The Morning Star still has time for Johnson

As a humiliated Boris Johnson pathetically claims “there is a witch hunt underway, to take revenge for Brexit and ultimately to reverse the 2016 referendum result” he receives support from what may seem an unlikely quarter: the Communist Party of Britain’s Morning Star.

Despite a front page headline on 16 June (quoting the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice) “Liar Johnson Unfit To Hold Office Again”, that day’s editorial lines up behind Johnson’s claims of an “establishment” conspiracy, by both Sunak and Starmer, to get rid of him.

Here’s some of what it says:

“Tory high command see Johnson as a maverick who served his purpose in defeating Jeremy Corbyn but is too egotistical and unreliable to tolerate long-term.

“Johnson’s claim that his ‘political assassination’ is about reversing Brexit is true in that respect. Brexit too was an insurgency, a vote against the advice of the Conservative government of 2016 as well as every party in Parliament, mixed in motivation but generally angry and anti-Establishment.

“Sunak is as keen to be rid of that kind of politics as Starmer is.”

Despite the growing danger posed by “a new right-wing populist movement” that may or may not involve Johnson, it insists: “Currently our bigger headache comes from those lining up to denounce [Johnson] — a Tory-Labour consensus on lowering wages, privatising services and restricting our political and civil rights.”

But this is far from the first time that the Morning Star has suggested that Johnson’s brand of populism is somehow, sort-of… progressive.

During the Tory leadership contest of 2019, the Morning Star came close to backing Johnson against Jeremy Hunt, as (wait for it)… the candidate “who has … the right … to call himself a proletarian” (editorial, 2 July 2019). And if any reader at the time thought that was a joke, the same editorial seemed to praise Johnson’s proposed “pledge of a wedge to protect small businesses, farmers, fishermen (and presumably fisherwomen).”

Following Johnson’s victory, a Morning Star editorial (23 August 2019) suggested: “Where his coronation both poses a risk and presents an opportunity to the left is in his greater distance from the Establishment ‘mainstream’ and the already evident breach between him and parts of the permanent state”.

Then Johnson prorogued parliament, and the paper clearly sympathised: “By adding an extra few days to the habitual parliamentary break over the party conference season, he is hoping to avoid defeat in the Commons by MPs who clearly want to delay Brexit day yet again” (editorial, 2 September 2019).

The Morning Star went on to support Johnson’s withdrawal bill, stating (editorial, 21 October 2019): “this government… has, against the expectations and manifest hopes of all those parliamentary renegades who have repeatedly found ways to subvert the popular will, reached agreement with the European Union. This is the actually existing Brexit. There is no going back.”

But the paper’s most bizarre moment of almost Nadine Dorries-level fantasising came in September 2020, when it seemed to believe, in all seriousness, that Johnson might bring in… a planned economy (!): I kid you not.

The paper portrayed Johnson’s clashes with the EU as about state aid rules. The editorial of 9 September 2020 claimed Johnson’s stance opened up the prospect of: “Massive state aid to support industrial development”, adding a chirpy: “What’s not to like?”

By now totally carried away, the same editorial went on to suggest Johnson might usher in something like … the old USSR’s planned economy (!): “It evokes the rousing verse in Red Fly the Banners Oh, sung at many a union conference: ‘Five for the years of the Five Year Plan, and four for the four years taken’.”

I suppose that with that level of self-delusion, it’s hardly surprising that the people who run the Morning Star even now feel some sympathy for a poor, persecuted, anti-establishment “maverick”.