British democracy in dire straits: PMQs review

PMQs, a pillar of the unwritten British constitution, appears to have devolved into brown-nosing and party advertising.

Yesterday in Prime Ministers Questions (which I followed at Bournbrook Live), Boris Johnson fielded questions from the house on a number of issues; HS2, local government, and of course, the COVID-19 pandemic. But one development was ominously omitted, that recent border guidelines pave the way for ten-year sentences to be handed out for ‘severe non-compliance’.

If the purpose of PMQ’s is to curb the excesses of government, then British democracy is in dire straits. The session, a pillar of the unwritten British constitution, appears to have devolved into brown-nosing and party advertising.

The SNP’s Ian Blackford was his typical self, taking pot-shots at the government and sternly shaking his head, while offering nothing in the way of alternative policy.

Leader of the ‘Opposition’ Keir Starmer was fiery but missed the key targets, namely the aforementioned prison sentences, showing to us all that within the halls of Westminster, there is no true opposition to the destructive and Knutian policy of ‘COVID-zero’.

What it most frustrating about Stamer in these engagements is that he is so close to the real issue, yet so far. He lamented the governments tepid actions around the border, without advocating for its closure. Have our politicians forgotten the most relevant factor in Britain’s national defence, that we are an island?

Throughout the pandemic, many slogans have sneakily entered the political lexicon; ‘stay home, protect the NHS, save lives’, and the eternally unsettling ‘build back better’. But it seems, this week, a new slogan entered its trial period, that the government was ‘putting its arms around the nation’. An almost laughable proposition considering the soon-to-be irreversible damage done by the government's lockdown policy.