Boris Johnson may win the election. The rest of us will lose

By Peter Oborne

December 06, 2019 "Information Clearing House" - A week to go until the UK election, and Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party is winning the popular vote hands down. He’s cruising.

If the polls are right, and I guess they are, Johnson is set to move back into Downing Street with the most commanding Conservative victory since Maggie Thatcher secured a majority of 102 in 1987. 

As a lifelong Conservative, I should be delighted. Instead, I feel despair. To secure his victory, Johnson has sunk lower than any prime minister in modern times. Far lower.

Exploiting tragedy

Take his reaction to the murder of the young man and woman on London Bridge last Friday. Johnson promptly announced he would cease to campaign in a mark of respect to the victims. While observing the formalities, in practice he did nothing of the sort.

Instead, Johnson went into overdrive to secure every possible electoral advantage he could from the deaths of the two young people. This was in direct defiance of the express wishes of the father of one of the victims, who wrote on Twitter: “My son, Jack, who was killed in this attack, would not wish his death to be used as the pretext for more draconian sentences or for detaining people unnecessarily.”

The Conservatives sought to exploit the tragedy regardless. Johnson blamed Labour for the early release of the attacker. He wrote an article in the Mail on Sunday, titled “Give me a majority and I’ll keep you safe from terror”. How does the prime minister promise to achieve this? By introducing more draconian sentences. In Johnson’s words: “These criminals must serve every day of their sentence, with no exceptions.”

   

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