Mercer and the pit of vipers

Reader Michael Barningham commenting at Breitbart:

Britain’s first Veterans Minister, now sacked, has denounced Boris Johnson’s Downing Street office a “cesspit” of “snakes” and “cowards”.

Mr Mercer, your condemnation of of Roger Scruton, could at best be described as jumping on a band wagon while not in possession of the facts. Subsequent events have shown that in joining the woke Bristol 'University' brigade condemning and de platforming Roger Scruton, despite your combat record, [shows] your own judgement in the political field leaves a lot to be desired.

Your support for the British Army Veterans of the Northern Ireland troubles is to be applauded. But the thing about entering the pit of vipers that is the British government, is that expectations must adjust to the 'standards' of serpents. Trust, commitment, honour, honesty, courage of conviction, all count for diddly-squat. 

Power is their sustenance, mendacity is their creed, back-stabbing their advancement code, and cowardice their survival instinct.

You were naive in the extreme, 'out of courtesy,' to tell the 'Johnson' in advance that you were going to resign over a matter of principle. Johnson and the rest of his cabal see your advanced warning, 'out of courtesy,' as a weakness in someone now seen an enemy, pursuing a policy of amnesty for Army veterans, they clearly, out of cowardice, do not support. Johnson saw your impending resignation as a strike against his own governance, but turned the tables on you getting rid of someone clearly troublesome to their two-faced connivance. So instead of resigning you are on the record as being fired. Johnson and his cohorts have no principles.

But your correct description of the snakes and cowards will now be interpreted in Tory circles, to look like sour grapes over the way you were treated. So I do think it would have been better for you to have remained silent while the vipers tear into each other. You now know to your cost, that the Officer Code has no place among scheming politicians, and it seems that the British Army veterans of Northern Ireland will now be pursued to their graves by a corrupt legal industry, encouraged by a government sitting on the fence, while enemies of the state laugh at British 'governance.' The entire system is rotten from the top down.

So Mr. Mercer, always, in your future dealings with your two legged political serpent species, remember you have no 'friends,' only false friends. So in order to survive amongst the Right Honourable snakes, you must also become a serpent and slither in the cesspit.

All right, let's look at viper Gove's Surrey Heath:

Workless claimants, registered jobseekers, were in November 2012 significantly lower than the national average of 3.8%, at 1.7% of the population based on a statistical compilation by The Guardian.[3]

Until the 2019 general election, the constituency was seen as one of the Conservative party's safest seats.

The 2019 general election saw an unexpected 16% swing to the Liberal Democrat's candidate Alasdair Pinkerton, polling the highest second place since the constituency's creation, with Labour recording the lowest share of the vote since its creation.

Right, so dissidents go LibDum.  The jawdropping thing is that these people both in the branch and the community know full well he's a scumbag, a threat to the Prime Minister, so what's going on here?  Pride that "their boy" is vying for the top job?  Do they see in him a "steady hand"?

I was once a member, before 2012, I've met these people and they're quite "civilised" to speak to, compared to those I knew from Labour.  So what on earth is wrong with their brains?  No desire for a conservative to represent them?  A commenter at Breitbart mentioned that it was not Boris himself, it was those voting for the party.

This is the nagging realisation I'm afraid, that perhaps they do not deserve the vote if they can't come to reasoned conclusions on the viper they're voting for.  There's some missing element in the brain.  

And if the retort is: "You'd vote Lib Dem or Labour, would you?" then what would that reveal about the interlocutor?  Sad state of affairs.