Not fit for the job

Subject: Not fit for the job.

Not fit for the job, well we knew that from his time at the Foreign Office but in the archaic way we produce a Prime Minister is it any wonder we have from time to time had visited such incompetence.

In our parliamentary system we don't get a chance to grill a prospective candidate for PM, we don't get a chance to debate who should occupy the most powerful office in the land rather it's a gift  handed to the winner by the party who won the election, choosing from within their own ranks the man or women who ticks the parties boxes not necessarily the national box. The internecine struggle within the Tory party as Johnson emerged from the ranks resulted in well seasoned politicians, ex-ministers who individually might have expected to be considered for a job being cut out and laid to rest on the back benchers whilst new, barely blooded faces rose through the ranks to become ministers occupying huge responsibility, Spads one day Right Honorables the next.

Respected ex-ministers such as Jeremy Hunt  and Philip Hammond, we’re jettisoned along with Savid Javid for a much more lightweight cabinet which soon showed as poor decision and many U turns followed, especially in the pandemic debacle  

Dominic Cummings laid bare to the the Parliamentary Committee yesterday his view of the performance of Boris Johnson and his team in a scathing attack on not only the ability of cabinet members to do their job but exposed a  lack of integrity, especially of Mat Hancock in his role of Minister of Health and the purported scandals of placing government procurement for PPE  into the hands of family and friends.

In a mammoth 7 hour session before the Committee, Cummings who clearly has an axe to grind with the PM and his girlfriend Carrie Symonds with whom he had gone head to head opposing the appointment by Ms Symonds of her friends to important jobs in the Downing Street office. A wife or girlfriend, in Downing St rightly plays a behind the scenes role since the pressure on the PM, or any man for that matter, is significant if a partner is involved. It cuts across his loyalties, to the job and his colleagues on the one hand  or to the person he shares his life with. It’s one of the basic reasons that in an office environment it’s frowned upon for employees who share the same house to have managerial positions in which a conflict of interest might arise.. Carrie Symonds, having landed a job in Downing Street is in just that position and by applying pressure on the cabinet office regarding the hiring of people she was friendly with (inevitably firing the incumbent) and having a well publicised strop because issues regarding her dog were not being dealt, with all spanks of nepotism.

Cummings laid bare the dysfunctionality of government at the top level, its inability to have plans for different scenarios and schemes worked out if plan A goes wrong.

As laymen we screamed from the sidelines when we heard old people were being discharged from hospital, an potential incubator for Covid, straight into care homes with no provision made to segregate them from the other residents.  We cried out at the news that protective equipment had been so run down and not replenished and that firms in the business of making protective clothing were not being asked to even submit a quote but instead that firms who had no track record in this business were awarded the contract. We only learnt later of the links to family and friends  which seems to have been the vital clincher. We rolled our eyes at the obvious lies about production and missed targets, and wondered how, in any other situation the man in charge should have been fired. Cummings sites 15 occasions when he felt Hancock should have been axed but was protected by the boss Boris.

The problem is that politics is a dirty game and no amount of fact, figures or exposure makes one iota of difference, the good ship Johnson will sail on until the next election and we are once again wooed by promises of a better tomorrow.