The Boris Johnson Show: Not a Comedy

When Boris Johnson resigned as Foreign Secretary last month, it meant that for the first time since 1721, there were no Old Etonians in the British Government, defined as the Cabinet of her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
Eton College was founded by King Henry VI in 1440 to educate poor boys who would then be permitted entry to the King's College, Cambridge, which Henry founded in 1441. It has since become one of the most exclusive -and expensive- schools in the world; 19 British Prime Ministers have been Old Etonians, the last one being David Cameron, a few years younger than Boris when he was there, and regarded by Boris as a silly little twerp. It is not known if David fagged for Boris at Eton, but they were both members of the Bullingdon Club when they 'went up' to Oxford.

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (born New York City, June 1964 when his father was studying economics at Columbia -he has dual US and British Nationality) has been in the news because of an article he published in The Telegraph on Monday 6th August 2018. (article is hidden behind a paywall).

The article concerns the legal ban that Denmark has imposed on people wearing full-face clothing, and though it has been called the 'Burqa Ban' because when debated in Parliament it was this item and the Niqab that was most cited, in fact the law covers more than the Niqab, and

• forbids the wearing of full-face veils such as the niqab, balaclavas, face-covering ski masks, face masks and fake beards.
  
• It does not include protective masks, winter clothing such as scarves or costumes, motorcycle helmets and masks often worn during Carnival or at Halloween.

https://www.dw.com/en/denmark-bans-f...lic/a-44021340

[The law may have included the last clause cited above because when a similar law in Austria was passed it led to two men being arrested: one was dressed as a rabbit, the other as a shark].

These details are lost on Johnson who has been accused of Islamophobia with multiple calls for him to apologise for an article in which, written in his flippant style, he likened the appearance of a woman in a Niqab to a 'letterbox' and also wrote 'If a female student turned up at school or at a university lecture looking like a bank robber' arguing simultaneously that such woman should remove their veils in public spaces or when talking to him as an MP at his surgery but that Denmark was wrong to make this clothing illegal. It is not even known if anyone has ever worn a Burqa in Denmark and they estimate the law affects less than 200 Muslim women. The difference in clothing can be seen here-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/24118241

This is how Boris Johnson, who in the first part of the article lauds Denmark's 'Liberal' culture and defends the view of it proposed by 19th century philosopher John Stuart Mill -'that you should be able to do what you want provided you do no harm to others'- appeared to defend a basic principle of liberal democracy, while raising the flag of prejudice against Muslims to appease those in his party and anywhere else he wants to support his long-term campaign to be the Prime Minister, because that is his greatest dream, something he cannot let go of, believing it is his destiny. Or some other inflated rubbish of the kind only his bloated idiot can invent.

It goes deeper, though because Johnson has been meeting Steven Bannon, who is on a quest to revive European fascism through something he calls 'the Movement,' bringing like-minded people across Europe together to oppose most of the Liberal values Johnson claims to defend in the Telegraph article. Indeed, there is some belief that when John Bolton met -in secret and in violation of Diplomatic Protocol- the European Research Group of Tory MPs in July, it was to convey the President's message: Theresa may must Go! Replace her with Boris! Bolton's visit taking place shortly before the President gave his interview to Rupert Murdoch's comic, The Sun, in which he suggested May was not up to the job of PM and that he liked Boris Johnson.

Where is Boris Johnson headed? The calls for disciplinary action will probably not produce more than censure, because Theresa May knows that Boris Johnson is popular in the party -but not all the MP's who will select the candidates to succeed her- and doesn't want to give him more power than he already has. But on Radio 4 today (Weds 8th August 2018) Dominic Grieve MP said explicitly that were Johnson to be elected leader he would leave the Conservative Party, regarding Johnson in his words as 'an unfit and improper person to lead the Conservative Party'; raising the prospect that either Johnson could split the party if elected, or if expelled, would take a lot of Tories with him.

So now we have Labour tearing itself apart over anti-Semitism, with Corbyn's leadership challenged; and the Conservative Party convulsed by Islamophobia with Theresa May under fire because of her useless Brexit plans.

To conclude: the Boris Johnson Show is not a comedy, or a tragedy. It is a warning. As in the USA, it is democracy itself that is threatened.

And here is the man himself, describing the Republican candidate in the US elections as unfit to be President-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4EAc0QFubs

I was quoting Dominic Grieve from memory this is what he actually said:

“If he were to become leader of the party, I for one wouldn’t be in it. I don’t regard him as a fit and proper person to lead a political party and certainly not the Conservative party,” Grieve told BBC Radio 4’s The World at One on Wednesday.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...becomes-leader

Over the weekend Boris Johnson has produced two articles in his campaign to replace Theresa May as leader of the Conservative Party. Both of them reveal what we already know, that Boris Johnson is not a leader in waiting, just waiting. There was some gossip in the press that he was preparing a leadership challenge this week, ie starting Monday the 10th of September, so it could be that he will with his friends, launch it on 9/11, having a taste for theatrics that to most people leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

On Sunday the attention-seeking whore, the 'Polished Turd' of Primrose Hill, said, of the Chequers Plan that Mrs May thinks will secure an orderly transition out of the EU
“We have opened ourselves to perpetual political blackmail. We have wrapped a suicide vest around the British constitution – and handed the detonator to Michel Barnier.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics...n-suicide-vest

Even if you can bear to set aside the gruesome insensitivity of the 'vest', Johnson might step forward with this 'British Constitution' he seems so ardent on defending, because the reality is, there isn't one. But why let an historic detail like that get in the way of his deliberate intention to provoke discussion about, well, Boris Johnson. For after all, this the same Boris Johnson who, when he was actually right there on the ground at Chequers, signed the agreement along with his Cabinet Colleagues, but in a true example of hiis version of leadership, betrayed them days late by resigning and trashing the very documet he approved of.

Or it could be that he did not approve of it at the time but was too much of a spineless coward to say to to his colleagues in person. That's leadership for you.

Now, today, as if we needed proof, Johnson has outed himself as an economic illiterate. His latest ruse is to promote tax cuts as a means of encouraging economic growth and prosperity for all, claiming it is based on both the Laffer Curve, and the wisdom of the ancient Muslim sage Ibn Khaldun -just in case you thought he had a problem with Muslims.

The Laffer Curve has been proven to be nonsense, none of its claims being supported by evidence, just as Johnson quoted Ibn Khaldun out of context because the details are never of any interest to such a headline banger.

The Laffer Curve states in simple terms: high taxes = low economic growth; low taxes= high economic growth. From this simple equation it follows that for an economy to grow, taxes must be low. How this explains the economic growth of the USA between say 1945 and 1955 is not hard at all: it doesn't. Because it's wrong. Thus:

this scenario is not applicable to the US. Private investment tends to ebb and flow with the business cycle; when demand is feeble, so is investment. Cutting taxes on America’s rich isn’t going to encourage them to invest more—they already have plenty to spend and aren’t spending it. Worse, by shifting wealth from middle class families to the moneyed few—a group that is able to consume far less than the working masses—this sort of policy suppresses consumption, which in turn discourages investment in productive businesses. Slowing demand drags on growth, causing debt and unemployment to rise.
https://qz.com/895785/laffer-curve-e...d-reaganomics/

As for Ibn Khaldun, he was talking abut taxation in a different age, and while he appears to be an advocate of low taxes, the context in which he made his comments was not shaped by a capitalist economy with networks of supply and demand, but of the relgious duties of the Empire: he advocated low taxes when one dynasty takes over from another -but a Muslim rule, thus

"The reason for this is that when the dynasty follows the ways (sunan) of the religion, it imposes only such taxes as are stipulated by the religious law, such as charity taxes, the land tax, and the poll tax. They mean small assessments, because, as everyone knows, the charity tax on property is low.
https://www.themadinanway.com/single...liki-And-Taxes

Last comment: Johnsn's claim that the policies of the US President have resulted in econmic growth at rates of 4.5% is also a detail lost in analysis -dare one accuse the US President of faking the figures?

Economic growth rebounded under Trump — but hasn’t reached the rate he promised, and is still below the best years under Obama ...

The first official estimate for the second quarter of 2018 won’t be released until July 27. However, the “GDP Now” forecast produced by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta projected on July 6 that the second-quarter growth rate will come in at 3.8 percent — almost within the range that Trump promised.

But few if any economists expect sustained growth at anywhere close to what Trump has pledged.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects real GDP to grow 3.3 percent this year, and 2.4 percent in 2019, then settle to an average of 1.9 percent for decades to come.

The National Association for Business Economists June survey produced a median forecast of 2.8 percent growth this year and 2.5 percent next year.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics...-politics-live
(at 10.59 am).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Stavros

The Laffer Curve states in simple terms: high taxes = low economic growth; low taxes= high economic growth. From this simple equation it follows that for an economy to grow, taxes must be low. How this explains the economic growth of the USA between say 1945 and 1955 is not hard at all: it doesn't. Because it's wrong. Thus:

Last comment: Johnson's claim that the policies of the US President have resulted in econmic growth at rates of 4.5% is also a detail lost in analysis -dare one accuse the US President of faking the figures?

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The Laffer curve is actually the relationship between tax rates and revenue collected, not tax rates and economic growth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve

I doubt that the figures are being fiddled just yet, but the 4.5% figure (which has since been revised to 4.2%) is just one quarter's growth converted to annual terms. That's a pretty silly way to report things and the US seems to be the only country that does it that way. On the basis that other countries do it - growth over the past year - the US economy has grown by 2.9%, which is reasonable but nothing special.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by filghy2

The Laffer curve is actually the relationship between tax rates and revenue collected, not tax rates and economic growth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve

I doubt that the figures are being fiddled just yet, but the 4.5% figure (which has since been revised to 4.2%) is just one quarter's growth converted to annual terms. That's a pretty silly way to report things and the US seems to be the only country that does it that way. On the basis that other countries do it - growth over the past year - the US economy has grown by 2.9%, which is reasonable but nothing special.

---

You are of course correct with regard to the theory, I don't think that was what Johnson meant and that he presented his argument in the same way I reported it, as a simple equation between tax rates and growth.

As for US growth, according to the President

The GDP Rate (4.2%) is higher than the Unemployment Rate (3.9%) for the first time in over 100 years!

The clam is that not just that is simply wrong, but that someone gave the President the figures with an added zero to make it look better and please their Lord and Master, perhaps a necessary means of 'proving' there is no 'resistance' to him in his own office?

The truth is here, if anyone is interested in it.

during the 70 years since the government has tracked growth and unemployment, the real GDP growth rate has been higher than the jobless rate more than 20 percent of the time. At a briefing with reporters Monday, Kevin Hassett, chairman of Trump's Council of Economic Advisors, conceded that Trump's claim was not true.

"From the initial fact to what the president said … I don't know the whole chain of command," he said. "What is true it is that it's the highest in 10 years. At some point somebody probably conveyed it to him adding a zero to that, and they shouldn't have done that."

Then there is this claim

Last month, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders falsely claimed that Trump has created three times as many jobs for black workers as his predecessor, President Barack Obama, did during his entire time in office.

"This president since he took office ... in the year and a half that he's been here has created 700,000 new jobs for African-Americans," Sanders told reporters Aug. 14. "After eight years of President Obama in office, he only created 195,000 jobs for African-Americans. President Trump in his first year and a half has already tripled what President Obama did in eight years."

But according to the official count from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, most of the employment gains for black people since the Great Recession occurred during the Obama administration.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/10/trum...ven-close.html
(Statistical graphs provided)

Until the Brexit campaign I knew of Boris Johnson only as a sort of charmingly eccentric purveyor of witticisms, which I suspect is the main reason for his popularity. Does he have a history of supporting the positions he advocates now, or is he just being an opportunist?

Boris Johnson has one priority in his political life, and that is Boris Johnson.

He is the kind of old Etonian people assume that remarkable school produces: convinced of their own superiority over others, and born to lead. The problem for Boris is that although he was two years ahead of David Cameron, whom he regarded at Eton as a little twerp, it was Cameron who became leader of the Conservative Party. Boris may not even have wanted the job until Cameron got it, but either way his record as a journalist -sacked by The Times for inventing historical facts proven to be wrong-was based on 'jolly japes' such as his reports from the EU in Brussels for the Telegaph in which he claimed the EU was going to re-define snails as fish, ban British 'pink sausages', standardize condom sizes and ban Prawn Cocktail flavoured crisps. Some have claimed he made these stories up because he lacked the patience to actually sit through sessions of the European Parliament or even read documents from them or the European Commission.

As Mayor of London he made promises he did not even attempt to keep, indeed, whch seemed to produce the opposite of what he offered:
He promised to totally eradicate rough sleeping on the streets of London by 2012; rough sleeping doubled under his leadership. His 2008 manifesto promised there would be manned ticket offices at every station; the former Mayor closed all of London's ticket offices. He aimed to reduce transport fares; they increased by 4.2 per cent on average and subsequently rose in line with inflation.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices...-a7105976.html

When Boris decided to back the 'Leave' campaign in the EU Referendum in 2016, it was seen for what it was -a direct challenge to David Cameron's leadership of the Conservative Party. For the simple reason that he had written two speeches: one in favour of withdrawiing from the EU, the other in favour of staying in. The argument was based around the failure of David Cameron to persuade other EU members to back his ideas for reform, offering him crumbs instead. Although the pro-EU speech has many criticisms of the EU, this is the argument Boris offered for Remaining:

Britain is a great nation, a global force for good. It is surely a boon for the world and for Europe that she should be intimately engaged in the EU. This is a market on our doorstep, ready for further exploitation by British firms: the membership fee seems rather small for all that access.
Why are we so determined to turn our back on it? Shouldn't our policy be like our policy on cake - pro having it and pro eating it? Pro Europe and pro the rest of the world?

He ends his assessment by saying
I am going to muffle my disappointment and back the prime minister.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/poli...-a3370296.html

He did the opposite. Waited to see which campaign Cameron was going to chose, and chose the other for that reason alone.

Even his resignation letter to Theresa May contained false details, because he has never bothered to fact check his own statements, details being less relevant than his over-sized, over-rated ego. Thus, he stated:

“If a country cannot pass a law to save the lives of female cyclists — when that proposal is supported at every level of UK Government — then I don’t see how that country can truly be called independent.”

however,
It’s true that when he was Mayor of London, Mr Johnson campaigned to introduce tougher rules on lorry safety to protect cyclists.
But he’s left out some key details.
For one thing, he neglects to mention that the regulations he’s talking about were in fact put forward by the European Parliament, and backed by 570 MEPs, with 88 voting against. He also fails to acknowledge that those laws have actually been passed.
More crucially, Mr Johnson is wrong to say that the laws in question were “supported at every level of UK Government.”
When the regulations were put forward by the EU, the UK government explicitly did not support the proposals.
https://www.channel4.com/news/factch...gnation-letter

If the devil is in the detail, this is a man so convinced of his own sainthood that the details can look after themselves. Pity that the devil then laughs in his face when it emerges that Boris Johnson was a useless Mayor of London. That when his constituents expected him to stand up in the House of Commons to object to a third runway at Heathrow Airport he was nowhere to be seen. That his definition of loyalty is to campaign against the leader of his party, not once, but twice. Even when, as a junior Arts Minister he was asked to resign by the leader of the party Michael Howard (Johnson lied about having an affair with a journalist that included her having two abortions), Johnson refused to go and was therfore 'relieved of his duties.

Boris Johnson, like his new buddy in the White House -the same man he has said was 'unfit' to be President of the USA, believes in himself, and himself alone. Talk of a leadership challenge to Mrs May may yet fizzle out it is hard to say, and we still don't know if he will go for it, but whatever happens, he is a completely untrustworthy politician who will be as useless in No 10 as he has been in every other office he has occupied.

Further reading:
https://www.newstatesman.com/politic...s-followed-his

https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/times-bo...son-flat-lied/

Edit to my OP -Johnson no longer has dual nationality, havin renounced his US citizenship.

Mummy! I'm going to be President!

https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/...0&h=800&crop=1

I genuinely don't know what to say.
No matter who wins, we lose.
But this.............WTF?

Attachment 1164740

All spruced up and ready to kiss the hands of our Noble, and Most Gracious Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, Boris Johnson, who, according to the Princess Royal of the USA, Ivanka Kushner, will tomorrow become the Prime Minister of the United Kingston. Not sure if that is Kingston-upon-Thames, or Kingston-upon-Hull. The difference? Swans in the former, skittles and a pint in t'other.

https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/cM...66dc17ff61de53

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Stavros

When Boris Johnson resigned as Foreign Secretary last month, it meant that for the first time since 1721, there were no Old Etonians in the British Government, defined as the Cabinet of her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
Eton College was founded by King Henry VI in 1440 to educate poor boys who would then be permitted entry to the King's College, Cambridge, which Henry founded in 1441. It has since become one of the most exclusive -and expensive- schools in the world; 19 British Prime Ministers have been Old Etonians, the last one being David Cameron, a few years younger than Boris when he was there, and regarded by Boris as a silly little twerp. It is not known if David fagged for Boris at Eton, but they were both members of the Bullingdon Club when they 'went up' to Oxford.

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (born New York City, June 1964 when his father was studying economics at Columbia -he has dual US and British Nationality) has been in the news because of an article he published in The Telegraph on Monday 6th August 2018. (article is hidden behind a paywall).

The article concerns the legal ban that Denmark has imposed on people wearing full-face clothing, and though it has been called the 'Burqa Ban' because when debated in Parliament it was this item and the Niqab that was most cited, in fact the law covers more than the Niqab, and

• forbids the wearing of full-face veils such as the niqab, balaclavas, face-covering ski masks, face masks and fake beards.
  
• It does not include protective masks, winter clothing such as scarves or costumes, motorcycle helmets and masks often worn during Carnival or at Halloween.

https://www.dw.com/en/denmark-bans-f...lic/a-44021340

[The law may have included the last clause cited above because when a similar law in Austria was passed it led to two men being arrested: one was dressed as a rabbit, the other as a shark].

These details are lost on Johnson who has been accused of Islamophobia with multiple calls for him to apologise for an article in which, written in his flippant style, he likened the appearance of a woman in a Niqab to a 'letterbox' and also wrote 'If a female student turned up at school or at a university lecture looking like a bank robber' arguing simultaneously that such woman should remove their veils in public spaces or when talking to him as an MP at his surgery but that Denmark was wrong to make this clothing illegal. It is not even known if anyone has ever worn a Burqa in Denmark and they estimate the law affects less than 200 Muslim women. The difference in clothing can be seen here-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/24118241

This is how Boris Johnson, who in the first part of the article lauds Denmark's 'Liberal' culture and defends the view of it proposed by 19th century philosopher John Stuart Mill -'that you should be able to do what you want provided you do no harm to others'- appeared to defend a basic principle of liberal democracy, while raising the flag of prejudice against Muslims to appease those in his party and anywhere else he wants to support his long-term campaign to be the Prime Minister, because that is his greatest dream, something he cannot let go of, believing it is his destiny. Or some other inflated rubbish of the kind only his bloated idiot can invent.

It goes deeper, though because Johnson has been meeting Steven Bannon, who is on a quest to revive European fascism through something he calls 'the Movement,' bringing like-minded people across Europe together to oppose most of the Liberal values Johnson claims to defend in the Telegraph article. Indeed, there is some belief that when John Bolton met -in secret and in violation of Diplomatic Protocol- the European Research Group of Tory MPs in July, it was to convey the President's message: Theresa may must Go! Replace her with Boris! Bolton's visit taking place shortly before the President gave his interview to Rupert Murdoch's comic, The Sun, in which he suggested May was not up to the job of PM and that he liked Boris Johnson.

Where is Boris Johnson headed? The calls for disciplinary action will probably not produce more than censure, because Theresa May knows that Boris Johnson is popular in the party -but not all the MP's who will select the candidates to succeed her- and doesn't want to give him more power than he already has. But on Radio 4 today (Weds 8th August 2018) Dominic Grieve MP said explicitly that were Johnson to be elected leader he would leave the Conservative Party, regarding Johnson in his words as 'an unfit and improper person to lead the Conservative Party'; raising the prospect that either Johnson could split the party if elected, or if expelled, would take a lot of Tories with him.

So now we have Labour tearing itself apart over anti-Semitism, with Corbyn's leadership challenged; and the Conservative Party convulsed by Islamophobia with Theresa May under fire because of her useless Brexit plans.

To conclude: the Boris Johnson Show is not a comedy, or a tragedy. It is a warning. As in the USA, it is democracy itself that is threatened.

And here is the man himself, describing the Republican candidate in the US elections as unfit to be President-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4EAc0QFubs

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Attachment 1176153

BloJob is inherently a lazy SOB, who is only out for himself and his paymasters, he would and probably has eaten his own large intestines to get the keys to #10 though I suspect he'll barely be able to move his furniture and his tart into the place before he's evicted! He cares not a jot for anyone with less than multi millionaire status, to paraphrase my late Mum, BloJob is all wind and piss and will fuck us here in the UK like we've never been fucked before, if we thought the last 4 PM's we've had were bad we ain't seen nothing yet, he's only had the job a week, elected by a few thousand dead folk from the Shires, not by us I might add! He will take us to hell in a handcart and not give a shit about it for he has assembled around him the most right wing Cabinet not seen since the days of Hitler and the Reichstag! He has scraped the bottom of a very deep and dirty barrel to put this lot together, to quote Fraser from Dad's Army, "we're doomed I tell yer, we're all doomed!"

Attachment 1176154Attachment 1176155Attachment 1176156

Ouch!

Bring the HEAT CrazyTrucker, you warmed up my old cockles.
Who's Boris Johnson?

Wow , I didn't realize how crazy this guy was , being an American we don't get the thing in perspective on the news here , but this recent New Yorker magazine article opened my eyes.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...-boris-johnson

I think the problem with Johnson over there and Trump over here isn't that we don't understand them, the problem is we do understand them. And not that you don't believe them, they lie. What is impossible to believe is that the majority of our fellow Countrymen voted for them.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by buttslinger

What is impossible to believe is that the majority of our fellow Countrymen voted for them.

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Actually they didn't. BoJo was never voted in by the electorate. He's only PM because a majority of only 160,000 Conservative party members voted for him. As you should know, Trump received 2.8 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. He only got 46 per cent of the vote.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by filghy2

Actually they didn't. BoJo was never voted in by the electorate. He's only PM because a majority of only 160,000 Conservative party members voted for him. As you should know, Trump received 2.8 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. He only got 46 per cent of the vote.

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Thanks for the correction.

Rumours have been floating around that Boris Johnson can't cope with the pressures of being Prime Minister, that he has not fully recovered from his bout of Covid 19, and will be gone in six months. I think the aim of the rumours is to give vent for those members of his party who think he has lost control of the Government. The shambles over A level and GCSE results, and the 11 u-turns the Government has made on health policy since March (see link below) have undermined public confidence, with the result that a spectacular election vctory in December now looks like a one-off oddity that mostly happened because so few people could vote for Jeremy Corbyn.

Having transformed the Conservative Party into a Brexit party, I think he is desperate to lead the English into a new dawn of Freedom at midnight on December 31st, and the real question is, if the UK leaves without a trade deal of any substance, willl Boris be Prime Minister on December 31st 2021?

As for the curious case of Ministerial Responsibility. the exams fiasco is now blamed on a 'mutant algorithm'. One assumes a now sentient computer, fed with an algorithm by the exams regulator OFQUAL, pinged to itself, 'I can do better than this' and the mutant was born.
Or it could be that a human being somewhere knew months ago there was an algorithm and was 100% confident it would produce better results than teacher assessments, and is thus unable to explain how it all went wrong. That the person or persons involved made the wrong decision, is of course speculation that will appear as fact -or not- in the report into the fiasco when it appears, probably next year when the news is all about some trade dispute with Bulgaria, or Tuvalu, or most likely something fishy.

It at least enables Boris to shift responsibility to a computer when he is after all, as Prime Minister, the man responsible for it all. Maybe if he was actually doing his job, he might know more about what happens, and not delegate everything to the galactic superbrain of Super-Information, Dominic Cummings, who I am reliably informed is not an Android.

Responsibility -is this now the dirtiest word in politics?- be it the UK, the USA, Belarus, Russia, China, Brazil -the list goes on....

"Boris Johnson got an angry response after telling school pupils that the exam results crisis was caused by a “mutant algorithm” and he was glad it had been “sorted out”.
The National Education Union (NEU) called the prime minister “brazen” after he appeared to shrug off responsibility for the fiasco."
https://www.theguardian.com/politics...r-exams-fiasco

U-turn if you want to, the Government will carry on spinning, around and around-
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...s-and-missteps

Hmmm, Boris, where is your left hand? Is that why she's smiling?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/...eg?imwidth=960

The Telegraph has temporarily lifted its paywall in defence of a 'free press' because of Extinction Rebellion's siege of printing works, though I suspect most people access the paper oniine and read articles that are not in the print edition.

Whatever. The link below documents the relationships that Johnson has cultivated in the White House, not so much with the President but the Under-President Kushner and his wife, and in particular Stephen Miller. But it is a sad comment that to get the President to listen you must first spend ten or twenty minutes telling him what a great guy he is and how well he is doing as President, rather like meeting the leader of a Banana Republican and showering him with praise before suggesting his foreign policy is rubbish.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/202...s-easier-said/

I tend to tread lightly when it comes to discussing the politics of countries that I'm not a citizen of.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MrFanti

I tend to tread lightly when it comes to discussing the politics of countries that I'm not a citizen of.

---

Why tread lightly when this was the country that gave you Jamestown; gave you the Slave Trade- which I assume traded your ancestors for £20 a head, sometimes £3-; that is at the root of the claim that Americans don't approve of taxes or Kings, but whose President was desperate, and I mean desperate to be seen to have a banquet with the Queen, and is seeking a trade deal with the UK that gives the US 100% access to UK markets in return for what, 5% of the US?

Why tread lightly when the Prime Minister was born in Manhattan, and shares with the President from Queens a self-obsession that sneers and jeers at lesser mortals, makes flagrantly ridiculous campaign promises, yet in office is revealed to be a liar and a fraud, a pompous creator of bogus tales, a fanatical devotee to a flimsy idea called Brexit that threatens to unravel the Union -ours, not yours- ,while the public heath crisis that has engulfed the UK is being handled with the same level of incompetence at the political level as your Government, with the frightening possibility that the man in charge of Covid policy in the US, Under-President Kushner, is conferring with his father-in-law's equivalent, bloated foozler were it not for the fact that Boris Johnson is too lazy to play golf, but seems to give himself the same sporting chances as the President when it comes to playing pussy.

I get it, that the UK doesn't mean much to you, but look around and ask how it is that we see political leaders across the world who in reality don't lead, who talk a lot but don't walk it, who jeer at everyone they think is beneath them, while above them the people turn away in disgust, and while this same class of criminals who blame their predecessors for economic and financial failure are helping themselves to the Nation's cash as if it belonged to them, or rather, as if they were Medieval Kings acting on their entitlement.

You might think you are alone, but the US is mired in the same swamp of corruption and lies as Russia, Hungary, the UK et al -but with the better option for getting out of it. By the end of this year you might be on the road to restoring your self-respect, the Constitution and the Rule of Law. With the cavalier attitude to the rule of law and International Treaties being shown by our Prime Minister, the UK is being kicked down the road to ruin.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...g-in-the-wings


And no, we don't want you to come to our rescue this time.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Stavros

Why tread lightly

---

Because IMHO, when one doesn't reside and or is not a citizen within "said" country, that individual misses out an numerous innuendos to the bigger picture.

Do I have opinions and perspectives?
Yes indeed!!

-But I don't around blaring them out like I had a megaphone in hand....

I have stated before that there are a lot of those nuances in American politics that I don't get, and there are a lot of people in politics and the media well known to you I have never heard of. There is nothing to stop you from commenting on British, European and World affairs, and I would welcome it. All I can say is that you might not be aware of how constant reporting on the US is in the UK, not just because of the election, from high politics to social and cultural affairs, probably more than what you get of the UK over there.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Stavros

I have stated before that there are a lot of those nuances in American politics that I don't get, and there are a lot of people in politics and the media well known to you I have never heard of. There is nothing to stop you from commenting on British, European and World affairs, and I would welcome it. All I can say is that you might not be aware of how constant reporting on the US is in the UK, not just because of the election, from high politics to social and cultural affairs, probably more than what you get of the UK over there.

---

I generally agree with you in that the world receives more on the US than the US does on the rest of world - which only serves to strengthen my resolve on treading lightly on other countries politics.
I will however make an exception - for example I spent 3 months living in a small Italian town. I saw a whole lot more in those 3 months living in Italy than in a single year from a US reporting perspective on Italy.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MrFanti

Because IMHO, when one doesn't reside and or is not a citizen within "said" country, that individual misses out an numerous innuendos to the bigger picture.

---

It seems we have a master of malapropism in our midst.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by filghy2

It seems we have a master of malapropism in our midst.

---

filghy2 -any thought on Tony Abbott being appointed 'Trade Adviser' to the UK Government? I don't know a lot about him other than he was dumped by his own party when Prime Minister, and has been appointed either because there is no-one in the UK who can do his job, or Johnson can't find anyone in the UK with sufficient Brexit zeal to be trusted. That Abbott has been offered a job by a bare-faced liar who told us in December he had an 'Over Ready' deal with the EU which turns out to be half-baked, suggests Abbot is either a fool who has been conned, or is desperate for a job, even one that comes without a salary though I assume the tax-payer will pay for his travel and accommodation expenses. Or maybe he just wants to live outside Australia for a while?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Stavros

filghy2 -any thought on Tony Abbott being appointed 'Trade Adviser' to the UK Government?

---

I know that he was never trade minister and does not appear to have any expertise in that field (he was health minister in the previous conservative government before he became PM). A senior ministerial colleague also once said that Abbott knew nothing about economics, though I guess lack of expertise would be a plus rather than a minus for Boris and the Brexiteers.

Abbott was actually born in the UK and studied at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. I believe he has strong political connections in the UK, which I suppose is why he got the job (in addition to being a Brexit fan). I would guess that he has found his relevance in Australia to be declining, so perhaps he concluded that the current government was unlikely to offer him a good job. Since he left politics his views seem to have become increasingly hard-right - eg describing the climate change movement as a cult (even though he claimed to accept the science when he was PM) and also praising what Viktor Orban has been doing in Hungary.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MrFanti

Because IMHO, when one doesn't reside and or is not a citizen within "said" country, that individual misses out an numerous innuendos to the bigger picture.

Do I have opinions and perspectives?
Yes indeed!!

-But I don't around blaring them out like I had a megaphone in hand....

---

I feel everyone knows what I'm about to say but I won't feel comfortable until it's been said or I've said it.

Mr. Fanti did not write what he wrote in this thread because he really wants to comment on British politics but is not doing so out of humility. He wrote what he did because he doesn't want any non-Americans who disagree with his nonsense in other threads to comment there. And he's pretending he's holding back here so they should hold back there. But he's not holding back here given that he probably knows even less about British politics than he knows about American politics which is close to nothing.

People should comment on whatever they want and their arguments stand or fall based on whether they're supported by facts and reason. Thank you for your cooperation:).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by broncofan

Mr. Fanti did not write what he wrote in this thread because he really wants to comment on British politics but is not doing so out of humility. .

---

What kind of self-important idiot posts to say that he doesn't intend to express an opinion on a topic anyway? Did he really think that we were all wondering why he'd expressed no view on Boris Johnson and it was important to explain why?

It is really up to Mr Fanti or anyone else to tell us what they think. Occasionally a supporter of the President will post something, but for the most part Republican supporters tend these days to stay quiet. We had some around 10 or so years ago but they tended to be heavy on attack but light in defence, though I wonder what the poster, whose name I forget, who constantly posted the rising debt under Obama, thinks of Obama's successor, who has been in debt most of his life and has been adding $1 trillion in debt to the US deficit every year since 2017.

There is a crisis in the UK right now -a public health crisis, and a political crisis shaped by the determination of the UK to leave the EU. It is a deep crisis because it not only raises questions about political representation and accountability, but as we have seen this week, the rule of law and what it means. The UK is not alone in this, there is a crisis in the US, while within the EU Poland and Hungary are struggling to accept that the EU's values are their values too, while the crisis in Greece and France with regard to migrants arriving on the coast (UK) or the islands (Greece) is being as badly handled as Covid 19.

One would expect intense debate on these issues, but in HA it seems, Boris Johnson doesn't merit much interest. Yet even the Telegraph, for which he writes, posted an article in the last 24 hours suggesting Johnson has 6 months to 'take control' or lose his position as party leader and Prime Minister -proving that in this febrile age, an 80-seat majority in the House of Commons is no guarantee of security of tenure. Because Johnson really is an incompetent oaf. And since the Telegraph's articles are locked behind a paywall, few people will read it. Which rather sums up the content of this post!

From one breathtaking liar across the sea, to our homegeown, or homespun version. One could argue that as a student of Classics at Oxford, Boris Johnson knows who Pericles and Aristotle are, even if turns out he doesn't meet their standards of virtue in public life, whereas the 45th President probably can't pronunce Pericles, and thinks Aristotle used to own a lot of ships. He may also bristle with envy at this estimation Stewart makes in the review printed below-that Boris Johnson is

"the most accomplished liar in public life."

What is remarkable is that having led the country out of the EU to the delight of his party's lunatic fringe, and having won them a huege majority in Parliament, Boris Johnson is at war with the very same cohort of MPs, plus some new boys and girls, who are Libertarians not Conservatives and object to, and have voted against his Lockdown measures. Johnson exhibited his own version of contempt when he heard the Speaker calll Theresa May to reply to his speech on the Lockdown. Barely a sentence into her reply, and not adhering to any convention that he respect a former Prime Minister, indeed, the colleague who gave him the job of Foreign Secretary, and listen to, and reply to her speech, Johnson stood up and walked out -not to his left through the door behind the Speaker's Chair, but down the central aisle of the House where all could marvel at his childish behaviour.

As we lurch from the Covid-19 crisis to the moment of truth on Brexit, his former colleague and leadership challenger, Rory Stewart, has written a review of Tom Bower's biography of Boris that is so openly dsmissive of Johnson it needs to be read in full.

It is from the most recent Times Literary Supplement, and is here for you to enjoy-

Lord of misrule


Boris Johnson: an amoral figure for a bleak, coarse culture


By Rory Stewart

On Boris Johnson’s desk in Number 10 stands a bust of the Athenian leader Pericles – his “hero” and “inspiration” for forty years. Tom Bower, who has made his name trying to destroy the reputation of famous figures (from Richard Branson to Prince Charles), chooses in this new biography of Boris Johnson, to provoke through rehabilitation – to invite comparisons with figures such as Pericles by praising Johnson’s personality, talents, political successes and character.
On Boris Johnson’s desk in Number 10 stands a bust of the Athenian leader Pericles – his “hero” and “inspiration” for forty years. Tom Bower, who has made his name trying to destroy the reputation of famous figures (from Richard Branson to Prince Charles), chooses in this new biography of Boris Johnson, to provoke through rehabilitation – to invite comparisons with figures such as Pericles by praising Johnson’s personality, talents, political successes and character.
Bower tells us that Johnson can be warm-hearted, kind and genuinely polite, that he is not gossipy or malicious, and that he is generous, believes the best of people and lacks pettiness or envy. He reminds us of “Johnson’s magic combination of intelligence, wit, cunning and exhibitionism” which – allied to a formidable memory, and a facility with words – has made him one of the most highly paid writers and speakers of his generation. He minimizes Johnson’s misdemeanours – not by omitting them, but rather by listing so many that they lose their power to shock. Thus, the first time he describes Johnson cheating on his wife, and lying, it is disturbing; but when Bower describes the fourth affair and Johnson’s claim that “It is complete balderdash. It is an inverted pyramid of piffle. It is all completely untrue and ludicrous conjecture …”, it is bathetic.

Things that would seem humiliating lapses in others (such as Johnson’s prevarications to avoid leaving his official residence when he resigned as foreign secretary) are made to seem predictable and “authentic”. The countless times when he lets people down subliminally readjust our expectations, so that on the rare occasions when Johnson does what is required for the job (gets up early to read his briefings as mayor of London, for example) it appears a sign of heroic diligence. And when Johnson behaves particularly badly, Bower is able to excuse it as a product of an unhappy childhood, with a mother who had a breakdown and a stingy father who (according to Johnson’s mother) kept them in cold houses, cheated on her, and hit her in front of their young son.

There are other compliments that could be paid to Johnson. Bower is not strong on his sense of humour, or flashes of learning. He passes quickly, for example, over the impressive lecture Johnson gave on the Latin poet Horace in 2004. There are some characteristic Johnson touches in that speech (he emphasizes Horace’s hypocrisies, cowardice and compromises over the more dignified and stoical elements in the Odes; and reduces the poetry to the question of whether journalists are more important than politicians). But it is impossible to deny the ease and enjoyment with which Johnson cites Latin verse. And few other public figures would have observed that “there is a final sense in which Horace is not just a ward and protégé of Mercury but also carries out the ultimate function of that divinity”.

It is above all, however, as a successful politician that Bower invites us to admire Johnson. He bet on the side of Leave in the Brexit referendum when the polls were against it. He persevered after his first failed leadership campaign. He resigned as foreign secretary, although resignation is generally fatal to a political career. And on the basis of all this became prime minister, just as he twice before became a Conservative mayor in a Labour city. Then – having defied parliament and the Supreme Court, brought in an unpopular and provocative Chief Adviser, fired some of the most senior and well-known members of his own party (and also others including me), and called an election when the polls were unpromising – he won an astonishing majority. He appears able to sense and grab the tail of the galloping horse of history, when everyone else is still wondering where it might be stabled.

Even this underestimates his achievement. Johnson is not simply an opportunist, exploiting impersonal historical forces; he has often created these events – whistling the horse of history to himself, and whipping it on its way. In 2019, he faced the same Labour leader and the same Brexit conundrum that led Theresa May to lose her majority two years earlier, and with a highly personal and idiosyncratic campaign won an eighty-seat majority. And his disproportionate impact on that election, which was not apparent in the early polls, also suggests that he did not simply benefit from the vote for Brexit, but made it happen. Bower concludes, therefore, that those of us who criticize him – as I am about to do – are narrow-minded, prudish, inadequate or envious.

Perhaps it is envy. Johnson is after all the most accomplished liar in public life – perhaps the best liar ever to serve as prime minister. Some of this may have been a natural talent – but a lifetime of practice and study has allowed him to uncover new possibilities which go well beyond all the classifications of dishonesty attempted by classical theorists like St Augustine. He has mastered the use of error, omission, exaggeration, diminution, equivocation and flat denial. He has perfected casuistry, circumlocution, false equivalence and false analogy. He is equally adept at the ironic jest, the fib and the grand lie; the weasel word and the half-truth; the hyperbolic lie, the obvious lie, and the bullshit lie – which may inadvertently be true. And because he has been so famous for this skill for so long, he can use his reputation to ascend to new levels of playful paradox. Thus he could say to me “Rory, don’t believe anything I am about to say, but I would like you to be in my cabinet” – and still have me laugh in admiration.

But what makes him unusual in a politician is that his dishonesty has no clear political intent. Lyndon Johnson’s corrupt and dishonest methods were ultimately directed towards Civil Rights Reform; Alberto Fujimori’s lies enabled a complete restructuring of the Peruvian economy. Machiavelli argues on the basis of such examples that dissimulation may be necessary for effective political action. But Johnson proves that it is not sufficient.


On Boris Johnson’s desk in Number 10 stands a bust of the Athenian leader Pericles – his “hero” and “inspiration” for forty years. Tom Bower, who has made his name trying to destroy the reputation of famous figures (from Richard Branson to Prince Charles), chooses in this new biography of Boris Johnson, to provoke through rehabilitation – to invite comparisons with figures such as Pericles by praising Johnson’s personality, talents, political successes and character.
Bower tells us that Johnson can be warm-hearted, kind and genuinely polite, that he is not gossipy or malicious, and that he is generous, believes the best of people and lacks pettiness or envy. He reminds us of “Johnson’s magic combination of intelligence, wit, cunning and exhibitionism” which – allied to a formidable memory, and a facility with words – has made him one of the most highly paid writers and speakers of his generation. He minimizes Johnson’s misdemeanours – not by omitting them, but rather by listing so many that they lose their power to shock. Thus, the first time he describes Johnson cheating on his wife, and lying, it is disturbing; but when Bower describes the fourth affair and Johnson’s claim that “It is complete balderdash. It is an inverted pyramid of piffle. It is all completely untrue and ludicrous conjecture …”, it is bathetic.

Things that would seem humiliating lapses in others (such as Johnson’s prevarications to avoid leaving his official residence when he resigned as foreign secretary) are made to seem predictable and “authentic”. The countless times when he lets people down subliminally readjust our expectations, so that on the rare occasions when Johnson does what is required for the job (gets up early to read his briefings as mayor of London, for example) it appears a sign of heroic diligence. And when Johnson behaves particularly badly, Bower is able to excuse it as a product of an unhappy childhood, with a mother who had a breakdown and a stingy father who (according to Johnson’s mother) kept them in cold houses, cheated on her, and hit her in front of their young son.

There are other compliments that could be paid to Johnson. Bower is not strong on his sense of humour, or flashes of learning. He passes quickly, for example, over the impressive lecture Johnson gave on the Latin poet Horace in 2004. There are some characteristic Johnson touches in that speech (he emphasizes Horace’s hypocrisies, cowardice and compromises over the more dignified and stoical elements in the Odes; and reduces the poetry to the question of whether journalists are more important than politicians). But it is impossible to deny the ease and enjoyment with which Johnson cites Latin verse. And few other public figures would have observed that “there is a final sense in which Horace is not just a ward and protégé of Mercury but also carries out the ultimate function of that divinity”.

It is above all, however, as a successful politician that Bower invites us to admire Johnson. He bet on the side of Leave in the Brexit referendum when the polls were against it. He persevered after his first failed leadership campaign. He resigned as foreign secretary, although resignation is generally fatal to a political career. And on the basis of all this became prime minister, just as he twice before became a Conservative mayor in a Labour city. Then – having defied parliament and the Supreme Court, brought in an unpopular and provocative Chief Adviser, fired some of the most senior and well-known members of his own party (and also others including me), and called an election when the polls were unpromising – he won an astonishing majority. He appears able to sense and grab the tail of the galloping horse of history, when everyone else is still wondering where it might be stabled.

Even this underestimates his achievement. Johnson is not simply an opportunist, exploiting impersonal historical forces; he has often created these events – whistling the horse of history to himself, and whipping it on its way. In 2019, he faced the same Labour leader and the same Brexit conundrum that led Theresa May to lose her majority two years earlier, and with a highly personal and idiosyncratic campaign won an eighty-seat majority. And his disproportionate impact on that election, which was not apparent in the early polls, also suggests that he did not simply benefit from the vote for Brexit, but made it happen. Bower concludes, therefore, that those of us who criticize him – as I am about to do – are narrow-minded, prudish, inadequate or envious.

Perhaps it is envy. Johnson is after all the most accomplished liar in public life – perhaps the best liar ever to serve as prime minister. Some of this may have been a natural talent – but a lifetime of practice and study has allowed him to uncover new possibilities which go well beyond all the classifications of dishonesty attempted by classical theorists like St Augustine. He has mastered the use of error, omission, exaggeration, diminution, equivocation and flat denial. He has perfected casuistry, circumlocution, false equivalence and false analogy. He is equally adept at the ironic jest, the fib and the grand lie; the weasel word and the half-truth; the hyperbolic lie, the obvious lie, and the bullshit lie – which may inadvertently be true. And because he has been so famous for this skill for so long, he can use his reputation to ascend to new levels of playful paradox. Thus he could say to me “Rory, don’t believe anything I am about to say, but I would like you to be in my cabinet” – and still have me laugh in admiration.

But what makes him unusual in a politician is that his dishonesty has no clear political intent. Lyndon Johnson’s corrupt and dishonest methods were ultimately directed towards Civil Rights Reform; Alberto Fujimori’s lies enabled a complete restructuring of the Peruvian economy. Machiavelli argues on the basis of such examples that dissimulation may be necessary for effective political action. But Johnson proves that it is not sufficient.
I saw almost daily, when he was foreign secretary and I was one of his Ministers of State, how reluctant he was to push through even those policies that he professed to endorse. He demanded, for example, to know why we were not doing more for “charismatic megafauna”, but when I came back with a £9 million programme to work with the German development agency on elephant protection in Zambia, he simply laughed and said “Germans? Nein. Nein …”. He said, “Rory: Libya. Libya is a bite-sized British problem. Let’s sort out Libya”, but when I proposed a budget, and some ideas on how we might work with the UN and the Italians in the West of Libya, he switched off immediately. “Cultural heritage”, he told me, “is literally the only thing I care about in the world”, but again I could not get him to support a fund on cultural heritage. Even when he did rouse himself to action, as mayor, the results often seemed not what he intended – having campaigned against skyscrapers, for example, and in favour of emulating the architecture of Periclean Athens, he left a legacy of some of the most ill-considered, inhuman towers in London (Nine Elms in Vauxhall being a dramatic example).

Why? Was it that implementing his policies would have involved challenging another point of view and he did not want to make anyone unhappy? Did he lose interest because I had reduced “charismatic megafauna” to actual elephants, or “the bite-sized British problem” to a slow multilateral effort? Was it allergy to detail, which meant that, two-and-a-half years after the Brexit vote, he still struggled to understand the Customs Union, was blind to the issue of Irish borders, and kept saying that we could have a transition period without an agreement? Why did he fail to grasp the implications of Coronavirus in February?


On Boris Johnson’s desk in Number 10 stands a bust of the Athenian leader Pericles – his “hero” and “inspiration” for forty years. Tom Bower, who has made his name trying to destroy the reputation of famous figures (from Richard Branson to Prince Charles), chooses in this new biography of Boris Johnson, to provoke through rehabilitation – to invite comparisons with figures such as Pericles by praising Johnson’s personality, talents, political successes and character.
Bower tells us that Johnson can be warm-hearted, kind and genuinely polite, that he is not gossipy or malicious, and that he is generous, believes the best of people and lacks pettiness or envy. He reminds us of “Johnson’s magic combination of intelligence, wit, cunning and exhibitionism” which – allied to a formidable memory, and a facility with words – has made him one of the most highly paid writers and speakers of his generation. He minimizes Johnson’s misdemeanours – not by omitting them, but rather by listing so many that they lose their power to shock. Thus, the first time he describes Johnson cheating on his wife, and lying, it is disturbing; but when Bower describes the fourth affair and Johnson’s claim that “It is complete balderdash. It is an inverted pyramid of piffle. It is all completely untrue and ludicrous conjecture …”, it is bathetic.

Things that would seem humiliating lapses in others (such as Johnson’s prevarications to avoid leaving his official residence when he resigned as foreign secretary) are made to seem predictable and “authentic”. The countless times when he lets people down subliminally readjust our expectations, so that on the rare occasions when Johnson does what is required for the job (gets up early to read his briefings as mayor of London, for example) it appears a sign of heroic diligence. And when Johnson behaves particularly badly, Bower is able to excuse it as a product of an unhappy childhood, with a mother who had a breakdown and a stingy father who (according to Johnson’s mother) kept them in cold houses, cheated on her, and hit her in front of their young son.

There are other compliments that could be paid to Johnson. Bower is not strong on his sense of humour, or flashes of learning. He passes quickly, for example, over the impressive lecture Johnson gave on the Latin poet Horace in 2004. There are some characteristic Johnson touches in that speech (he emphasizes Horace’s hypocrisies, cowardice and compromises over the more dignified and stoical elements in the Odes; and reduces the poetry to the question of whether journalists are more important than politicians). But it is impossible to deny the ease and enjoyment with which Johnson cites Latin verse. And few other public figures would have observed that “there is a final sense in which Horace is not just a ward and protégé of Mercury but also carries out the ultimate function of that divinity”.

It is above all, however, as a successful politician that Bower invites us to admire Johnson. He bet on the side of Leave in the Brexit referendum when the polls were against it. He persevered after his first failed leadership campaign. He resigned as foreign secretary, although resignation is generally fatal to a political career. And on the basis of all this became prime minister, just as he twice before became a Conservative mayor in a Labour city. Then – having defied parliament and the Supreme Court, brought in an unpopular and provocative Chief Adviser, fired some of the most senior and well-known members of his own party (and also others including me), and called an election when the polls were unpromising – he won an astonishing majority. He appears able to sense and grab the tail of the galloping horse of history, when everyone else is still wondering where it might be stabled.

Even this underestimates his achievement. Johnson is not simply an opportunist, exploiting impersonal historical forces; he has often created these events – whistling the horse of history to himself, and whipping it on its way. In 2019, he faced the same Labour leader and the same Brexit conundrum that led Theresa May to lose her majority two years earlier, and with a highly personal and idiosyncratic campaign won an eighty-seat majority. And his disproportionate impact on that election, which was not apparent in the early polls, also suggests that he did not simply benefit from the vote for Brexit, but made it happen. Bower concludes, therefore, that those of us who criticize him – as I am about to do – are narrow-minded, prudish, inadequate or envious.

Perhaps it is envy. Johnson is after all the most accomplished liar in public life – perhaps the best liar ever to serve as prime minister. Some of this may have been a natural talent – but a lifetime of practice and study has allowed him to uncover new possibilities which go well beyond all the classifications of dishonesty attempted by classical theorists like St Augustine. He has mastered the use of error, omission, exaggeration, diminution, equivocation and flat denial. He has perfected casuistry, circumlocution, false equivalence and false analogy. He is equally adept at the ironic jest, the fib and the grand lie; the weasel word and the half-truth; the hyperbolic lie, the obvious lie, and the bullshit lie – which may inadvertently be true. And because he has been so famous for this skill for so long, he can use his reputation to ascend to new levels of playful paradox. Thus he could say to me “Rory, don’t believe anything I am about to say, but I would like you to be in my cabinet” – and still have me laugh in admiration.

But what makes him unusual in a politician is that his dishonesty has no clear political intent. Lyndon Johnson’s corrupt and dishonest methods were ultimately directed towards Civil Rights Reform; Alberto Fujimori’s lies enabled a complete restructuring of the Peruvian economy. Machiavelli argues on the basis of such examples that dissimulation may be necessary for effective political action. But Johnson proves that it is not sufficient.
I saw almost daily, when he was foreign secretary and I was one of his Ministers of State, how reluctant he was to push through even those policies that he professed to endorse. He demanded, for example, to know why we were not doing more for “charismatic megafauna”, but when I came back with a £9 million programme to work with the German development agency on elephant protection in Zambia, he simply laughed and said “Germans? Nein. Nein …”. He said, “Rory: Libya. Libya is a bite-sized British problem. Let’s sort out Libya”, but when I proposed a budget, and some ideas on how we might work with the UN and the Italians in the West of Libya, he switched off immediately. “Cultural heritage”, he told me, “is literally the only thing I care about in the world”, but again I could not get him to support a fund on cultural heritage. Even when he did rouse himself to action, as mayor, the results often seemed not what he intended – having campaigned against skyscrapers, for example, and in favour of emulating the architecture of Periclean Athens, he left a legacy of some of the most ill-considered, inhuman towers in London (Nine Elms in Vauxhall being a dramatic example).

Why? Was it that implementing his policies would have involved challenging another point of view and he did not want to make anyone unhappy? Did he lose interest because I had reduced “charismatic megafauna” to actual elephants, or “the bite-sized British problem” to a slow multilateral effort? Was it allergy to detail, which meant that, two-and-a-half years after the Brexit vote, he still struggled to understand the Customs Union, was blind to the issue of Irish borders, and kept saying that we could have a transition period without an agreement? Why did he fail to grasp the implications of Coronavirus in February?

Johnson’s explanation for all these things is that he suffers from the classical vice of akrasia. He knows what the right thing to do is but acts against his better judgement through lack of self-control. He is, in Aristotle’s words, like “a city that votes for all the right decrees and has good laws but does not apply them”. But Johnson’s lack of so many of the other virtues listed by Aristotle – temperance, generosity (he is notoriously reluctant to reach for his wallet), realistic ambition, truthfulness or modesty – is startling. It is hard to accept that in every case he agrees on what is good, and intends it, but somehow frustrates himself from achieving it – rather than in fact having quite different beliefs, priorities and intentions.

This lack of moral conviction is not a secret. Rather than fooling everyone, he has in a sense never fooled anyone. Siblings, parents, teachers, bosses, subordinates, colleagues and friends have always seen through him. His housemaster at Eton wrote about the teenage Johnson’s “gross failure of responsibility” and his sense that he was “an exception, one who should be free of the network of obligation which binds everyone else”. His first Editor at The Times fired him thirty years ago for lying. His next editor at the Daily Telegraph called him “a morally bankrupt cavorting charlatan, rooted in a contempt for the truth”.


And the public are fully aware of this. Nevertheless, millions voted for him to be prime minister – some with great enthusiasm. Is this because many assume that no politician could actually be diligent, competent or sincerely dedicated to public service? And that if someone – a Theresa May or Keir Starmer, for example – claims to be one of these things, they must be deceiving us? Johnson believes so, and this frames his political approach. “Self-deprecation is a very cunning device”, he explains, “all about understanding that basically people regard politicians as a bunch of shysters.”

His speeches, therefore, are written not to dampen but to titillate the public’s sense of scandal, and embarrassment. Take his most familiar speech, which begins with an attack on regulations, and Health and Safety, but continues:

“Which is why my political hero is the mayor from JAWS.”
Laughter.
“Yes. Because he KEPT THE BEACHES OPEN.”

“Now, I accept,” he goes on in an uncertain tone, “that as a result some small children were eaten by a shark …”

The audience follows Johnson down the path of their shared hatred of Health and Safety, only to discover with delight that he has, apparently inadvertently, endorsed the eating of children. Johnson never poses as our better – rather he goes out of his way to exaggerate his incompetence. Take again his central speech during the election campaign, when he stood in front of a row of police and asked:

You know the police caution? (Long pause while he apparently tries to remember) “You do not have to say anything …” Is that right? “But anything you say …” (pause) No … “but if you fail to mention something which you later rely on” … hang on let’s get this right … (pause) anyway you get the gist.

Instead of the politician who tries to impress us with knowledge, Johnson flatters us by allowing us to feel we always know more than him.

Why is this so particularly appealing? Is it that voters want him to confirm their distrust of all elites and high-minded stories? Or to validate some conviction that there can be no true moral or political purpose, no sincere vision of self or country? Or does his disregard for red lights, the edges of racism and homophobia in his humour, the flamboyant ricketiness of his life and finances, his refusal (until very recently) to eat well, drink sensibly, watch his weight, and still less act professionally, tuck in his shirt or brush his hair – while still becoming prime minister – make us feel better about ourselves? Is he a carnival lord of misrule allowing us to rebel against the oppressive expectations of our age, or a hand-grenade to be thrown at the establishment?

Whichever it is, Bower is wrong to suggest that Johnson is seeking to emulate the heroes of ancient Greece. Johnson states grandly that “every skill and every pursuit and every practical effort or undertaking seems to aim at some good, says old Aristotle, my all-time hero. And that goal is happiness”. But Johnson’s notion of happiness seems a much thinner thing than Aristotle’s life of honour and virtue. It is more akin to pleasure, and insufficient to provide a rich, flexible or satisfying purpose to his political life. Again, Johnson often compares himself to Pericles on the grounds that they both enjoy good speeches, democratic engagement, big infrastructure and fame. But Pericles built the Parthenon, not the Emirates Cable Car. And if, like Johnson, he had made and lost a £1,000 bet, he would have wanted to pay it, and be known to have paid it (rather than sending Max Hastings an envelope with a note saying “cheque enclosed” with no cheque).

These differences are not trivial. It is not simply that Pericles had more self-control, allowing him to act more prudently. It is that Pericles’ understanding of which drama and architecture to sponsor, when not to attend a private party, when to speak and when to be silent, and why fame was worthwhile, was rooted in a notion of personal honour, and the honour of the state. Gladstone and Churchill, also – in their very different context – had a sense of personal and national honour (and it can be traced from Churchill’s grand historiographical writing to his micromanagement of the detailed designs of a bomb shelter). Johnson does not. And if Johnson is not a virtuous Greek, still less is he a stoical Roman. Johnson’s delight in bluff, and in what the Romans would have called levitas and impudentia, is the antithesis of the Roman ideal – and a direct rejection of the Roman statesman’s dignitas and gravitas.


On Boris Johnson’s desk in Number 10 stands a bust of the Athenian leader Pericles – his “hero” and “inspiration” for forty years. Tom Bower, who has made his name trying to destroy the reputation of famous figures (from Richard Branson to Prince Charles), chooses in this new biography of Boris Johnson, to provoke through rehabilitation – to invite comparisons with figures such as Pericles by praising Johnson’s personality, talents, political successes and character.

Bower tells us that Johnson can be warm-hearted, kind and genuinely polite, that he is not gossipy or malicious, and that he is generous, believes the best of people and lacks pettiness or envy. He reminds us of “Johnson’s magic combination of intelligence, wit, cunning and exhibitionism” which – allied to a formidable memory, and a facility with words – has made him one of the most highly paid writers and speakers of his generation. He minimizes Johnson’s misdemeanours – not by omitting them, but rather by listing so many that they lose their power to shock. Thus, the first time he describes Johnson cheating on his wife, and lying, it is disturbing; but when Bower describes the fourth affair and Johnson’s claim that “It is complete balderdash. It is an inverted pyramid of piffle. It is all completely untrue and ludicrous conjecture …”, it is bathetic.

Things that would seem humiliating lapses in others (such as Johnson’s prevarications to avoid leaving his official residence when he resigned as foreign secretary) are made to seem predictable and “authentic”. The countless times when he lets people down subliminally readjust our expectations, so that on the rare occasions when Johnson does what is required for the job (gets up early to read his briefings as mayor of London, for example) it appears a sign of heroic diligence. And when Johnson behaves particularly badly, Bower is able to excuse it as a product of an unhappy childhood, with a mother who had a breakdown and a stingy father who (according to Johnson’s mother) kept them in cold houses, cheated on her, and hit her in front of their young son.

There are other compliments that could be paid to Johnson. Bower is not strong on his sense of humour, or flashes of learning. He passes quickly, for example, over the impressive lecture Johnson gave on the Latin poet Horace in 2004. There are some characteristic Johnson touches in that speech (he emphasizes Horace’s hypocrisies, cowardice and compromises over the more dignified and stoical elements in the Odes; and reduces the poetry to the question of whether journalists are more important than politicians). But it is impossible to deny the ease and enjoyment with which Johnson cites Latin verse. And few other public figures would have observed that “there is a final sense in which Horace is not just a ward and protégé of Mercury but also carries out the ultimate function of that divinity”.

It is above all, however, as a successful politician that Bower invites us to admire Johnson. He bet on the side of Leave in the Brexit referendum when the polls were against it. He persevered after his first failed leadership campaign. He resigned as foreign secretary, although resignation is generally fatal to a political career. And on the basis of all this became prime minister, just as he twice before became a Conservative mayor in a Labour city. Then – having defied parliament and the Supreme Court, brought in an unpopular and provocative Chief Adviser, fired some of the most senior and well-known members of his own party (and also others including me), and called an election when the polls were unpromising – he won an astonishing majority. He appears able to sense and grab the tail of the galloping horse of history, when everyone else is still wondering where it might be stabled.

Even this underestimates his achievement. Johnson is not simply an opportunist, exploiting impersonal historical forces; he has often created these events – whistling the horse of history to himself, and whipping it on its way. In 2019, he faced the same Labour leader and the same Brexit conundrum that led Theresa May to lose her majority two years earlier, and with a highly personal and idiosyncratic campaign won an eighty-seat majority. And his disproportionate impact on that election, which was not apparent in the early polls, also suggests that he did not simply benefit from the vote for Brexit, but made it happen. Bower concludes, therefore, that those of us who criticize him – as I am about to do – are narrow-minded, prudish, inadequate or envious.

Perhaps it is envy. Johnson is after all the most accomplished liar in public life – perhaps the best liar ever to serve as prime minister. Some of this may have been a natural talent – but a lifetime of practice and study has allowed him to uncover new possibilities which go well beyond all the classifications of dishonesty attempted by classical theorists like St Augustine. He has mastered the use of error, omission, exaggeration, diminution, equivocation and flat denial. He has perfected casuistry, circumlocution, false equivalence and false analogy. He is equally adept at the ironic jest, the fib and the grand lie; the weasel word and the half-truth; the hyperbolic lie, the obvious lie, and the bullshit lie – which may inadvertently be true. And because he has been so famous for this skill for so long, he can use his reputation to ascend to new levels of playful paradox. Thus he could say to me “Rory, don’t believe anything I am about to say, but I would like you to be in my cabinet” – and still have me laugh in admiration.

But what makes him unusual in a politician is that his dishonesty has no clear political intent. Lyndon Johnson’s corrupt and dishonest methods were ultimately directed towards Civil Rights Reform; Alberto Fujimori’s lies enabled a complete restructuring of the Peruvian economy. Machiavelli argues on the basis of such examples that dissimulation may be necessary for effective political action. But Johnson proves that it is not sufficient.

I saw almost daily, when he was foreign secretary and I was one of his Ministers of State, how reluctant he was to push through even those policies that he professed to endorse. He demanded, for example, to know why we were not doing more for “charismatic megafauna”, but when I came back with a £9 million programme to work with the German development agency on elephant protection in Zambia, he simply laughed and said “Germans? Nein. Nein …”. He said, “Rory: Libya. Libya is a bite-sized British problem. Let’s sort out Libya”, but when I proposed a budget, and some ideas on how we might work with the UN and the Italians in the West of Libya, he switched off immediately. “Cultural heritage”, he told me, “is literally the only thing I care about in the world”, but again I could not get him to support a fund on cultural heritage. Even when he did rouse himself to action, as mayor, the results often seemed not what he intended – having campaigned against skyscrapers, for example, and in favour of emulating the architecture of Periclean Athens, he left a legacy of some of the most ill-considered, inhuman towers in London (Nine Elms in Vauxhall being a dramatic example).

Why? Was it that implementing his policies would have involved challenging another point of view and he did not want to make anyone unhappy? Did he lose interest because I had reduced “charismatic megafauna” to actual elephants, or “the bite-sized British problem” to a slow multilateral effort? Was it allergy to detail, which meant that, two-and-a-half years after the Brexit vote, he still struggled to understand the Customs Union, was blind to the issue of Irish borders, and kept saying that we could have a transition period without an agreement? Why did he fail to grasp the implications of Coronavirus in February?

Johnson’s explanation for all these things is that he suffers from the classical vice of akrasia. He knows what the right thing to do is but acts against his better judgement through lack of self-control. He is, in Aristotle’s words, like “a city that votes for all the right decrees and has good laws but does not apply them”. But Johnson’s lack of so many of the other virtues listed by Aristotle – temperance, generosity (he is notoriously reluctant to reach for his wallet), realistic ambition, truthfulness or modesty – is startling. It is hard to accept that in every case he agrees on what is good, and intends it, but somehow frustrates himself from achieving it – rather than in fact having quite different beliefs, priorities and intentions.

This lack of moral conviction is not a secret. Rather than fooling everyone, he has in a sense never fooled anyone. Siblings, parents, teachers, bosses, subordinates, colleagues and friends have always seen through him. His housemaster at Eton wrote about the teenage Johnson’s “gross failure of responsibility” and his sense that he was “an exception, one who should be free of the network of obligation which binds everyone else”. His first Editor at The Times fired him thirty years ago for lying. His next editor at the Daily Telegraph called him “a morally bankrupt cavorting charlatan, rooted in a contempt for the truth”.

And the public are fully aware of this. Nevertheless, millions voted for him to be prime minister – some with great enthusiasm. Is this because many assume that no politician could actually be diligent, competent or sincerely dedicated to public service? And that if someone – a Theresa May or Keir Starmer, for example – claims to be one of these things, they must be deceiving us? Johnson believes so, and this frames his political approach. “Self-deprecation is a very cunning device”, he explains, “all about understanding that basically people regard politicians as a bunch of shysters.”

His speeches, therefore, are written not to dampen but to titillate the public’s sense of scandal, and embarrassment. Take his most familiar speech, which begins with an attack on regulations, and Health and Safety, but continues:

“Which is why my political hero is the mayor from JAWS.”

Laughter.

“Yes. Because he KEPT THE BEACHES OPEN.”
“Now, I accept,” he goes on in an uncertain tone, “that as a result some small children were eaten by a shark …”

The audience follows Johnson down the path of their shared hatred of Health and Safety, only to discover with delight that he has, apparently inadvertently, endorsed the eating of children. Johnson never poses as our better – rather he goes out of his way to exaggerate his incompetence. Take again his central speech during the election campaign, when he stood in front of a row of police and asked:

You know the police caution? (Long pause while he apparently tries to remember) “You do not have to say anything …” Is that right? “But anything you say …” (pause) No … “but if you fail to mention something which you later rely on” … hang on let’s get this right … (pause) anyway you get the gist.

Instead of the politician who tries to impress us with knowledge, Johnson flatters us by allowing us to feel we always know more than him.
Why is this so particularly appealing? Is it that voters want him to confirm their distrust of all elites and high-minded stories? Or to validate some conviction that there can be no true moral or political purpose, no sincere vision of self or country? Or does his disregard for red lights, the edges of racism and homophobia in his humour, the flamboyant ricketiness of his life and finances, his refusal (until very recently) to eat well, drink sensibly, watch his weight, and still less act professionally, tuck in his shirt or brush his hair – while still becoming prime minister – make us feel better about ourselves? Is he a carnival lord of misrule allowing us to rebel against the oppressive expectations of our age, or a hand-grenade to be thrown at the establishment?

Whichever it is, Bower is wrong to suggest that Johnson is seeking to emulate the heroes of ancient Greece. Johnson states grandly that “every skill and every pursuit and every practical effort or undertaking seems to aim at some good, says old Aristotle, my all-time hero. And that goal is happiness”. But Johnson’s notion of happiness seems a much thinner thing than Aristotle’s life of honour and virtue. It is more akin to pleasure, and insufficient to provide a rich, flexible or satisfying purpose to his political life. Again, Johnson often compares himself to Pericles on the grounds that they both enjoy good speeches, democratic engagement, big infrastructure and fame. But Pericles built the Parthenon, not the Emirates Cable Car. And if, like Johnson, he had made and lost a £1,000 bet, he would have wanted to pay it, and be known to have paid it (rather than sending Max Hastings an envelope with a note saying “cheque enclosed” with no cheque).

These differences are not trivial. It is not simply that Pericles had more self-control, allowing him to act more prudently. It is that Pericles’ understanding of which drama and architecture to sponsor, when not to attend a private party, when to speak and when to be silent, and why fame was worthwhile, was rooted in a notion of personal honour, and the honour of the state. Gladstone and Churchill, also – in their very different context – had a sense of personal and national honour (and it can be traced from Churchill’s grand historiographical writing to his micromanagement of the detailed designs of a bomb shelter). Johnson does not. And if Johnson is not a virtuous Greek, still less is he a stoical Roman. Johnson’s delight in bluff, and in what the Romans would have called levitas and impudentia, is the antithesis of the Roman ideal – and a direct rejection of the Roman statesman’s dignitas and gravitas.

Instead, Johnson’s way with words, his irrepressibility, his recklessness (and caution with money), his lofty references and brutal politics, and his tricks echo the less familiar moral universe of Norse literature. Like Egil’s saga, his life shocks and impresses us with the resilience, shamelessness and cunning (disguised as simplicity) that allows him to continually embarrass and defeat every conceivable authority and constraint – teacher and colleague, boss and husband – seizing power through trickery. Johnson may have a bust of Pericles on his desk.

But he is not, as he pretends, a man suffering from akrasia – someone who struggles, with shame, to live up to the ideals of a complex classical civilization. Rather, he is an amoral figure operating in a much bleaker and coarser culture. And it is in his interest – and that of other similar politicians around the world – to make that culture ever coarser. But unless we begin to repair our political institutions and nurture a society that places more emphasis on personal and political virtue, we will have more to fear than Boris Johnson.

Rory Stewart is a Senior Fellow at the Jackson Institute at Yale University
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/b...-rory-stewart/

At Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons on Wednesday last, Boris Johnson attemptd to ridicule the Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, Sir Keir Starmer, by claiming 'he wans to shut down Christmas'. On Saturday night, it was Boris Johnson who did just that. With the prospect of a No Deal on trade with the EU leaving the UK to trade on WTO rules from January 1st, it has been a remarkable year for a man who this time last year was riding the crest of a wave that has dissipated onto a beach littered with dead bodies.

Andrew Rawnsley in today's Guardian/Observer, has a good summary of a year in the life of Britain's Official Idiot.

"The coronavirus crisis could not have been more cunningly engineered to expose Mr Johnson’s flaws. He was made prime minister not because anyone thought that he was a cool and decisive head with the leadership skills and moral seriousness required to handle the gravest public health emergency in a century. He was put there because he was a successful representative of the entertainer branch of populist leadership that prospered in the pre-virus era. “We elected him to be a ‘good times’ prime minister,” comments one senior Tory. “His curse is to be prime minister in bad times.”
Few of his strengths as a politician have been of much utility in this emergency. All of his weaknesses have been searingly exposed. A man who spent his career ducking responsibility was suddenly confronted with a challenge that could not be run from, though that didn’t stop him vanishing at the outset when he went missing from critical meetings. In the coronavirus, he met an opponent impervious to glib slogans and empty promises. Here was a disease posing hideous and inescapable dilemmas that confounded the “have your cake and eat it” philosophy by which he had lived his life."

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...ar-of-debacles

Boris Johnson is very sorry we've had a 100k Covid deaths.
Britain Trump Cunt!

Agaiin: not a comedy because he was Foreign Secretary and is now Prime Minister. Nevertheless...

"Later, after Johnson quit as foreign secretary in July 2018, Duncan wrote that Johnson needed publicity like a drug addict needs cocaine. He also told the Spectator in September that year that Johnson “needs a regular fix” of headlines and equates it with political power.
In an entry made in September 2017, Duncan claimed that Johnson “despises” the former prime minister Theresa May and had accused her of disloyalty.
Duncan also claimed he had had a row with Johnson over a press report about diplomats treating him as an “international joke”.
Johnson is said to have asked: “Why don’t they take me seriously?” Duncan claims he replied: “Look in the f***ing mirror!”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics...uty-in-diaries

This is a trans pornsite/forum.

Can't you find somewhere else for this drivel?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by obslam

This is a trans pornsite/forum.

Can't you find somewhere else for this drivel?

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So what do you expect to find in the section identified as Politics and Religion? And do you have anything to say about a man who is known for his ignorance and incompetence, for lying to Parliament, who has presided over the award of billions of pounds of your money and mine to his friends and backers for services either run into the ground because the people concerned had no expertise (eg, Test and Trace), or which never got off the ground at all like the OneWeb scandal, a mere snip at £400 million?

You seem to prefer making snide remarks to debate- but you have every right to duck the issues, and be judged accordingly while the country I live in slides into bankruptcy, preferring isolation and conflict rather than prosperity and co-operation with the EU.

All great except your list of incorrect facts and that the country isn't sliding into anything like bankruptcy.

Like a lot of people you seem to have a great deal of confusion between actual fact, your opinion, future possibilities (or not) and media, agenda-led rumour/gossip.

But you keep on with your largely solo conversation if you like it that much.