Dead-Catting

[Editor’s Note: no felines were hurt in the production of this piece.]

Boris Johnson signing the Brexit withdrawal

photo posted as https://twitter.com/10DowningStreet/status/1220759626427310082—OGL 3

If you missed it, the April 17th Sunday’s Washington Post commentary on Boris Johnson introduced the art of dead-catting, not to be confused with caterwauling or the Year of the Cat by that British songwriter, Al Stewart, who likewise shouldn’t be confused with Rory Stewart, the former British politician and general conservative moral compass who I thoroughly enjoy listening to. First, the article:

Boris Johnson is a master of distraction. What if that stops working? by Matt Potter, yet another Brit, is itself a superior piece of British humor—desert dry to be sure:  Johnson’s lost owl look in the photo accompanying the commentary alone is worth a look see.

“British politics features a strategy called dead-catting. The brainchild of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s former electoral adviser Lynton Crosby, it goes like this: If you’re at a dinner party and you make a terrible mistake—say something awful, commit an unpardonable act or get caught in a lie—your dinner companions may gaze at you in horror. They may demand an apology or seek redress. This is where the deceased feline comes in. You simply produce a dead cat from your bag, whacking it onto the table with a thud.” from Boris Johnson is a master of distraction. What if that stops working? by Matt Potter in the Washington Post 

If you can’t be famous, be infamous.

Johnson, however, has been called out—about the silliest of issues, holding parties at 10 Downing Street while shutting down the rest of the country to contain Covid. The third rail of politics in a democracy is being caught naked with one’s privilege for a fig leaf.

After hearing an American presidential candidate brag about grabbing ladies in their privates, this “partygate,” as it’s been dubbed, comes across as a touch overly sensitive, but there’s actually a stricture against lying in Parliament. They take a damn oath.

“Consider how Johnson first claimed that there had been no parties. Then, if there were parties, all guidance was followed and no laws were broken. Then, he had been at a boozy lockdown party (“Bring your own booze!” said his invitation), but he had not known it was a party.” from Boris Johnson is a master of distraction. What if that stops working?

If you can’t be famous be infamous—it’s a gig.

“Johnson’s past is a diary of lying and being found out… His Brexit campaign is remembered chiefly for the mendacity of its claims, from Turkey’s membership in the European Union being eminent (it isn’t) to more money being available to the National Health Service as a bonus for leaving the E.U. (it wasn’t). But dead cats make headlines and the ex-columnist prime minister loves headlines as much as Trump loves ratings. Calm statecraft? Good governance? Never mind them, look at this dead cat.” from Boris Johnson is a master of distraction. What if that stops working?

So onto the most recently deceased cat. In the midst of the ruckus over “Partygate” and getting fined by the police for breaking his own law, Johnson announced his government had worked a deal to ship the ‘illegal’ immigrants off to Rwanda for ‘holding.’ Send those awful foreigners away. Even if some were from Afghanistan. Caterwauling ensued.

“Britain’s latest plan is to fly migrants more than 6,000 kilometers to Rwanda, where they will be put in holding centers while their asylum claims are processed. Britain’s home secretary, Priti Patel, [1] signed the policy alongside Vincent Biruta, Rwanda's minister of foreign affairs, during a visit to Kigali earlier this month.

“ ‘The persistent circumventing of our laws and immigration rules and the reality of a system that is open to gain and to criminal exploitation has eroded public support for Britain's asylum system and those who genuinely need access to it,’ Patel told reporters. ‘Putting evil people, smugglers, out of business is a moral imperative. It requires us to use every tool at our disposal and also to find new solutions.’ “ from Voice of America News, British Plan to Send Migrants to Rwanda Draws Backlash by Henry RIdgwell  

[1] Priti Patel is the daughter of Indian immigrants with money. She’s a fine example of slamming the door shut after getting inside. Evil people AND smugglers—good word choice.

Johnson even got the Archbishop of Canterbury going on this one:

“ ‘Subcontracting out our responsibilities, even to a country that seeks to do well, like Rwanda, is the opposite of the nature of God,’ “ Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury

Opposite the nature of God? At the least, opposite the nature of charity, but the stink and fur of it does resemble a cat carcass. The darker part of this disingenuousness will be the lives of affected immigrants presuming Johnson is allowed to actually go through with it. And how many Russian oligarchs have his government expelled?

One dead parrot, excuse the expression.

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If there had been a strong border wall built all those years ago in Alaska, that migration across the Bering Strait land bridge might have been prevented, leaving America to the Europeans as God intended. We in the States originally learned from the English—not always from their better natures.

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Some will explain you can tell a politician is lying by their lips moving. Though anymore it seems lying isn’t the sin it once was. Saying shit one day and denying you said it the next is considered rudimentary practice. Even when caught on live mikes and cell phones. How can you be embarrassed when everyone’s doing it?

Presently, the disease seems limited to those in high office, or aspiring to the same. Picture what might happen when it spreads:

·         The car mechanic hands you a bag of spare parts along with your bill. “Here! Runs like a top!”

·         The pilot apologizes for not training to the manual. “I’m done with manuals. I’m gonna fly this mother!” Euphemistically speaking.

·         The surgeon walks into the room, declaring she’s saved the patient, as the gentleman who’d been recently under the knife is wheeled out in a bag. “Well, he was alive when I finished with him.”

·         “It’s a ‘special operation’ not a war.” V. V. Putin

·         “This parrot’s not dead. He’s pining for the fjords.”

Monty Python’s skit from decades ago gets to a universal truth.

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So we come to two cheerfully dueling Brits on their podcast, The Rest is Politics, Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell.

Rory Stewart had served back in Theresa May’s Cabinet for international development after taking a long hike across the length of Afghanistan with his dang [1] and a dog who loved him—the dog adopted him on the way, and Theresa May being the last Tory Prime Minister before Boris. Stewart mourned the loss of his dog and praised the lady for being forthright.

[1] Oh not that one—the trusty wooden staff he’d bought in Herat at the start of his walkabout.

How could I not cheer for a skinny Brit with a dang dog—got it?—walking the length of a country noted for its ancient blood feuds, still asking for shelter in Farsi in the village he entered each evening?

Stewart asserts that he’s conservative, just not a Conservative any longer. Being in the Conservative Party in Britain isn’t the same as the far right in the U.S, but it does have its share of nutters—take Nigel Farage and the Brexit kool aid folks.

To argue Britain’s move away from Europe with Brexit was anything but last century isolationism seems as politically ‘dodgy’ as building a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico—chumming for votes while riling the rile-able. When in need of a dead cat, xenophobia always comes through.

Stewart left the party in protest over Brexit. One might say Brexit gives populism a bad name, but it’s not what’s keeping folks up at night.

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Stewart has allied himself with Alastair Campbell, a former Labour Party cabinet member, for their podcast, The Rest is Politics.

“But the simple central fact is that he [Boris Johnson] introduced laws for the rest of the country… that had a huge impact on peoples’ lives, and he was in endless covid meetings looking at the details of those laws, discussing them in real detail as he needed to… and then he creates a culture at 10 Downing Street that deliberately breaks those laws—as the Metropolitan police have now confirmed. And that tells us about all you need to know about this man, which is that he is simply incapable of acting with any kind of responsibility or seriousness.” Rory Stewart from the April 13th podcast, The Rest Is Politics

This from a former member of Boris Johnson’s own party. Mitt Romney comes to mind.

From the April 20 podcast, in relation to Boris Johnson’s hat dance around Partygate, Campbell said “I was talking to the Mayor of Tirana [who said], ‘Oh my god, some of the things your politicians have been getting up to [in Britain] we would not be able to get away with in Albania.’ ”

To which Stewart goes to the moral issue:

“The choice of Rwanda was deliberate. They deliberately chose one of the poorest countries in the world. They deliberately chose a country that is associated with the horrors of the genocide. They deliberately chose a country that’s right in the center of Africa as the place to move people, rather than, for example, the Channel Islands. Because they like the sense that some of their supporters would see it as a punishment...” Stewart from the April 20 podcast, The Rest Is Politics

These two seemingly opposed pols are saying virtually the same thing about Boris—that he’s a lying sack of brown smelly stuff who needs to go. At one point in last week’s podcast, Stewart made the comment that at least he ought to credit Johnson’s response to the Ukraine invasion, and Campbell jumped on him, pointing out the obvious dead cat in the room.  

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Campbell asked Stewart about his take on Scotland leaving the U.K.—back on the table since Brexit was approved over Scotland’s objections. The question is important to both men, since Scotland was their birthplace.

Given Stewart’s resignation from Parliament protesting Brexit, might he now agree Scotland should break with England?

Stewart’s response was consistent. He said he sympathized with Scottish anger at being forced to abandon the European Union. Nonetheless, he saw the union of England, Scotland and Wales as stronger than their component states could ever be apart from each other. Great Britain had evolved from squabbling tribes and he didn’t want to see it fall back into them again. He’d lived in Afghanistan.

It’s hard to tell between them, one a Tory and the other a liberal, who thinks less of their present Prime Minister. The impression is their views are founded on broader principals than chasing down the lowest common denominator—a refreshing change from Boris Johnson. And it isn’t that they think the midnight crossings of the English Channel are to be ignored, only that blockading the country from the rest of the world just isn’t in the British makeup.

It isn’t possible to encourage freedom and democratic rule beyond one’s borders by turning your back on the sufferings of others. Some things the British taught the world are worth holding onto.

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With Macron’s electoral win in France last Sunday, Stuart and Campbell will have plenty to chew over on today’s podcast.

We should all breathe a sigh with the results from France. Le Pen tried softening her message, but couldn’t claim she didn’t mean her previous praise for Putin and a desire to leave NATO. Le Pen’s may not be her father’s style of overt fascism, but she’s not so far from it that she would ever repudiate him. And if she were, her followers would just find another fascist to salute.

While Boris Johnson is flinging his dead cats right and left, nativism around the world is flourishing. Combined with easy answers in fascism. Putin, Xi Jinping, even Modi, all are at work practicing their styles of nativism, and moving in a common direction away from democratic rule. That we avoided adding Le Pen to the list, we should thank the French. While the British may feel Johnson isn’t in that league; it’s hard to tell what Johnson truly believes, other than engrandizing himself—and flinging dead cats in every direction.

Coda

Would it matter that Boris Johnson lied about partying while the British burned—rhetorically speaking? Johnson’s not been accused of practicing his violin like Nero—yet—there’s still time. In a single, albeit drawn-out, stroke, he and his cohorts managed to shrink Britain’s influence in the world with Brexit.

So for that matter, why follow British politics at all? Why does Great Britain even matter? In a word: Ukraine.

The world’s democracies need each other in this all hands on deck moment—as battered as we may be and of weakened standing in the world. If today’s British leaders aren’t what they were, the same might be said of the U.S. Though just as the U.S. hasn’t walked away from its leading role after Trump’s best efforts at isolationism, it would be sad to see the British people forgetting their own history of opposition to despots.

The spine that Great Britain requires now can be found in those who speak plain truth, as Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell do. With moral outrage against despots. And to those who say changing governments in a time of crisis is too risky, Campbell reminded his audience, ‘we always replace our leaders in a time of war.’ It stands for moral courage.