Some nightmares are psychedelic, and others are realistic; some require Freud’s help to interpret them, and others, not so much. One dreams of monsters and snakes, chases and falling into the void, drowning, the death of loved ones, being trapped or naked in public, screaming for help and not being heard. They respond to trauma and fear, and are sometimes seen as harbingers of what will or will not happen. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, his Conservative Government and the British have for some time had two recurring issues: Brexit and Boris Johnson.
Both made a joint appearance yesterday (not at night, but in the afternoon, at nap time) in the political scene of the. On the one hand, the vote on the new Brexit compromise between London and the EU, approved by an overwhelming majority (515 votes to 29 and a hundred abstentions or absences), but with the opposition of the Northern Irish unionists of the DUP , a handful of recalcitrant Eurosceptics and parliamentary heavyweights including former prime ministers Johnson and Liz Truss, ex-ministers Jacob Rees-Mogg and Priti Patel and former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith. On the other, the dramatic four-hour questioning of Johnson by a parliamentary committee to determine whether or not he lied to the Commons about partygate.
It was pure political theater of the first category, like the inquisition on Nixon about what he knew and didn’t know about Watergate, or on Clinton for his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, or that of Senator McCarthy on suspected philo-communists during the witch hunt in the 1950s to the United States. The stage, a small room full of press and the audience that managed to get in, the television cameras broadcasting live around the country and Johnson in a gray suit, a very understated light blue tie and his hair cut, sitting next to his lawyer, Lord Pannick (who has defended in litigation Queen Elizabeth, Putin allies and gays and lesbians expelled from the army because of their sexual orientation).
“I swear I will tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,” Johnson said with his hand on a Bible, like in the movies. And whether or not he said it after that is a different story (his word is traded on the stock market for less than Credit Suisse shares). In any case, he assured, as he has done for some time and despite the fact that their versions have changed more than the script of a bad Hollywood film, that it never occurred to him that the parties in Downing Street during the pandemic were against the rules. That they were “work meetings” (albeit with birthday cakes, karaoke, Abba music and suitcases full of alcohol smuggled from the corner store). That the staff needed them to relax (while ordinary citizens couldn’t even say goodbye to their dying relatives, and were fined for sitting on a park bench with a friend). That his advisers told him everything was correct (although there was documentary evidence that some expressed serious doubts about). That it would never have occurred to him to lie to Parliament, and if he ever gave wrong information, it was in good faith. That if the illegality was so obvious, the current leader Rishi Sunak is as guilty as he is because he was present and was fined by the police. And that with the information he had – like Aznar with the Iraq war – he would do the same thing again. No act of contrition or regret.
“No one stops being a star, that’s what makes someone a star,” says silent film actress Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, unable to adapt to the arrival of sound and to admit that his time has passed. The same goes for Boris Johnson, who does not accept the humiliation of being forced to resign as Prime Minister, and clings to the remote hope of regaining the throne if the Tories do not raise their heads, if they suffer a rout in May’s municipal elections, if his Praetorian Guard orchestrates a successful mutiny against Sunak. Yes, yes, yes… But first he must come out of the investigation of which he is the subject and for which he was questioned yesterday. If he is only warned, he will live on. If his parliamentary record is suspended for ten days or more, he will have to stand for re-election as MP for Uxbridge, and he could lose.
One of the characters in The Impassive American, by Graham Greene, states that “he had never met anyone who had such good reasons for causing so much trouble”. Johnson does not stop causing them – for Sunak, the Conservative Party, the United Kingdom…–, but without good intentions. Only selfishness and the spirit of revenge. Time has its revenges, but they are usually bitter.
While in a room in the Palace of Westminster Johnson was subjected to his inquisition, the Commons was voting on the modification of the Brexit agreements negotiated by Sunak with Brussels to fix some of the grievances of his predecessor, with a reduction in customs controls at certain products and a mechanism so that the Stormont Assembly (the Northern Irish legislature) can apply a brake and request the non-application of new EU regulations that affect the province. The Government won comfortably, without needing the votes of the opposition, but it was a Pyrrhic victory because of the divisions it showed between the Tories and the refusal of the DUP unionists, the lords of the no, to accept the reform. They have blocked the autonomous institutions of Ulster, with no prospect of them ceasing to do so.
“There was a time when the eyes of the world were on me,” Norma Desmond says nostalgically. They were hanging on Johnson yesterday, albeit for the wrong reasons. For partygate and for its role in the creation of Brexit as a pyrotechnic charisma and doctrine of national revival through the conflict with Europe, with disastrous results for the economy. In the treatise The interpretation of dreams, Freud says that they are repressed desires, a reflection of things that are wanted or not wanted, sometimes in a masochistic way. In the case of the British with Boris Johnson and Brexit, masochism is taken for granted.
