Can Boris Johnson be Britain’s saviour?


To add to this furore, we had Sir Alan Duncan pre-resigning from Johnson’s government and one can only expect a swathe of further resignations to come, further cutting the Conservative’s majority in parliament

https://twitter

com/BorisJohnson/status/1153629326811774976 Johnson is not difficult to understand

Since his days at Eton, he has been all consumed in his quest for power, grandeur and acclaim

One could make the comment that all politicians suffer from some affliction of narcissism, but you would struggle to find a politician who adores himself more than Johnson

As a child, he proclaimed he wanted to be “king of the world” and throughout his career he has stumbled onward from scandal to success with an unyielding ambition

In honesty, it’s difficult not to find some admiration for just how far he has gotten despite a string of career threatening scandals

He had once agreed to physically assault a journalist at the behest of a friend, he’s had a string of affairs and illegitimate children, he rugby tackled a teenager to the ground, and he even described Barack Obama as a “part-Kenyan” with an “ancestral dislike of the British”

So for him to now enter 10 Downing Street is nothing short of remarkable

But in many ways Boris provides comfort to the Tory membership

As he himself admits, he has modelled his clumsy persona after Winston Churchill

His scruffy hair, bumbling prose and multi-syllabled vocabulary is some sort of perverse tribute to the, erroneously termed, ‘good old days’

Britain is currently knee-deep in an identity crisis and the particular strand of voters who elected Johnson are over-ridden with nostalgia for a by-gone era

In many ways, the same forces that led to Brexit have propelled Johnson to Downing street

His Eton education, his Oxford degree, his casual racism all provide a safety blanket with which the Tory party can shroud themselves, quivering away from the realities of a 21st century Britain

A country that no longer rules the waves has made it impossible for the young to buy a house and where the famous National Health Service (NHS) is wheezing its last breaths

Among Johnson’s cabinet members there are fresh faces and an ostensibly diverse batch of new ideas

However, what lurks beneath the surface is a lot more sinister

The elevation of Dominic Cummings to the position of Special Adviser is alarming

Cummings was the mastermind behind the 2016 Leave Campaign and his questionable tactics are essentially the primary cause for Britain’s Brexit trajectory

Cummings has been found in contempt of parliament and has railed against what he views as a alliance of the establishment

This sort of anti-establishment figure will no doubt lead the UK further away from the stability it was once renowned for

Johnson has also taken great pride in appointing Sajid Javid and Priti Patel as the finance minister and home secretary respectively, calling his cabinet the “most diverse ever”

One should not shy away from praising Javid and Patel’s ascent in a visibly xenophobic Conservative Party, but one should also not shy away from highlighting how unrepresentative of their ‘diverse’ backgrounds these individuals are

Javid has continuously complained about the intrinsic problems within the Islamic faith and in Pakistan’s culture as well

In fact, he went as far as to praise Nigel Farage in a recent speech he gave about migration

Similarly, Patel has continuously advocated for a much tougher asylum and immigration system, not realising that the system she advocates would have disqualified her own family from entering the UK

But this cabinet is what Johnson has always represented: smoke and mirrors

During his time at Oxford, his election to the presidency of the Oxford Union serves as a useful metaphor for what has transpired in his political career

He lost his first election running on a conservative platform so, magically, he became a social democrat overnight and managed to garner the support needed to win

However, frankly, deceit is sadly not enough to disqualify him from being prime minister

If this was the case, we would cease to have a political class

However, what should be enough to disqualify him is his rampant and unabashed incompetence

The highest post he has held prior to premiership is that of foreign secretary, but his two years in the role are seen to have been downright damaging for Britain’s international reputation

Not only was he caught reciting a racist poem at a temple in Myanmar, embarrassed for remarks he made about America in front of John Kerry, but when it came down to it, he failed to further Britain’s interests in any tangible way

This was damaging since it came at a time when Britain should have been consolidating friendships left, right and centre in the wake of the vote

https://twitter

com/realDonaldTrump/status/1153628242529722369 Now if the case against Johnson is not robust enough, let us remember that you are judged by the company you keep

The fact that Donald Trump, in one fell swoop, congratulated Johnson and willed him on to work with Farage is enough to know that this man is just a meagre shadow of his American counterpart

When you ask the question about what Johnson stands for, it is hard to come up with any answer apart from himself

The road ahead is fraught with obstacles and we are about to see a wave of resignations, protests and tough negotiations

But if Johnson has his way and drags the UK out of Europe in October, the very unity of the country will be at stake



Date:26-Jul-2019 Reference:View Original Link