A little perspective
In the London Review of Books for March 8, 2018, William Davies writes:
"The political weather in Westminster has been made over the past two years by Boris Johnson, a man whose only apparent goal is to make the political weather...Johnson approaches public life as a game in which he commits sackable offenses as a way of demonstrating his unsackability...Johnson is as close as British politics has to a Trump problem, and his seniority suggests that Trumpism has permeated our political culture more deeply than we like to admit. Trump may be a more acute case, but both men compel all around them to react to their idle remarks, mistakes and fantasies...Trump and Johnson are 'real-time' politicians: they dominate the rolling news cycle, and devalue the painstaking aspect of politics in the process. Psychologically, they are inverses: Trump has no sense of humour, where Johnson sees the funny side of everything. Johnson is said to strut around Whitehall asking civil servants if they've found his 350 million pounds a week yet: 'I know it exists because it was written on my bus.' Ha ha...No doubt men such as Johnson and Trump have always existed, but healthy political systems have ways of keeping them away from the highest echelons of power."
The 350 million-a-week gag derives from a claim by Brexiteers that separating from the European Union would free that amount, which would go straight into the National Health Service. A day after the referendum, Johnson and the equally loathsome Nigel Farage coolly admitted, "We lied." It's just as funny as George W. Bush looking under his desk for the weapons of mass destruction that couldn't be found in Iraq, except that no one has been blown to pieces by Brexit. The lie served its purpose, it got the credulous to vote Leave. On to the next lie. Ladies and gentlemen, that's Trumpism.
Boris Johnson has yet to claim he could shoot someone in Oxford Street and no one would care, but give it time: he will probably succeed the deeply unpopular (and incompetent) Theresa May as leader of the Conservative Party. Or America could rise up before the British like the ghost of old Jacob Marley, warning them to change their ways. I wonder if they will.
"The political weather in Westminster has been made over the past two years by Boris Johnson, a man whose only apparent goal is to make the political weather...Johnson approaches public life as a game in which he commits sackable offenses as a way of demonstrating his unsackability...Johnson is as close as British politics has to a Trump problem, and his seniority suggests that Trumpism has permeated our political culture more deeply than we like to admit. Trump may be a more acute case, but both men compel all around them to react to their idle remarks, mistakes and fantasies...Trump and Johnson are 'real-time' politicians: they dominate the rolling news cycle, and devalue the painstaking aspect of politics in the process. Psychologically, they are inverses: Trump has no sense of humour, where Johnson sees the funny side of everything. Johnson is said to strut around Whitehall asking civil servants if they've found his 350 million pounds a week yet: 'I know it exists because it was written on my bus.' Ha ha...No doubt men such as Johnson and Trump have always existed, but healthy political systems have ways of keeping them away from the highest echelons of power."
The 350 million-a-week gag derives from a claim by Brexiteers that separating from the European Union would free that amount, which would go straight into the National Health Service. A day after the referendum, Johnson and the equally loathsome Nigel Farage coolly admitted, "We lied." It's just as funny as George W. Bush looking under his desk for the weapons of mass destruction that couldn't be found in Iraq, except that no one has been blown to pieces by Brexit. The lie served its purpose, it got the credulous to vote Leave. On to the next lie. Ladies and gentlemen, that's Trumpism.
Boris Johnson has yet to claim he could shoot someone in Oxford Street and no one would care, but give it time: he will probably succeed the deeply unpopular (and incompetent) Theresa May as leader of the Conservative Party. Or America could rise up before the British like the ghost of old Jacob Marley, warning them to change their ways. I wonder if they will.
posted by Buttermilk Sky at 1:36 PM
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