On December 6, the The Sunday Times revealed that in various instances of the British Parliament, traces of cocaine were detected. Specifically, traces of this substance were found in 11 of the 12 sinks examined. The president of the House of Commons himself immediately recognized that drug use in the seat of "popular sovereignty" is a fact that has occurred for a "very extended" time.
When this revealing news came to light, Boris Johnson had just announced on his social networks a 10-year anti-drug plan and special measures to fight crime in England and Wales: “We are getting tougher on crime to protect security, the protection and support that communities need,” he wrote on his Twitter.
The accusation of the habitual consumption of cocaine on the part of their lordships was accompanied by another major scandal: the parties organized in Downing Street by Johnson and members of his Cabinet in full confinement.
The style of the decadent and decrepit British bourgeoisie and its political representatives never disappoints. They are true artists: their provincial morality always hides the most grotesque degeneration and a rotten double standard.
"Do what I say, not what I do." Hypocrisy as a flag
A few days ago, the British government raised the health alert from level 3 to 4. This means that "the contagion is high and that the pressure on health services is widespread, significant and on the rise." The next step, 5, is the highest grade and indicates that the health care system is on the brink of collapse.
Anyone may think how much Johnson cares about public health. But not. Just as these announcements were made public, the press published photos and leaked the news that Boris and his collaborators had carried out joyous private parties, without security measures and in full confinement, at the Downing Street headquarters.
These deplorable events have unleashed a great media storm from which Johnson tries to escape by displaying large doses of cynicism and shamelessness.
The prime minister, facing his lowest ever popularity ratings (66% of British disapprove of his management), hastened to apologize for the parties, assuring (of course) that the information he had was that in those parties all anticovid regulations were met, and he has promised a "thorough investigation" to clarify responsibilities.
Johnson's communication adviser has resigned, obviously, although this has not prevented many conservative parliamentarians observing the free fall of Johnson's popularity from harshly criticizing the attitude of the British "premier". As a protest, around 100 Tory deputies voted against the new measures to stop the pandemic that the government had proposed, although these have finally been approved thanks to the support of Labour.
For its part the Labour opposition, dominated by the right wing of the party, has criticized the government but has not even called for Johnson's resignation, something that only Ian Blackford, spokesman for the Scottish National Party, has done.
As for the discovery of cocaine in the Palace of Westminster, all of them, in a show of infinite hypocrisy, have shown to be dismayed and have demanded that it be investigated and to get to the button of the matter. No more, no less!
The spectacle is tremendous, and it reflects the senile decay that corrodes the capitalist state and its institutions in the United Kingdom. The profound degeneration to which its political representatives have reached has been carved out during years of impunity, austerity and social cuts.
Bourgeois institutions are portrayed as the social drama deepens
All the criticism of the Conservative Government and its Prime Minister from the media, the Conservative Party itself and the Labour Party, does not go beyond empty rhetoric and ingenious qualifiers. This is no accident.
The shameful parties in Downing Street and the cocaine in the toilets of Parliament are being used to spill more rotten morality. But very few point out the consequences that the policy in the service of the rich of the Tory Government is having, and also the authentic social drama that British working families and most of the population in general are facing.
While they perform their circus performance, the living conditions of the masses continue to deteriorate. To date, Covid has killed more than 146,000 people in Great Britain and currently, in this "new wave", around 50,000 infections are occurring daily. The government's strategy against the virus is focused on vaccination and PCR tests, which is generating huge benefits for pharmaceutical companies and companies in the sector, but, by themselves, they are not serving to stop the spread of the disease.
The British National Public Health System (NHS), which has suffered deep cuts for decades, has been forced to face the pandemic at the limit of its human and material strength, and it continues to deteriorate inexorably. Although the United Kingdom spends around 10% of its GDP on healthcare spending, a large part of this percentage goes directly to swell the coffers of private healthcare companies.
On the NHS, waiting lists are growing. In England alone, the number of patients who are there for surgery or treatment has already reached a record 5.5 million. The average waiting time has gone from 25 weeks before the Covid, to 44 (El Periódico 7-09-21).
On the other hand, poverty continues growing unstoppably and the number of the most disadvantaged people grows without stopping. On April 22 the Trussell Trust, Britain's leading food bank organization, reported that in the last year it distributed 2.5 million emergency food packages, a number never reached.
As in many other so-called advanced capitalist countries, poverty hits the little ones. According to a study by the Action Group Against Child Poverty, 1.7 million children go hungry because their families cannot afford enough food. The number of schoolchildren registered for free school meals increased from 200,000 people during the first year of the pandemic, to more than 1.6 million - a fifth of the 8.2 million children in the state school. According to official data, 47% of minors from British families with three or more children live in poverty.
These and many other data reveal the real nightmare that capitalism represents for the British working class. The fifth largest economy in the world, with a GDP of 2.6 trillion dollars, can only offer misery and exploitation to most of the population, while the political representatives of the British ruling class display a despicable double standard.
