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An agent of chaos. Leon Neal/WPA Pool /Getty
Pity the poor columnist attempting to write The Case for Boris: a blank screen sits before him, the cursor blinking helplessly. There simply is no case for Boris, no justification for any continued role in public life. None of the accusations against him — his constant lies, his disregard for Westminster conventions — would matter in the slightest if he were just competent, but he is not. And that is why he must go.
No one in living memory can have squandered such a far-reaching and revolutionary mandate for reform through such petty and absurd personal failings. Never the quasi-fascist wrecker of the constitution our more hysterical liberal commentariat still make him out to be, he was, as the phrase has it, simply a messy bitch who lives for drama, brought to these humiliating depths by the penumbra of chaos he carries swirling around him. Long presented as a threat to Westminster’s hallowed traditions, the charge against him is in truth far graver: if he is the best leader our political system can throw up, almost any other system of governance would seem an improvement.
It is the failings for which he is now condemned — the contempt in which he held Westminster’s institutions, his urge to override the sterile norms and petty taboos which have sunk British governance into a tar-pit of torpor and incapacity — which won him office in the first place. The people wanted him to break our failing state, and rebuild it in a way that finally worked for all the nation. With a historic majority in parliament, Johnson had almost unlimited power to drive through the Meiji Restoration our collapsing country so desperately requires. That he survived so long, and won such a parliamentary mandate for total change, is a reflection not on his personal qualities, about which no one ever had any doubt, but on the sheer disgust the vast majority of the country feels for his political enemies.
In all the long litany of failures he now drags around behind him, this is the bitterest draught for his voters — for us — to swallow: that there is nothing to show for any of it, for any of the turmoil and vitriol that has defined Britain’s politics under his tenure. The nation was used and discarded like any other of his brief, dramatic but doomed dalliances: our dignity alone demands a decisive end to this pointless drama.
Fate had granted Johnson an appointment with History: but he missed it, lost in a diary clash with wallpaper merchants, lobby courtiers and the endless need to flush away the squalid mess he was compelled to smear around the highest offices of the state. The governance of a nation is a sacred task: in a secular age, it is perhaps the only sacred office remaining. But whatever strange daimon brought Johnson to power also made him entirely unfit to wield it: his story is a cautionary tale for all of us. That is his only gift to History.
Johnson was — we can say was now — a creature born from chaos, thrust to power by the same inchoate demands for political revolution that are roiling every western democracy. Yet instead of embracing meaningful reform and wielding power to transformative ends, he embroiled the nation and mired the entire governance of the country in his own domestic strife. The chosen agent of creative destruction entirely lacked a vision, a philosophy, or any justification whatsoever in his legislative record for the position he clings to so desperately, even now. He saw Brexit through, though not well; his support for Ukraine, self-serving though it may have been, inspired primarily by a craving for Zelenskyy’s reflected glamour, helped the country survive up to now, though he will not now be around to see Ukraine and Britain through the hard months ahead; but there is nothing else to add to his slim credit sheet.
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SubscribeTruly excellent essay. I love it that Aris Roussinos’ contributions are rarer than those of other writers, but absolutely on point when they do appear. In an age of dross being churned out right, left and centre just to feed websites with “content”, he’s a writer that takes time to think, consider and then deliver an artful blow. Brilliant.
Nope, just the usual Bre-liever gnashing: https://ayenaw.com/2022/07/07/cults-ii/
Thank you so much for the link to that oh-so carefully nuanced article on Brexit, closely examining the pros and cons. Summary: “Brexiteer are nutters”. I give even Kier Starmer enough credit to think he won’t be using that as one of his campaign slogans.
What is it exactly with people like you who appear to believe we should be largely governned by an unaccountable international organisation? Our creaky system does actually allow for prime ministers and governments to be changed, as we have seen. No such luck with such political has-beens in positions of great authority such as Ursula Von Der Leyen. Why has the Left indeed largely abandoned it’s previous well reasoned Euro scepticism? Poor old Tony Benn must be turning in his grave!
Honestly, I agree with what he has to say on a lot of things but the man needs to learn to calm down and stop being so dramatic about absolutely everything.
Things can’t just be bad or in need of reform, instead they must be “the death march of a civilisation” or other similarly overwrought statements. It can make it hard to read when I feel like I’m not being informed but harangued instead.
Yeah I mean who else uses hyperbole these days?
Agreed. The constant catastrophising of the media is tedious – like people claiming climate change will end the world.
This essay is rubbish. Just more money making to meet a deadline. Johnson fulfilled his function to free the logjam of Brexit and the stop the takeover of U.K. governance by the elite. Job done. It was a bonus that he was around for COVID (could you imagine the extreme lockdowns of other politicians?) and Ukraine.
Aris seems to be so up himself that he fails to realise Johnson couldn’t manage the aftermath and the benefit of a big majority to manage the humdrum of routine. He was a rocket that went off and did the deed.
Don’ agree,the aftermath of Brexit was just the beginning of UK’s efforts to break free of the EU shackles,it was a bargain basement deal that demoted UK to ‘ nation that must not succeed’ status in Brussels with an insane NI agreement that gave the EU political and economic control over a part of the UK!I believe Boris started out with a clear idea of what reform was needed, but quickly got bogged down by NGOs,lobbyists and all the progressive institutions that have become deeply embedded in this country’s infrastructure,not least the civil service and government departments who blatantly opposed his policies.Also,the Tory Party,despite its huge majority,is not unified in its vision for the future as it now contains a proportion of MPs from the former Labour heartlands in the North-they will have different aspirations from the traditional Tory faithful in the South.
Add a twist of Carrie policy (Zak Goldsmith too close there!) and a cabinet that was selected based on its lack of threat to the PM,you have the chaotic and incompetent mess that has now thankfully ended.
Let us all hope for better Government,we are going to need it with the economic cataclysm that is arriving this Winter.
And we needed that rocket following dithering May.
The article was hyperbolic but hardly rubbish. Can you take issue with any substantive point in it? I hoped, rather than expected, that Boris Johnson could rise to the occasion of being a reasonable, if not great, post -Brexit prime minister. As it is he has proved a lazy, unserious shyster, almost solely preoccupied with being liked at best (you are never going to be, Boris, by the Left wing establishment elite!) and actively venal and dishonest at worse. He has championed absurd and self destructive policies such as Net Zero, that his voters largely couldn’t care less about, until of course it hits them in their pockets.
Oh, and he entirely failed to stand up for freedom and liberal principles over covid – the social democratic Swedes managed to do infinitely better.
He has now opened the way for the Left to come to power, and quite conceivably reverse the few achievements he does have to his name, in substance if not in legal terms.
Well said
Great essay.
And, to all the people who have always hated him and the Tories, be warned: Whoever replaces him might actually start behaving like a Conservative and enacting Conservative policies, rather than a buckling coward who has – always in his bumbling, detail free, incompetent way – bowed to the pressure exerted by the leftwing commentariat on virtually every issue; each concession promptly ignored or fanatically attacked on a minute fact or detail that didn’t entirely live up to demands that were in most cases (fully understood beforehand by those demanding them of course) not attainable in the first place.
So, as far as I’m concerned, his lack of detail, contempt for his own rules, incompetence, betrayal of his duties, and failure to capitalise on his 80 seat majority is second only to his pathetic need to be liked, and to completely fail to spot the utter futility and stupidity of pandering to people who would despise and attack him no matter what he did, simply because hes a (nominal) Tory and dared to enact the result of a referendum that they still can’t accept.
Dream on Jim Jam! Fat chance
What is there to conserve (that is Conservative)?
The Tories haven’t been conservative since before the days of Thatcher. She was a turbo charged economic liberal and the rest have all followed her lead
The Tories have a choice. They can either steal their opponents’ clothes or else be, you know, conservative (intentional small c). In the former case voters are likely to vote for the real thing, e.g. Labour/LibDem rather than for an imitation. Only if the Tories apply conservative policies rooted in conservative principles do they stand a chance of reelection. I think there are more than a few Tory MPs who appreciate that.
All the mainstream political parties are controlled by the globalist parasites as is the majority of the MSM.
Only parties like Reform UK are still independent and they won’t be allowed to win a single seat.
Why not? All you can do is vote for them if they have a candidate. There are a lot of these small Brexit parties. Pity they cannot merge and make a mark.
Only if the Tories apply conservative policies rooted in conservative principles do they stand a chance of reelection. I think there are more than a few Tory MPs who appreciate that.
I do hope you are correct, but I’ll withhold judgement until I see it.
“and to completely fail to spot the utter futility and stupidity of pandering to people who would despise and attack him no matter what he did, simply because hes a (nominal) Tory and dared to enact the result of a referendum that they still can’t accept.”
Spot on
He is only a Tory in the sense of the origins of the term, the Gaelic ” Toraidh” which meant ” Villain, outlaw and bandit”.
Spot on.
beautifully put
Did he fail? Or did it become necessary to put another face on the Gates and Schwab Build Back Better agenda
If your theory is correct, then he still failed – failed to stand up to it. He either buckled, or was tricking us from the start.
Yeah bankrupt the Netherlands food production to fit in with the global agenda.
There have been two national votes now for total change – 2016 and 2019. On both occasions these have been frustrated by the media and the civil service, aided and abetted by Conservative MPs.It’s almost as if change cannot any longer be effected at the ballot box. When that fact finally dawns on people these times will seem like a fairy tale.
Yes, it is always someone else’s fault. Have you considered that the national populist agenda, manifested by Brexit doesn’t have any answers to any problems. It’s all slogans, made up of half truths. Well, you got your man – and look what he did. You have had your turn. Put someone sensible in charge.
The cause is bigger than Boris Matty.
It’s only because there is not enough will to deal with the civil service traitors. Once that is realised action will happen.
No mention of the pandemic, which would’ve derailed even the most competent PM (which Boris hasn’t been) from pursuing a mandate. For that reason alone, this is far from a fine essay, as some would have it.
Fair point, but there hasn’t been the slightest hint of him enacting anything even approaching his mandate. He had an overwhelming majority and completely flunked it. And at nearly every stage throughout the pandemic it was though he was being instructed what to do by the commentators at The Guardian.
But in omitting the emergency and ongoing effects of the pandemic Aris has made the essay irrelevant, when including it in his analysis would’ve rendered it far more meaningful. I’m not sure such an oversight can be anything but deliberate. No PM would’ve had the mental resources to do anything other than follow the advice of appointed scientific advisers, or open themselves up to (even wider) accusations of failing to prevent unnecessary deaths.
Does anyone praising the essay have a counter proposal for what the PM should’ve done instead? It’s a complete misrepresentation of the events of the past two and a half years.
Sweden
The Sweden example, beloved of the hard right. Ironically. But we need to remember that there are significant differences between e.g. England and Sweden. Sweden has a far smaller population and c 500% more land mass. And around half of all Swedish households are made up of one person. They have outdoor nursery schools and class sizes around 40% smaller than the UK’s. Lots of Swedes have summer houses in the North to escape to; and they’re more reserved in public to begin with. They don’t need to form a scrum in order to socialise, and they don’t have a culture of covert admiration for rule-breaking. Sweden is a pretty contrived comparison.
The ‘hard right’? Nothing like a good bit of stereotyping.
You also seem to be stereotyping the Swedes too Frank.
The average age of the UK ‘body count’ was a simply staggering 83, when UK life expectancy is 81.
I doubt very much than an Oxford trained Chemist such as the late Lady Margaret Thatcher would have been ‘taken in’ by all that tosh spouted by our so called Scientific experts.
Indeed. Thatcher would not have been enslaved to hopeless modelling that got it wrong, again and again and again. The consequences of such are only now emerging and they are horrific.
That’s what you get when people worship their intellect.
Otherwise known as, following the pandemic plan we had in place and not following Chinese policy. Of course that isn’t all his fault, but it hasn’t helped him.
Strange how the immortal “Business as usual” Pandemic Plan Johnson inherited has largely been airbrushed from history
“Business as usual
7.4 During a pandemic, the Government will encourage those who are well to carry on with their normal daily lives for as long and as far as that is possible, whilst taking basic precautions to protect themselves from infection and lessen the risk of spreading influenza to others (see Chapter 4). The UK Government does not plan to close borders, stop mass gatherings or impose controls on public transport during any pandemic.”
Would that they could have stuck to that.
Sorry Steve, but this isn’t so. A government really is supposed to be able to tackle more than one thing at a time, or at the very least lay out a roadmap – Most of us have to do so every day.
Johnson is guilty as charged. He is the conceited little boy who wanted to be PM when he grew up. Unfortunately he didn’t grow up.
Abroad he is respected by many for his principled stand on major issues – not least the unwavering support for Ukraine. Most UE leaders want to force Zelensky into a pragmatic compromise that suits the economic interests of –
Germany and France and Co.
As if Ukraine is some meek downtrodden, liberal, democracy loving picture of human virtue?!!!
If I had to choose between Ukraine and Russia, Ukraine all day long.
At least it was going in the right direction. Furthermore, through the great volume of coverage since 24/02/22, they come across as likeable and life-affirming people, and my heart bleeds for their suffering and daunting future.
Unfortunately some think you have to be perfect to get any support from Britain. There is an awful lot of good in Ukraine.
That is a very cruel thing to say in their predicament.
Johnson was heroic on Ukraine. He will be sorely missed by the Ukrainians.
Yes. Absolutely nothing. Keep calm, carry on.
An entirely fair point.
As I understand it, it was not just the experts but the threats from Macaroon that forced his hand on lockdown
No PM would’ve had the mental resources to do anything other than follow the advice of appointed scientific advisers, or open themselves up to (even wider) accusations of failing to prevent unnecessary deaths
See DeSantis, Ron.
Alas we don’t have any Ron’s waiting in the wings.
The sign of any good leader is a person who can surround themselves with the best team possible. Johnson seemed incapable of doing that. His choice of ‘advisors’ clearly demonstrated how thoroughly incompetent he was. And to cap it all of he was sleeping with his chief advisor.
I agree – but we’ve observed incompetence by governments of all colours without such hysteria and vitriol over many years (and nothing can be as bad as the incompetence of letting yourself be ‘suckered’ into an unlawful war as the Labour government was, lead by the now Lord Blair). Judging by the competencies of the House as a whole (and a proven ‘competence poor’ Civil Service) I don’t see much hope for change. Mr Sunak is no better – furlough fraud cost us £billions through a lack of oversight – good old ‘checks and measures’ !
I could understand the necessity for an immediate lockdown when Covid surfaced. Any competent leader would have gathered together the ‘great and the good’, psychologists, sociologists, civic leaders, educationalists, etc., to determine the consequences of a long-term lockdown. You simply do not enter such a drastic situation without fully understanding its implications. These are now becoming apparent and they are horrific.
Johnson’s legacy is the untold damage he has done to our society by panicking and enthralling himself to the medical fraternity.
A great deal of confidence has evaporated with regard to the medical community who cancelled the natural cures for Covid on behalf of Big Pharma. One suspects that some of them may have had big shares in them.
That is taken as normal in marriage. It was a problem that she seemed to be into woke though. I think some of the problem was down to her.
Spot on!
Funny that it was only a woman called Margaret who would have had the courage to do it.
The pandemic didn’t derail the Swedish government.
A Swedish group said
‘the price for Sweden’s laissez-faire approach has been too high. The country’s cumulative death rate since the beginning of the pandemic rivals that of the United States, with its shambolic response. And the virus took a shocking toll on the most vulnerable. It had free rein in nursing homes, where nearly 1000 people died in a matter of weeks. Stockholm’s nursing homes ended up losing 7% of their 14,000 residents to the virus. The vast majority were not taken to hospitals. Although infections waned over the summer, scientists worry a new wave will hit in the fall. Cases are rising rapidly in the greater Stockholm area, where almost one-quarter of the Swedish population lives.’
In the UK you had people calling Johnson a ‘murderer’ because he introduced Lockdown a few days after France. Your country was riven by violent protest whatever your government did. Are you honestly suggesting that a UK government could have followed the Swedish example?
this is not serious. Uk had 0.27% of the population die, sweden had 0.19%. Clearly UK did worse (at most). Let us grow up and admit our society made mistakes in embracing harsh measures that didn’t work and let us move on instead of this bizarre doubling down.
Yeah. We won’t move on until we can be honest about the facts. The collusion of Twitter, Youtube and Big Media etc. was horrific.
“A Swedish group”. And who might they be? A handful of pharmaceutical executives? An online sewing circle? Some weirdos gluing themselves to the road? Here in Florida we have groups like that, too, complaining about our governor’s response to Covid. And yet, everything’s long been open, masks are a distant, embarrassing memory, thousands of new homes are being built, and the moving vans keep on coming. Maybe these “groups” have an ulterior motive? Maybe their stats are dubious. Or maybe they just don’t know what they’re talking about.
Leftist lockdown nonsense is like a vampire – keeps coming back after you think it is dead. The UK,US, and Europe all have higher deaths/capita than Sweden.
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&facet=none&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&Metric=Confirmed+deaths&Interval=Cumulative&Relative+to+Population=true&Color+by+test+positivity=false&country=USA~GBR~SWE~Europe
Precisely, or ‘nihil facere’ as Caesar might have said.
Incidentally who exactly are this “Swedish group “ you speak of? And what is their authority, if any?
By the way, this just happened:
“On July 5, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the No Patient Left Alone Act to right some of the most egregious wrongs of the COVID-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, hospitals nationwide denied patients visitation, even at the end of their lives. Nursing homes and other long-term care facilities did the same. Closing healthcare facilities to visitation from family is no longer legal in Florida.”
I haven’t checked with any of the “groups” who will no doubt find reasons to condemn this, but stand by: they’re busy buying Gorilla Glue.
Also if you reported a positive test to the hospitals you had to go home and isolate until you were nearly dying. No treatment was given in that interim period.
“scientists worry a new wave will hit in the fall” Let them worry. I will take no notice of them. It has been shown that a lot of the motivation was to follow the money. The profits from the jab were in the Trillions. People still ignore the damage that the jab did to some people and still does.
But this proves my point, about Boris taking the advice of his scientific advisers. It was the leading Swedish epidemiologist who advised the Swedish government to maintain relative freedoms. One simply can’t fault Boris for taking the advice of our epidemiologists.
As for the point raise by polidori redux about a government being able to do more than one thing at once, he/she clearly has a very short memory; sorry polidori, but no further response is required than that.
Indeed, if no one had mentioned the pandemic, no one would have noticed a pandemic. All Johnson (and every other leader) had to do was nothing, or at least follow their pre-prepared pandemic plan, which didn’t involve doing a great deal, because there’s not a lot you can do, apart from make matters worse. Which is mentioned in the pandemic plans, and we are now reaping the results of.
It would be interesting to shine the light on some of these advising virologist’s investments in Big Pharma.
Major reform to the liberal institutions of this country was always going to require huge political capital and despite the size of the majority he won, there was large element of this been a reaction to “getting Brexit done” and preventing Corbyn from getting anywhere near the levers of power. Real reform would have probably required the mandate of at least a second election win.
The focus of his first term should have to been to stabilise the economy, defeat the EU’s rear guard action in Northern Ireland and to bring noticeable benefits to the Red Wall seats to secure his coalition. The pandemic and then perhaps even more so, the war in the Ukraine, (Western sanctions may be looked back on as one of the greatest acts of economic self harm in history) made it impossible to fight the EU on one front, leading to a phoney war like situation in NI. The government constantly delayed the confrontation for fear of a trade war that could little afford and at the same time, prevented it from spending the kind of money that would be required to have a noticeable impact on the newer Tory seats. Faced with such challenges, it’s unsurprising that little has been achieved in such circumstances.
Though disorganised and haphazard, I fail to see how the magnitude of his failing are enough to remove him from office. His “lies” were typically lazy denials, rather than orchestrated attempts at deception and more often than not, were in defence of the misdemeanours of others.
I hope that as the article states, Boris has kicked the door down for a more competent reformer to walk through it but there remains a danger that no one but Boris, with his disregard for convention, could have pulled off the radical reforms this country needs.
One day, will historians look back in amazement that a surreptitious piece of birthday cake, changed the course of British history?
“Major reform to the liberal institutions of this country was always going to require huge political capital”
He had as much political capital as any man or woman could wish for, and his enemies were in disarray. I remember thinking after the election that he had acquired so much effective power that it was almost scary. His successor, if there is to be one, must start from scratch.
A large majority and political capital are not entirely the same thing. His majority was not based on a program of rights based reform and was probably exaggerated by circumstances he won it in. Without an explicit mandate for reform, it would have been extremely difficult to tackle controversial issues like the Human Rights Act or the Equities Act head on.
No he didn’t. They were plaguing him from the start, chasing him across the prairie like a pack of wild beasts, turning every minor trip into a claim of fatality. His demise was predictable under that onslaught, it was just a case of timing.
“…preventing Corbyn from getting anywhere near the leavers of power.”
You couldn’t make it up!
His partying and breaking his own rules made him an open target and was entirely of his own making. He underestimated the number of enemies he made.
Unfair to put Trump in the same class as Johnson. Trump left the US in a good state, totally ruined in short order by Biden. Boris Johnson’s US equivalent is Biden.
Basically a fat version of Tony Blair.
It’s also a totally different system. Trump never had anywhere near the kind of power (relatively speaking) as a PM with a strong majority. Here in Canada, we have the same system as Britain, and the misrule of Trudeau is all the proof one needs that a PM has near unlimited power. Of course he is abetted by the Media, unlike conservatives.
The Covid problem – Johnson’s serious illness – implacable hostility of major parts of the media – deceit and insubordination in the civil service – deliberate obstructionism by quislings (identified bySir Peter Marshall) – lack of support from colleagues -Chancellor pursuing his own policies – your Establishment stitched Boris up. From a distance it all seems clear.
“…we still possess a thin sprinkling of talent on the front benches”
A very thin sprinkling. An actual Conservative would be nice. Are there any that were in the Brexit ‘Spartans’ that were also consistently anti the totalitarian Coronavirus measures? And not a net-zero zealot to boot? If there is a single one, who is also brave enough to say ‘NO!’ to the woke/trans/gender ridiculousness then we may have a saviour.
I do not think there is a single one.
I have done some homework: of the original 28 Spartans only two fit the my first two requirements (Brexit Spartan and anti FIRST renewal of Coronavirus Act in Sept 2020); They are
1. Peter Bone and 2. Philip Hollobone. The latter is also the MP who is consistently NOT claiming anywhere as near as much in expenses as the rest.
If we expand to the 35 who voted against the 2nd renewal of Coronavirus Act (March 2021) then there are more:
Peter Bone, Philip Davies, Philip Hollobone, Esther McVey, Desmond Swayne, Charles Walker, William Wragg, Adam Afriyie, Steve Baker, Christopher Chope, Philip Davies, Mark Francois, Marcus Fysh, Anne-Marie Morris, John Redwood…
There’s your new front bench dream team.
Funnily enough, I briefed many of them, warning them that COVID was a fraud designed to destroy the nation along with so many others. Add Chris Green & they all know (even if they’ve done nothing with the information for over a year).
Excellent!
Did any of them seem to ‘get it’? …or were they all equally useless at grasping the matter, and acting on it.
I hounded Steve Baker quite relentlessly about the WHO treaty (and the amendments to the IHRs, which were imminent), and once he finally read my correspondence he did actually address the matter to the Health Sec., so I credit him for that small effort since it was more than most did. Frankly, it’s nowhere near enough though.
…if it is you then a big thanks, well done and keep it up! The ‘COVID-19 misinformation‘ paragraphs on your wiki page is still unedited, showing how all their lies against you haven’t aged well!
Well done, good work!
Fine essay, difficult to argue with. And the true tragedy? Far from truncating the options to drive through genuine and lasting reforms of governance in the UK, the pandemic offered a magnified chance to do so – and as the author states, sadly the chance was blown, it looks like because Johnson couldn’t replicate the type of team he put in place when London Mayor, for whatever reason, who knows. Perhaps the structures in place for governing a country are so radically different from governing a city, that this was never on.
And yet. My fear is that the Tories will now pick a high quality and bright technocrat, like Sunak or outside chance Zahawi, who will offer up… precisely the same medicines as the past, when the need of the moment is for a figure who can deliver radical change. We as a nation simply owe this to our younger generations, notwithstanding how disaffected we may be with their values sets. And this means considering not just the need of this immediate moment which is urgent enough, but also what is literally around the corner: shatteringly fast societal change driven by technology adoption. It is very clear to me the current global economic and political climate, and the worldwide shortage of high-end skills, means the incentives around automation have flipped, and all of the corporate world will now spend very big to relentlessly drive automation forwards – and this means the employment situation will also flip to potentially looking very horrible half a decade down the line – in the same way that oil dropped to near zero in the early part of the pandemic, but now is so expensive as to generate as big a recession as the oil shock of the early 70s.
I guess I’m looking for a figure who can engage with the 21st century on it’s own terms, rather than harking back to solutions from the last century. Someone perhaps, like a souped up version of Andrew Yang in the US, but on the right instead. I have to admit though, there is no one remotely close to that on either political wing in the UK. And many of the potential successors to Johnson are absolutely dire, quite capable of making things worse.
When he was Mayor it was Eddie Lister running the show, and Munira Mirza in policy.
He actually convinced both of them to join him in government to implement Dom’s agenda. Both were there working alongside Cummings in the first months. Eddie bowed out following the palace coup that ousted Cummings. Munira stayed on for longer, but resigned when it became clear he’d brazenly lied about the parties etc. She was clear in her resignation statement about that.
So he had the dream team. He allowed his Mrs to remove his brain [Cummings] and it all fell to pieces after that.
Incidentally, Eddie Lister had said that he wouldn’t work in government again. He was only persuaded to do so because he believed that an 80 seat majority was a historic opportunity to actually bring about real change for the good of the country, and that Dom could do it (take on the Blob that is). He lost faith when it became clear that Boris would rather be comfortable than be a reforming leader.
Boris’s rhetorical skills and larger-than-life personality propelled him to the top but when he got there his dire lack of administrative skill was quickly exposed. I acknowledge that he had some extraordinary challenges to deal with – Brexit, coronavirus – but he squandered his 80 seat majority. He had the opportunity to be one of our greatest prime ministers but in the end, he turned out to be one of our greatest disappointments.
It’s because he was an entertainer and a raconteur with almost no skills that would make him suitable for the job of governing. I don’t think there was ever any realistic chance he would consistently “deliver”…people simply projected an image and their hopes onto him. And of course they’re disappointed, although it took a while to let go.
Covid proved to be the massive and wholly unexpected challenge, that dominated Johnson’s period of office, and swept his beloved Brexit to the sidelines. It could have been his great Churchillian moment, if he had any real conviction, like Tegnell did in Sweden. Alas for him and all of us, he proved to be a shambling walkover.
Johnson became PM because the political class in virtually its entirety tried to mount a coup to overturn the result of the BREXIT referendum. This will be denied by those whose real intention is to return the governance of Britain to EU technocrats, corporate lobbyists and banksters.
“chaos he Carries swirling around him”. Subtle!
I’ve just started watching House of Cards.
Political fixer, Kevin Spacey, manipulates the media, the naive, and politicians with something to hide, to bring down those who humiliated him.
Boris was doing fine til Cummings left. Everything since has been orchestrated.
“til Cummings left“…
I think you’ll find he was turfed out. And we know on whose orders.
House of Cards?
Thanks, corrected
An excellent polemic which sadly totally ignores the ‘Corona Scam’ as appositely pointed out by Steve Murray of this very forum.
For those of us who witnessed the appalling ‘assassination’ of Margaret Thatcher by Heseltine & Co, this drama has an awful feeling of deja vu.
With the notable exception of Sweden, ever single Western political leader was completely flawed, to our eternal shame, by Corona. That ‘we’ should have elected such a worthless bunch of pygmies is almost beyond belief, so Boris is in good company.
However this is his last chance to retrieve the situation and start acting like his mentor, WSC.
Ignore the sanctimonious drivel of the media and his feeble Cabinet colleagues and ‘go to the country’ and let them decide, this matter is far too serious for Parliament to decide.
Indeed, they all fell for lies which when followed took multiple nations to the brink of failure, from which position they can be pushed over the edge to a Great Reset.
I despise their complicity in destroying freedoms which won’t ever return.
Digital ID will be made mandatory through one or other of several possible scenarios all of which are unfolding simultaneously.
Spot on, I’m afraid.
I can almost hear that simpering little voice saying “We have to have Digital ID to protect us all”, or some such arrant piffle.
Fantastic essay that sums up the Johnson and, indirectly, Trump phenomena. Lost opportunity for sanity and conservatism, although Trump did make some progress before the clerisy swarmed over him.
I hope Johnson’s successor is a hard-nosed, competent, conservative politician.
Steve Baker has just confirmed that he’s standing. On air, live – GBNews.
Up or Down?
Up, pet.
The established institutions have fought back resisting change and briefing against the threat of reform.
We have found that they were confronted by an intellectual lightweight with no convictions except his own survival.
To his credit, he decided on a vaccine strategy outside the existing structure and resisted the pressure to postpone full release with briefings of calamity by ‘scientists’. He did complete Brexit against fierce resistance from an undemocratic Parliament and Civil Service. A Parliament that presented him with a limited negotiating hand by eliminating a no-deal option.
On the debit side his unruly behaviour has been manna from heaven for his enemies. The sense of entitlement and superiority displayed in and around Downing Street has alienated and disappointed many who voted for him.
Maybe he never even have understood that a vote for him in 2019 was a vote against the corrupt and self-serving oligarchy that has taken control during this century.
Instead of breaking Britain’s governance free from the witless rigmarole of the lobby, he dived headlong into it; instead of breaking the power of the Blairite para-state, he let its tentacles wrap around him until all the life and energy he brought into office was crushed out of him.
The Deep State wins again.
The difference from Trump is that Trump actually put the country in good shape economically and neutralized foreign enemies.
What does it say about our people, our political system, that we allow these bizarre characters to rise to the top of politics, where they’ll make important decisions on our behalf? Just take a look at BOTH the main parties. There’s not one decent person to choose from. Not a single one of them sounds like a champion of the people. If you’ve watched any of the choices on TV, or listened to them on the radio, they really are the oddest characters imaginable and I wouldn’t pick any of them to run my local fish & chip shop, nevermind the country! What this country really needs won’t be happening anytime soon. We can all be sure of that!!
“Such a Parcel of Rogues in a Nation“, as the great Bard said.
Can we now hope that there will be some action to remove the ” Offence/ hate crime” Communist legislation from the Statute Book?
Yes. my ‘pet’ opinion is the ‘zeitgeist’ wot dunnit in for him, summed up nicely as “… law and order is a distant memory, the NHS barely functions, and home ownership and family formation is an impossible dream for an entire generation. The state cannot control its external borders, nor guarantee its survival from break up by separatists. The economy is a disaster and social harmony is more or less non-existent.”
I realise that the title may have been an editor’s work, but Boris did not break Britain. Britain was already broken by the cowardice of Cameron and the ineffectiveness of May, and if it comes to that Brown and (especially) Blair might take some of the blame for the state of Britain too.
Boris might reasonably be blamed for only slapping a BREXIT patch on Britain but failing to make more permanent repairs.
However all the other actors (MPs, Civil Service) failed to align themselves with a better Britain too, preferring to remain in their comfort zones rather than doing their jobs. Perhaps getting rid of Boris was cashing in their ‘get out of jail free’ cards?
I wouldn’t quite share the pessimism about Boris’s potential replacements. They may not be the world’s greatest statemen and women, but I imagine most of them will be more competent than Boris in the business of day-to-day government, and will probably have what it takes to win an election. Compare them to Labour – Starmer’s no great shakes but if he goes they have absolutely no-one.
“Tribune of the proles”. The political and media class did that “setting up”. Only they had the power and derisive snottiness required to dismiss regular people as “deplorables” and “proles”. Can’t speak to Johnson’s situation, but Trump certainly didn’t think of his supporters that way. I know this: if he had run and won as a Democrat, those same smear merchants would have hailed him as a Brilliant True Man of the People.
Tony Blair had a similar mandate in 1997. The tragedy of not allowing Frank Field the support and space he needed reverberates through social care and our communities to this day.
Several Blair decisions reverberate:
1) Iraq War
2) Supreme Court
3) PFI in Hospitals
4) PFI in Schools
5) European Integration
“In resigning, Sajid Javid applauded Johnson for saving the country from the Corbynite menace, but it is difficult to see how worse-run the country could possibly be. Perhaps an elderly Communist of limited intellectual ability may have left us with at least a housebuilding programme and state support for vital national industries.”
Seriously? If you cannot imagine how much worse Britain under Corbyn would have been then you are in competition with the said elderly communist for the award for limited intellectual ability.
I have never been a fan or a supporter of Boris and his cronies, but I am sure Corbyn and his Minions could have managed to produce utter disaster on all fronts.
Just as Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March, so Boris is ‘assassinated’ on the Nones of July.
Is this also to be the end of Brexit or just the start of the great Civil War?
Excellent article I fully agree. The main thing I resented Johnson over wasn’t his absence of decency but his failure or lack of care to utilise the (albeit deluded) populist wave wanting to stop the rot and instill some pride back in the country. Instead of working to stop the wokeness plague, he adopted its lingo and instead of halting immigration he massively increased it.
Good riddance you waste of space.
How many more years of Tories deposing their leaders have we got when this is a decision the electorate should make? How long will the successor last? Is the proposed military man Ben Wallace going to plunge us into a war with Russia?
He opened the country back up last summer, and held his line over Christmas despite the usual hysteria from all quarters. There’s just no obvious replacement as leader, if they ask the party members, who do you think they’ll pick!?
The fact that there is no obvious replacement is a good thing just now. We just need competence and truth-telling. Almost anyone would be better.
It is a chaotic time, he was the prince of chaos. But he got Brexit done, he repealed the stupid fixed term act, he put Sturgeon on ice, he led the West in supporting Ukraine, and he managed the pandemic better than most. As for the revolution, the writer might reflect on the title of Duncan Weldon’s book 200 years of “Just Muddling Through”.
Ruined a good article by spouting nonsense about Trump.
Ruined a horribly biased article.
Matches a lot this thing bossing Canada incompetently.
Please, no more Old Etonians or Oxford graduates who are sound on the Classics and Latin Grammar but little else.
A very good read Aris. Thanks
However may I beg to differ ever so slightly with your contention that BJ was unfit to serve and failed to live up to the values expected by his electorate. In Britain, like elsewhere in the so-called West the preeminent values are: hypocrisy, LGBTQery, debauchery, depravity, misandry, self-entitlement and general wokery.
He reflected so many of those values perfectly.
The colourful use of language in this article denies it authenticity. Putting aside Covid, Ukraine, an interfering wife who did him no favours and global energy prices, nearly half the population voted remain, the most vociferous of whom worked in Parliament and MSM. And we know the power they wield – as per USA. Yes, Brexit giveth and Brexit taketh away.
I wonder if the world, especially the world outside the Anglophone countries, has been recently depressed by America and Britain because of the mumbling style of speech by the leaders of the two countries, especially the American one. A lot of energy is required to decipher what is said before the cameras. From the American and British pulpits, a clear and ringing voice is of the utmost necessity in this extra-dangerous world today. Is that what many European and other regions around the world still expect of America and Britain? I would say so.
What do the Americans say? Can we glean anything from the vice-President? The prime minister’s in town; what’s he saying?
We’re working on it!
Nixon, Reagan, Obama all had a certain charm across the world on account of their talking skills. Thatcher, Blair, perhaps May too, for the British. Perhaps there was at least a sense of sufficient optimism whenever the offices of such good oratory coincided. Such as Thatcher and Reagan, for example. And Blair and Clinton to some extent.
I know what I’m having for pudding: Eton mess.
The best one can hope for in any politician is that a flawed human does the right thing (best serves truth, mercy and justice) regardless of the surrounding conditions or people.
don’t know much nor care about Johnson but this writer has it wrong about Ukraine and that’s most important right now.
Johnson didn’t ‘help Ukraine survive’ at all. Ukraine is committing hari kari and all it’s ‘supporters’ (for which read opportunists of all stripes) are helping it die.
It is not nor ever was under attack as a nation. The intention was and is to make secure the Republics of DPR and LPR. Yes, that meant invading Russian Territory but it’s a far cry from intent to invade, occupy, crush.
And all that simply because Ukraine was at war with those republics for eight years. Would not stop shelling them, hating them, taking measures against them, mounting a propaganda campaign of vilification and outright hate.
Russia ‘invade Ukraine’? Ukraine invaded the DPR and LPR. They are still in there. They have fortifications and gunpits dug in there and used for years.
Let’s for god’s sake have no mealy mouthed bullshit about ‘invading’ after Iraq, Syria, Libya just to quote those that come quickest to mind.
And they with no speck of reason. Only the clear reason, as we all know, of feeding the American war machine.
Which is precisely what is happening now in Ukraine.
The whole thing is simply feeding the American war machine.
Feeding it money and feeding it young, living, breathing men… turning them into meatmeal.
For what? What do they stand to gain?
Nothing. I’ll tell you: nothing. Win or lose they stand to gain nothing.
You ‘supporters’ of insane rhetoric Zelensky and his crew and his CIA handlers should be deeply ashamed of yourselves.
What is wanted now is immediately CEASEFIRE in Ukraine and anyone not calling for it is simply a surrogate murderer.
“Hello my fellow westerners, I am from Surrey Oblast and don’t you just think it is horrible what a waste of life there is in Ukraine, we should petition our governments to end support for these evil Judeo-Fascist Ukrainian bandits and show our support for Putin (who seems like good man) and Russian Federation. When you think about it, aren’t we westerners the real bad guys?”
I sincerely hope you’re Russian, because there is nothing worse in this world than a genuine useful idiot.
❝The intention was and is to make secure the Republics of DPR and LPR❞. Which is why they attacked Kyiv? The intention was to destroy the Ukrainian nation, and it still is.
I miss any mention of Johnson’s weakest spot, namely the influence of his wife, which was clearly significant. The authoritarian measures introduced during the covid panic, woke gender gestures & Johnson’s embracing of the insanity of “net zero” are not in line with his own libertarian instincts. And they are certainly not what most of the people who voted for Johnson expected from him.
great article. He’s the biggest red herring in political history
Wow! Even the BBC has taken Wimbledon off.
What does the writer presume Johnson had the mandate to actually do? In reality his mandate was to (1) get Brexit off the front pages, preferably reversing immigration in the process (2) not be Corbyn. That’s it. The idea that the average Johnson voter wants anything other than a return to an imaginary 1950’s is fanciful in the extreme.
Oh dear – another commentator wanting to airbrush Covid from history. I totally agree that Johnson lacks moral and integrity, but to claim that his premiership is defined by policy failure totally ignore the fact that the first 18 months were dominated by the pandemic. This is how history will see it.
A bit too black and white for me. Boris was great on Ukraine and will be greatly missed by that beleagured country. He also could make great speeches in the world which was greatly respected. He had humility and a great sense of humour. He won the Mayorship of London twice, a great fete for a conservative. Some of his speeches were outstanding. He had the guts to go for Brexit which gave him a landslide. He had stature and presence that few MP’s had. He caved in to global warming and the Covid pandemic unfortunately. True he appeared to have a weakness for women in the past and did nothing to quell this tidal wave of LGBT and transgender in out schools. He was a mixture like all of us.
I believe the phrase is ‘Tribune of the plebs’, not of the proles. Even Johnson would have got that right!!! Still, a damning assessment of Johnson’s tenure and an accurate one to boot.
While your assessment of Johnson appears to be accurate, I have to disagree with the somewhat casual comparison to Trump. The fact that you have such a wide range of examples showing where Johnson floundered shows a depth of research/observance for the British situation, but to compare with Trump immediately suggests a lack of the same for
the American situation and Trump’s achievements. Whether that is due to a lack of interest in US politics to the same depth as the UK, or the all-too-common affliction of succumbing to the overwhelming media bias that surrounds and opposes all things Trump, I’m not sure, but it does not take too much delving beyond the daily ascerbic nonsense served up by the likes of CNN and the Guardian to find out that Trump, for all his understandably unpopular character traits, achieved a lot for the USA. And that’s where the Johnson/Trump comparison fails; Trump left office with a long list of successful achievements, which (importantly and unusually in the world of politics) were all pre-election promises that he adhered to.
Nonsense. Name one from any side of the house who would have prevailed. It was Covid that did for him.
Hear hear!
Very well said!. Thankyou, Aris!
https://ayenaw.com/2022/07/07/cults-ii/
Boris’s Speach says all you need to know.
He is an outright lying ass, he hasn’t delivered Brexit in any form and the Covid vaccine is just a poison gene therapy.
Arid is right there is literally nothing he can claim to have achieved.
“That he survived so long, and won such a parliamentary mandate for total change, is a reflection not on his personal qualities, about which no one ever had any doubt, …”
What exactly are these, presumably positive, personal qualities which you fail to specify? He was, and remains, a liar, a bounder, and a narcissist, none of which make him a good prospect for successfully running a government.
Aris nails it again.
No. Briton is a mess, because 17.4 million people in 2016 voted for a mess. and then 14 million in 2019 voted for a mess. You wanted cakeism. Well, Boris is the personification of cakeism. Just grow up Brexiteers. Own the mess you created.