Opinion

Boris Johnson is the court jester with nothing of significance to bring to the table

<span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: sans-serif, Arial, Verdana, &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;; ">To quote Rick from the old movie classic Casablanca - he is &ldquo;no good at being noble&rdquo;</span>
To quote Rick from the old movie classic Casablanca - he is “no good at being noble” To quote Rick from the old movie classic Casablanca - he is “no good at being noble”

It is now a cliché to state that Boris Johnson rose to the top by ‘playing the clown’. He is undoubtedly very much the clown king. However, unlike court jesters, clowns have traditionally served an important socio-religious and psychological role in society. Paradoxically, the roles of priest and clown have been compared. It has been observed that folly, like religion and magic, also addresses the deeply rooted needs of humanity. Therefore, we must ask the following question: Is Johnson merely a court jester who has made only a superficial impact on society or is he a clown with a more profound role?

It is widely acknowledged that he is a great electoral campaigner. But it is also true that he is judged to be a poor governor. Chaos and mismanagement seem to inevitably follow in his wake. There is also a deep ambiguity and nihilism to his subversive clown persona which borders on the malignant. Indeed, sometimes, very disconcertingly, it resembles the Joker – the flamboyant super villain of the Batman movies. Like the Joker, the Bo-Jo clown is mercurial and ephemeral with no long-term strategic goal other than to take control at any cost. He can border on the psychopathic and then unexpectedly swing back to the comical. A politician who was largely an agnostic about EU membership is now a born again Brexiteer. It represented his path to power.

Perhaps the defining characteristic of the Bo-Jo clown has been his seemingly endless penchant for gaffes. One of his latest, made during a visit to a wind farm in Scotland, was to suggest that Mrs Thatcher had helped to decarbonise the economy by closing the coal mines. It has been excused as an ill-judged joke. But it could also be viewed as deeply insensitive to the mining communities devastated by these brutal closures. So much for ‘levelling up’ the so-called ‘Red Wall’ constituencies.

Perhaps his most tactless, indeed callous, quip was made regarding clearing the corpses off the Libyan beaches following the civil war. He observed that this would transform it into an irresistible tourist destination. It was a coldly uncaring, impulsive and seditious comment – as dissenting from civilised behaviour as anything that could be attributed to the Joker.

To conclude, you do not have to be a dramatist to recognise that Johnson represents the epitome of the clown. His impulsiveness. His self-created crises. His impetuous nature. His self-conscious gaucheness. His dubious attitude to truth and to every concept of political or legal ethical standards. His debatable personal relationships and his morally questionable relationship with the public.

Everything is ludicrous. Johnson is the apex-clown – capable of the most sophisticated existential mockery while simultaneously maintaining the low physical comedy of the buffoon. But the above traits are closer to the chilling jester persona represented by the Joker. There is nothing meaningful about his behaviour. He toys with moral standards – inverts, switches, reverses – wringing the goodness out of them like water from a sodden towel. His apparent warmth is oddly symbiotic with a distancing coldness.

Ultimately, he is the court jester with nothing of significance to bring to the table. To quote Rick from the old movie classic Casablanca - he is “no good at being noble”.

GEORGE WORKMAN


Mornington, Co Meath

A child doesn’t magically stop costing money

A  joint report by Save the Children and Child Poverty has revealed that 11,000 more children will face poverty due to the planned cuts to the £20 uplift provided on Universal Credit during the pandemic.

Prior to the pandemic one in four children in the north already lived in poverty. Ending the measly £20 extra for those on universal credit is going to push more families into poverty and desperation.

Calls for the implementation of the Scottish system, which currently provides a child payment of £10 per week per child under six with no cap on the number of children, could lift as many as 27,000 children out of poverty. While this is a step in the right direction it goes nowhere near far enough.

A child doesn’t magically stop costing money at six years old. It needs to be extended to cover all children of school age.

Reports that Communities Minister Deirdre Hargey will urge the UK government to continue the £20 uplift are simply not good enough. This should have been agreed a long time ago and not wait until the 11th hour to plead for it to be continued.

Charities should not have to call on Stormont to invest in its anti-poverty strategy, which they committed to as part of New Decade New Approach. The fact so many families are forced to use food banks, struggle to heat their homes and pay for school uniforms, along with the growing numbers in temporary accommodation is quite simply shameful. That this number is likely to increase is a disgrace.

Once again we see the catastrophic failure and inability of Stormont minsters to deliver on the very basic needs of our most vulnerable and those most in need.

GEMMA WEIR


Workers’ Party, North Belfast

Abortion violates the moral law

‘BODILY autonomy’ advocates may view Fr McCafferty (August 23) as a fundamentalist ‘bogeyman’ but science tells us a different story. Modern ultrasound displays the unborn’s humanity in the ’dating scan’ on the NHS website. Creation-Christ-conscience inform Fr McCafferty’s position, which is based on dignity, decalogue, deicide. The Cross reveals how precious human life is, with the termination of the innocent unborn an act of violent blasphemy. Many people (eg Dr Bernard Nathanson and Dr Anthony Levatino) have experienced faith, grace and forgiveness, when they realised how abortion violates the moral law, innately hardwired into each and every one of us. The abortion surgeon, standing by the bed or operating theatre table, holds their trademark  dissecting tools. The ‘bogeyman’ under the bed in childhood nightmares, has a real life competitor, who regrettably is not a figment of the imagination – as yet.

TJ HARDY


Belfast BT5

Mr Cushnahan should speak up or shut up

I am writing in response to John Cushnahan’s letter, ‘Glorifying acts of murder’ (August 12).

The question I have for Mr Cushnahan is: Does he include the murders carried out by the British army and RUC, and what does he say about all the glorification by the British state of its campaigns throughout of murder and torture? Come on John, speak up or shut up.

 VAL MORGAN


Newry, Co Down