in December Boris Johnson proudly declared: \u201cThose who break the law have nowhere to hide.\u201d I doubt the so-called county lines gangs flinched at his show of bravado, but for Johnson and those close to him in Number 10, these words might [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8583,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471167"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8583"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471167"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":471168,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471167\/revisions\/471168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}