Carpet set for the «crazy mulla» – VG

Once in the 90s I joined comedy writer Ray Cooney at a play rehearsal in London. His new play immediately premiered in Norway with Rolv Wesenlund in a lead role as Unfaithful Labor Minister.

But the conversation had to take place among other tasks. And now we’re in the middle of a review of an unfinished piece of his hand, where the recently deceased Geoffrey Palmer was to play the British Tory Prime Minister. The character had received a blow to the head and thought he was Guy Fawkes incarnate, the man who in 1605 tried to blow up the Upper House with 36 barrels of gunpowder.

It was all pretty ridiculous. But the subject was neither political satire nor amusement. Even as an absurd farce, where “everything” is law, and the wilder the mad humor, the better, it was not possible to create a credible character on the stage of a prime minister in an internal conflict between duty as head of government and the commitment he intended to have. to those who had exposed it to explode the Existing.

The piece was set aside. It was just too crazy.

Fast forward to 2020. With a prime minister who has listened to both the conservative core of the Conservative Party and the most rabid phalanx of Brexiters in the Vote Leave campaign, 88-year-old Ray Cooney can dust off the issue. Reality catches up with the charade.

Unfortunately, it is a lot of fun. Britain last week became the first country in Europe to exceed 50,000 deaths from covid. The nation is closed. Hospitals exploded, the testing program fell into chaos, and the tracking system broke. And in a few weeks, Brexit will take hold. Then the transitory agreements that the country has with the EU expire.

Even if a new deal were struck at the last second, the Johnson government has wasted so much negotiating time pretending that Brexit has no downsides that the British are unprepared in critical areas.

For example A new patent regime for importing drugs must be approved before the UK can introduce a single covid vaccine. It is not the fault of the EU. It is the British who have unilaterally terminated the agreement. One of several layoffs in which the government has not understood the extent of the break with the EU. The Irish border is another example.

At the same time, Johnson’s condescension to Scottish self-government has spilled even more fuel on the independence bonfire. Even high-profile Scots who have voted neither for the SNP nor for secession have now publicly called for a new referendum on independence.

Separately These are cases with a severity that should receive full attention. Instead, Downing Street has expended energy on the internal conflict between Johnson’s controversial adviser Dominic Cummings and his hard-core Vote Leave, on the one hand, and conservative centrists, who want peace in the party, on the other.

Prime Minister Cummings’ senior adviser, who is not even a Conservative member, has had a stated goal of breaking through the established system of government to create a new one. He was the one who advised Johnson to dissolve parliament, something the Supreme Court ruled illegal. It was he who managed to get the government to withdraw the withdrawal agreement with the EU, which the House of Lords considers contrary to international law. And it is he who has asked Boris to speak out against EU infringements without a deal, despite the fact that all economic indicators are flashing red. To add insult to injury, it also undermined the government’s corona strategy by violating travel restrictions imposed on most people by the authorities.

A central role in contemporary political drama it is occupied by Carrie Symonds, Boris Johnson’s fiancée. According to the conservative newspaper The Times, he has called Dominic Cummings a “mad mullah” from whom Boris “must be freed.”

Symonds is the former communications chief for the Conservatives and is seen as loyal to the core of voters. She has expressed concern that the party will be permanently broken if her fiancé continues to listen to Cummings. The Vote Leave phalanx’s confrontational strategy has earned them some short-term populist victories, but it has divided the Conservative parliamentary group, undermined confidence in the government and damaged BoJo’s reputation as the most popular politician in the country.

She blames cummings that the media, especially the powerful right-wing press, turn to Johnson. Rather than building alliances to bring with him, as a successful politician must, Johnson, in keeping with Trump’s doctrine, has been advised to cultivate clear lines of conflict.

According to British media, there have been scenes in Downing Street in the last week that meet the demands of the father’s inner logic, and that always end with the foreign character from the first act being humiliated and disappearing through the back door.

Dominic cummings however, he chose the main entrance with all the press photographers in front when he demonstratively left Nr. 10 carrying a small box with private belongings, as we like to see in a movie when someone is fired. The subtitle was pretty clear: embarrass Boris for not defending his friend, but choosing peace with his fiancé.

How well founded Cummings the image of the indecisive Boris; the one who agrees with the last speaker (usually Cummings), who lacks his own ideas (they had Cummings), implementation capacity (Cummings), control over the government (Cummings) and not least a Brexit strategy (Cummings).

For the liberation project to succeed, Johnson must reset the party’s course to the center, take a Thatcher and ditch friends and yes-people in government in favor of ministers with professional weight.

Must make amends that the break with Cummings & co is more than an intriguing struggle for power; which is a personal, political and ideological arrangement on the direction of the government. And that’s your last U-turn.