Vote of no confidence ?

What does the vote of no confidence result say for electoral politics?
Boris Johnson has just won his vote of no confidence in the Houses of Commons, 211 in favour to 148. Over 40% of Tory MPs voted against him, but 63% of the country believe that he should resign, while only 25% had faith in him in February. While this is a very slim win for Johnson, it demonstrates a clear lack of care for what the regular people of this country want.


Johnson was booed upon his arrival to St Paul’s Cathedral over the Jubilee Weekend, which is an absolutely astonishing feat, considering it was packed full of hardcore Royalists who, one can assume, would support the Tories no matter what. So let’s face it, the country is screaming overwhelmingly for Johnson to go.


An argument that could explain this is simply that tory MPs do not know who else they would want to take over the country. The cabinet was involved in the partygate scandals, enacting the draconian measures of the policing bill and have protected Johnson throughout his time in power. Johnson, in turn, has upped their pay and ensured that whatever wrong they do they are not required to resign by changing the Minister’s Code. This is, to any sane person, an overwhelming damnation of electoral politics.


When the function of the UK parliament allows for an elected dictatorship with a large majority, bought on by lying in election campaigns, we must surely ask why we allow this to happen. The most tyrannous and unpopular rules of UK prime ministers – Thatcher, Blair, Johnson – have been bought on by large majorities in the commons as a result of ineffective PMs before them, and times of national crisis. However, as this trend shows, national crises don’t get better under tyrannous regimes, they only get worse.


Johnson is unfit to rule, and so is his cabinet. As anarchist communists, we believe that nobody should rule, but even to the overwhelming majority of the public, Johnson and his cabinet are notoriously unpopular. The voting intentions of the public have dropped almost to what they were at the landslide 1997 election.


It seems that the next opportunity to oust Johnson will be a general election, however, Johnson even amended the fixed term parliament Act of the 2010 coalition to ensure that his time in power is as long as possible, changing it from 5 years between general elections to the maximum term of parliament, removing the power of parliament to call a general election, instead focusing that power solely on the cabinet. The longer that Johnson remains in power, the worse conditions become for everyday people, and the more authoritarian his regime becomes. Electoral politics has surely been proven ineffective and harmful by this rule. Johnson began as a demagogue and now ends his career as a disgrace, hopefully bringing down the reputation of electoralism with him.