Dear Sir,
Kate Maltby rightly draws a parallel between Boris Johnson’s political inclinations and the more authoritarian forms of majority rule democracy practised currently in the U.S., Poland or Hungary (“Number 10 threatens media war” “I” 06.02.20).
Boris Johnson may be a social liberal with a romantic view of the United Kingdom, but that does not stop from having an authoritarian streak. This streak does not just cover the discrimination within the press lobby. In the agenda set out for Boris Johnson by his single-minded adviser Dominic Cummings, Johnson is keen to tame or otherwise diminish the role of the BBC both in his direct attacks but also by decriminalizing the non-payment of TV licences and not subsidizing pensioner’s licence fees, in the hope that the BBC will eventually become more malleable to promoting the government’s view.
He is considering the political appointments of judges in order to ensure the judiciary will not challenge the government again and to further curb trade union rights to strike, starting with the rail industry. Environmental protest groups are to be classed as terrorist organizations. Plans are afoot to bring in a different form of civil servants based on "wierdos and misfits" who bypass the normal recruitment and examination process and are handpicked by Mr Cummings himself. Johnson has also removed the possibility of MPs voting on his eventual Brexit trade deal or supervising the Brexit process in Northern Ireland even though the current clumsy customs settlement could make Northern Ireland a future smuggler’s paradise.
His American, Polish and Hungarian mentors must be congratulating him on these first steps away from the inclusive parliamentary democracy that operates within the UK's current unwritten constitution.
Yours faithfully
Wiktor Moszczynski
Published 07.02.2020 "I"
