It's my party, and I'll lie if I want to

Boris Johnson / Pippa Fowles No10 (Click to enlarge)

Tory MPs and members knew that Boris Johnson's entire career as a journalist and politician was littered with lies - that's why they selected him, to win a general election based on 'levelling up' lies.

They closed ranks over the Dominic Cummings affair. They showed no moral scruples over Tory corruption, crony PPE contracts, £37 billion wasted on Test and Trace, promotion of Tory donors to the Lords, or the latest privatisation and outsourcing of NHS services.

Johnson has clearly broken the law, and should be fined £10,000 as others have, and forced to resign. But the real reason why Tory MPs will remove him, now or later, are opinion polls and by-election results. They will do anything to save their £80,000-a-year jobs, and the lucrative contracts and directorships with big businesses that those bring.

They never took the protection of people's lives seriously if it got in the way of them and their millionaire friends making more money. Self-serving and self-entitled, they all voted for Sunak's budget which is now cutting our living standards.

The problem is Sir Keir Starmer's 'Labour' Party just pursues the same fundamental economic policies for big business. He dishonestly broke his promise to keep pro-worker policies once he was selected as leader.

Now he has ditched his pledge to renationalise privatised energy, water and rail companies, supported by two-thirds of voters - just when we are being made to pay higher bills.

In the coming electoral reckoning, working-class people will need their own voice and a real alternative. It's now time for the trade unions to create a new party for working people to defend living standards through socialist policies.

Brent Kennedy, Cumbria Socialist Party

"It's my party and I'll lie if I want to" sums up the arrogant attitude of the Tory leader. The universal condemnation from the media reflects public disgust that a set of rules, which divided families from each other during the pandemic, were flagrantly disregarded in Downing Street. Has 'bring a bottle' ever appeared on the agenda of a work meeting you attended?

The more pro-Boris MPs the BBC can produce, the more pathetic the excuse. "Downing Street staff work very hard", according to Dominic Raab, and by implication nobody else.

All those doctors and nurses were just sitting on their backsides, were they?

Derek McMillan, Brighton Socialist Party

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Finance appeal

The coronavirus crisis has laid bare the class character of society in numerous ways. It is making clear to many that it is the working class that keeps society running, not the CEOs of major corporations.

The results of austerity have been graphically demonstrated as public services strain to cope with the crisis.

The Socialist Party's material is more vital than ever, so we can continue to report from workers who are fighting for better health and safety measures, against layoffs, for adequate staffing levels, etc.
We must be ready for the stormy events ahead and the need to arm workers' movements with a socialist programme - one which puts the health and needs of humanity before the profits of a few.