It feels like we’ve given up. The best option might be for the whole country to haul itself off to Switzerland to guzzle barbiturates while overlooking an Alp. Britain is a mad cow that’s kicked its stall to pieces and is now determinedly walking in circles in the rain: a country for whom the bolt gun would come as a blessed relief.
The fact Boris Johnson was allowed a resignation honours list is a mark of how little self-respect the UK has and how deeply inured to corruption it has become. When a man who insisted law-breaking drinks parties were an essential part of his job (while the rest of us couldn’t visit dying relatives) is allowed to bestow lifetime incomes on the people who enabled the cover-up, you can’t help feeling there might be whipped curs who have more dignity than British citizens.
The French, of course, wouldn’t put up with it. They won’t even put up with having to open their businesses on weekday afternoons without setting fire to a sheep or a roundabout. Even the American system, where an outgoing president can issue pardons, is more sensible. At least, it recognises that a politician is more likely to be friends with a criminal than with someone who deserves a life-long income from the state.
Being ennobled by Boris Johnson is like having the scoutmaster dub you “the prettiest boy in Cubs”. It’s a compliment of unsettling provenance. He put his own brother in the House of Lords. He tried to get his father made a knight of the realm. Just the hint that Boris Johnson is thinking of ennobling you must come with a horrid realisation you might be one of his illegitimate children.
This really shouldn’t need saying but, in a democracy, no leader should have the power to make their family irremovable members of the legislature. By which I mean it really shouldn’t need saying. As in, this was one of those problems we were supposed to have solved in the eighteenth century. But, with every year that passes, Britain – so determined never to look at itself in a mirror – drifts further into the pre-Enlightenment. Where we were once the country of Cromwell, Locke, Milton, Paine and Adam Smith, we’re now 60 million people who would rather believe in their monarch’s friendship with a fictional bear than apply close scrutiny to their institutions.
The very existence of the House of Lords, of course, is an insult to everyone who’s not in it. It’s common for the smuggerati to point out that they do a lot of good work amending the terrible ideas of the Commons. To argue, however, that our electoral system is so twisted and broken that even a group selected by patronage and accidents of inbreeding can do better than our elected chamber is hardly an endorsement.
The more established you are, the more bountifully you can bedeck yourself with the arses of dead weasels
Those same chin-stroking, sensible voices will tell us it’s important that not everyone in public life should have to stand for election. Take, for example, Zac Goldsmith, the son of a man who plotted to overthrow the elected government of the UK in a military coup. He failed to be elected as MP for Richmond Park and failed to be elected as Mayor of London, yet will now be able to make laws for the rest of us until he drops dead. It’s just as well he doesn’t have to stand for election because he’s so bad at it. But it would be a shame if his immense wealth were to stop him making laws for the rest of us.
Nicky Morgan was one of the most deeply unimpressive ministers in one of the most deeply unimpressive governments in living memory. As Education Secretary she promised to make all schools into academies by 2022. Now she’s Baroness Morgan of Cotes, deciding what is and what isn’t legal for you to do and claiming a daily allowance of £342 at the same time – probably for the next 30 years.
Gavin Barwell, Theresa May’s right-hand man, is the sort of chap you can replicate by rolling some Play-doh between your hands and sticking a nervous smile on it. And yet he’s the Right Honourable Lord Barwell. He broke the rules on election expenditure – literally broke the laws we have governing how our democracy works – and has been trusted to make those same laws for the foreseeable future. Groucho Marx said he wouldn’t want to join any club that would have him as a member. I don’t think anyone would want to be a part of a legislative body that has Gavin Barwell.
Boris Johnson overruled the security services to put Evgeny Lebedev, the son of a KGB agent, in the House of Lords. Johnson, of course, loves handing out honours because they are gifts that cost him nothing. He curries favour at our expense: the git that keeps on giving. The whole system is venal, squalid and corrupt. Everyone knows it and nobody cares because we’re all exhausted. Our political classes scrabble over each other to get the sinecure that gives them permanent power over us. Power that is represented by the robes they are allowed to wear.
In the House of Lords, status is reflected in your robes. The more established you are, the more bountifully you can bedeck yourself with the arses of dead weasels. They even keep the tails on, so you can tell exactly how many dead weasels’ arses you’re worth.
Some days you don’t have to make up metaphors. When we’re all living in a regime constructed by people dressed in the arses of dead weasels, that’s one of those days.
Nathaniel Tapley is a comedy writer and performer on the TV shows you hate
