An illiberal democracy

Anyone who thought Boris Johnson was a political clown was wrong. He is changing Britain in an authoritarian direction.

Boris Johnson is an entertaining politician. The British Prime Minister knows how to garnish dry political affairs with wit and inventive rhetoric and to make headlines suitable with eloquence and nimble feet.

It was not least his lack of seriousness that led many political experts to underestimate his effect on voters. Brexit did not, as has often been predicted, split the Tory party – on the contrary, it enabled Johnson to cement conservative supremacy.

But behind the Prime Minister’s clown-like facade there is a tough politician. Johnson is increasingly pursuing an authoritarianism that threatens basic civil liberties. In Brexit Britain the outlines of the characteristics of an autocratic regime can be seen – attacks on freedom of expression and assembly, blatant corruption, cold-hearted politics against migrants. That is extremely dangerous. But the opposition is sleeping – the resistance has to come from the streets.

One of the leading representatives of authoritarian politics is Interior Minister Priti Patel, whose reactionary stance is hair-raising – until a few years ago she was a representative of the death penalty. The hardliner complains about the “do-gooders” and “left lawyers” who benefit from the allegedly broken asylum system.

Schools should avoid “anti-capitalist material” in the classroom. It is anti-democratic

According to a new proposal, refugees who come to Great Britain “illegally” are no longer entitled to protection. For example, anyone who makes it across the English Channel in a rubber boat should be deported. People from war and crisis areas who risk their lives to start a new life in Great Britain should not be welcome here. You have to have that much cold heartedness first.

In the coming Scottish election I will be voting for a party that has been around since 1934, founded by Cunningham Graham. It is a party that I hope will gain us Independence. It’s a party that has given us free prescriptions and scrapped university fees and many other things. I will not be voting for or against a personality. My only interest is in independence for the country I was born in Scotland 71 years ago. The country my Grandfather left for France in 1914 with promises of home rule ringing in his ears and returned minus a leg to a broken promise. The country my father came back to after 5 years in a prison camp in Poland to promises of a better Britain. The country that 99% of my extended family reluctantly left in the 50s and 60s for a better life in Canada.

In the coming Scottish election I will be voting for a party that has been around since 1934, founded by Cunningham Graham. It is a party that I hope will gain us Independence. It’s a party that has given us free prescriptions and scrapped university fees and many other things. I will not be voting for or against a personality. My only interest is in independence for the country I was born in Scotland 71 years ago. The country my Grandfather left for France in 1914 with promises of home rule ringing in his ears and returned minus a leg to a broken promise. The country my father came back to after 5 years in a prison camp in Poland to promises of a better Britain.The country that 99% of my extended family reluctantly left in the 50s and 60s for a better life in Canada.
A country that has been robbed of its resources and exported its talented people for generations.
Help me be the last generation to be trapped in this toxic union.
Both votes for SNP.

A country that has been robbed of its resources and exported its talented people for generations. 

Help me be the last generation to be trapped in this toxic union.

Both votes for SNP.

I grew up in a Scotland wholly ruled from Westminster. Both my parents worked but sometimes we went to school with cardboard in our holed shoes. We had enough to eat because my mother worked in the director’s canteen of a shipyard –  smoked salmon and roast meat leftovers. We went to Glasgow at term time with a Provident cheque to buy our school uniforms and spent the rest of the year paying it off There were children in my class dressed entirely in army surplus with the sleeves and trousers rolled up. I now understand why many of the children were so much smaller than their classmates.