Members banned from this thread: evince, katzgar and Guno צְבִי


Results 1 to 13 of 13

Thread: Boris Johnson is the EU’s nemesis. But could he be Europe’s saviour?

  1. #1 | Top
    Join Date
    Apr 2009
    Posts
    108,120
    Thanks
    60,501
    Thanked 35,051 Times in 26,519 Posts
    Groans
    47,393
    Groaned 4,742 Times in 4,521 Posts
    Blog Entries
    61

    Default Boris Johnson is the EU’s nemesis. But could he be Europe’s saviour?

    Brilliant article in the Spectator about BoJo!!


    It is a curious and rather moving experience to see someone you have known for thirty-five years standing in front of that famous black door in Downing Street. The idea that Boris is a buffoon is ridiculous to anyone who knows him. He is funny because he has a fundamentally comic vision of the human condition, like many clever people. You spend most of a lunch with him laughing. But he is one of the cleverest people I have ever met. His staff at the FCO said he actually read what they had written and asked for more. So I appeared on Sky News a few days ago bigging him up:

    ‘Don’t mistake his comedic ability for incompetence. Yes, he can’t see a joke without making it (an attractive failing) but he is extremely intelligent. He can wrong-foot you in an argument very quickly. He will be a leader who articulates a vision and a strategy to get there and then hires and motivates very good people to do it. I think he succeeded in doing that at City Hall.’

    I have found that appearance gave me a lot of street cred at my local Wetherspoons, where I am now treated as a person of national importance. The same can’t be said for my status at an Oxford high table, where my connection to Boris has made me a pariah. Dons felt the same way about Mrs Thatcher, of course.

    I do not live in London but, like an anthropologist, make field trips into the capital, sometimes prolonged and dangerous, and talk to people – members of the elite – who don’t realise just how different their worldview is from that of people who live and work in the provinces. Out here, Boris’s views on the EU find a ready echo in ordinary people.

    The Establishment might better consider how their opinions have got so out of kilter from the rest of the country. Rather than blaming Boris and Leave for appealing to the worst aspects of human nature, they might better try to understand how and why their views differ from a large chunk of society. Hillary Clinton’s comments, that Trump’s supporters were ‘a basket of deplorables’, catches this failure perfectly. In a democracy, this has electoral consequences for politicians, as Clinton now knows.

    Boris’s populism (for that is how it is going to be spun by some) has taken on two arguments, on which he may very well be proved right. First, that the nation state is the primary (perhaps the only) object of an individual’s loyalty to a larger whole. Second, that Brexit is a huge economic opportunity.

    Nationalism is condemned by some as an outdated concept. It certainly can be used for harm and is a necessary condition of most wars. But what if Boris is right and there is no equally effective substitute for the nation state? Perhaps, like religion, it can show people at their worst, but it may, too, bring out their best. Perhaps human nature and the love that many people have for their country cannot be easily overwritten by loyalty to a twenty-seven member semi-democratic club.

    Those of us who remember the rapidity of the collapse of another undemocratic, economically illiberal and unpopular multi-state coalition in 1991 would not be surprised if the EU disappeared equally quickly. I am not suggesting that the EU is anything like the Soviet Union but it does share at least those three characteristics with it. All history tells us that multi-state coalitions are fragile things. And the Soviet Union was also the subject of quasi-religious veneration by some lefties.

    By standing up to the EU, Boris may show it to be the paper tiger that sceptics have always suspected it to be. For the EU, Brexit presents an existential crisis – if Britain leaves and make a success of it, it is the beginning of the end for it. Others will surely follow, as squeaking rats scurry over the side of a sinking ship. For that reason, they were never going to make it easy for us to leave and May should have been prepared for a battle to the death – which means leaving without a deal.

    If Boris can get us out and then call to that basic, decent patriotism across Europe – to countries, rather than Brussels – he could be a figure of the same international weight as his heroes Churchill and Thatcher, both politicians with a visceral connection to the nation state.

    We know that Boris has prepared for being PM by studying the greatest of all his predecessors – what better preparation could there be than studying Churchill? – and perhaps what he says, and does now, could lead all Europe into broad, sunlit uplands. I wonder if we are now in one of those tides-in-the-affairs-of-men moments? Perhaps these are great days not just for him but for all of us.

    The second argument that has taken him to power is his articulation of a vision of Brexit as a huge opportunity, a giant Singapore, a free trade superpower off the coast of Europe, with a free trade deal with America and a free trade with Europe. Remain did not have such a powerful idea – all those who want Britain to stay in the EU can say is that it’s not possible to leave or that bad things would happen if we did.

    I spent a year living in Poland with a fairly prominent continental pro-EU politician and all the arguments I heard from him were: ‘It’s too difficult for you to leave’, rather than any concrete advantages to Britain. Other arguments were silly: ‘When you reapply we will make you drive on the right’. But these suggested that Leave had disrespected something sacred.

    Boris started that lese-majeste with comic Daily Telegraph stories on the Eurocrats’ anathema towards wrongly-shaped bananas or their supposed attempts to axe the much-loved figure of the Oxford college chaplain. But if there are concrete benefits to membership of the EU to counterbalance its costs (and there are some) let’s hear them.

    Theresa May conducted a masterclass in how not to negotiate. In future, business school students (and I used to be one) will be taught her EU negotiation strategy in order to avoid it. The textbooks of negotiation tell you that you need a BATNA: the Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement. In this case, leaving without a deal. But while May said no deal was better than a bad deal, she showed no sign of being prepared for this and it seems that Sir Humphrey and the Establishment had told her that it would be disastrous.

    How successful a PM is is often out of his or her hands. If the Falklands had not been invaded, then Mrs Thatcher would probably not have won the 1983 election. She would have been a female Edward Heath without the laugh. Instead, she became a great figure.

    So let’s see whether events will fall favourably for Boris. But Boris does have the personal qualities that could make him into a great PM. He has what Aristotle called greatness of soul – generosity of spirit, a desire to believe the best of people, a lack of pettiness and envy which is rather uncommon – so I do not think that the greatness of the office will find him out. It will come down to events and that means luck.

    Does Boris have luck, the quality Napoleon looked for in his generals? Well, so far, yes. He bet everything on the EU referendum and, against the odds, won. He has the great good luck of facing someone as spectacularly unelectable as Jeremy Corbyn, just as Mrs Thatcher did with the much more intellectually serious figure of Michael Foot; both of whom espouse a political philosophy that, for most people, was proven wrong long before its final collapse in 1991.

    I wrote to Boris a few days ago to congratulate him. I finished by saying: ‘Remember, Caesar, you are mortal and all political careers end in failure’. But you have a hinterland, a life of the mind and, like Cincinnatus, can retire when the battle is done to the cool and solitude of a library in Oxford and write more books, although you won’t be popular with the dons.

    I'm reading Boris Johnson is the EU’s nemesis. But could he be Europe’s saviour? via the app
    https://app.spectator.co.uk/2019/08/...r/content.html

  2. The Following User Says Thank You to cancel2 2022 For This Post:

    Stretch (08-17-2019)

  3. #2 | Top
    Join Date
    Apr 2009
    Posts
    108,120
    Thanks
    60,501
    Thanked 35,051 Times in 26,519 Posts
    Groans
    47,393
    Groaned 4,742 Times in 4,521 Posts
    Blog Entries
    61

    Default

    Bump

  4. #3 | Top
    Join Date
    Apr 2009
    Posts
    108,120
    Thanks
    60,501
    Thanked 35,051 Times in 26,519 Posts
    Groans
    47,393
    Groaned 4,742 Times in 4,521 Posts
    Blog Entries
    61

    Default

    Boris's most senior adviser Dominic Cummings pledges the Tories will take Britain out of the EU and then 'smash' Corbyn in an election because 'we control the date'

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-election.html

  5. #4 | Top
    Join Date
    Apr 2009
    Posts
    108,120
    Thanks
    60,501
    Thanked 35,051 Times in 26,519 Posts
    Groans
    47,393
    Groaned 4,742 Times in 4,521 Posts
    Blog Entries
    61

    Default

    I am surprised that this incredibly insightful article hasn't attracted any comments. It is written by somebody who has known him for over three decades and knows how he ticks.

  6. #5 | Top
    Join Date
    Dec 2016
    Posts
    28,698
    Thanks
    26,453
    Thanked 14,249 Times in 9,794 Posts
    Groans
    563
    Groaned 606 Times in 573 Posts

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Havana Moon View Post
    I am surprised that this incredibly insightful article hasn't attracted any comments. It is written by somebody who has known him for over three decades and knows how he ticks.
    I am optimistic that Boris can do it.

    What did you take away from the article?
    "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man."
    — Joe Biden on Obama.

    Socialism is just the modern word for monarchy.

    D.C. has become a Guild System with an hierarchy and line of accession much like the Royal Court or priestly classes.

    Private citizens are perfectly able of doing a better job without "apprenticing".

  7. #6 | Top
    Join Date
    Apr 2009
    Posts
    108,120
    Thanks
    60,501
    Thanked 35,051 Times in 26,519 Posts
    Groans
    47,393
    Groaned 4,742 Times in 4,521 Posts
    Blog Entries
    61

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Bigdog View Post
    I am optimistic that Boris can do it.

    What did you take away from the article?
    I knew that BoJo has a devastating wit and uses buffoonery to cover up a huge intelligence. It's wrong footed many in the past, although the likes of the EU and the Labour Party are genuinely terrified of him.

  8. The Following User Says Thank You to cancel2 2022 For This Post:

    Bigdog (08-18-2019)

  9. #7 | Top
    Join Date
    Oct 2016
    Location
    land-locked in Ocala,FL
    Posts
    27,321
    Thanks
    30,862
    Thanked 16,758 Times in 11,557 Posts
    Groans
    1,063
    Groaned 889 Times in 847 Posts

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Havana Moon View Post
    Brilliant article in the Spectator about BoJo!!


    It is a curious and rather moving experience to see someone you have known for thirty-five years standing in front of that famous black door in Downing Street. The idea that Boris is a buffoon is ridiculous to anyone who knows him. He is funny because he has a fundamentally comic vision of the human condition, like many clever people. You spend most of a lunch with him laughing. But he is one of the cleverest people I have ever met. His staff at the FCO said he actually read what they had written and asked for more. So I appeared on Sky News a few days ago bigging him up:

    ‘Don’t mistake his comedic ability for incompetence. Yes, he can’t see a joke without making it (an attractive failing) but he is extremely intelligent. He can wrong-foot you in an argument very quickly. He will be a leader who articulates a vision and a strategy to get there and then hires and motivates very good people to do it. I think he succeeded in doing that at City Hall.’

    I have found that appearance gave me a lot of street cred at my local Wetherspoons, where I am now treated as a person of national importance. The same can’t be said for my status at an Oxford high table, where my connection to Boris has made me a pariah. Dons felt the same way about Mrs Thatcher, of course.

    I do not live in London but, like an anthropologist, make field trips into the capital, sometimes prolonged and dangerous, and talk to people – members of the elite – who don’t realise just how different their worldview is from that of people who live and work in the provinces. Out here, Boris’s views on the EU find a ready echo in ordinary people.

    The Establishment might better consider how their opinions have got so out of kilter from the rest of the country. Rather than blaming Boris and Leave for appealing to the worst aspects of human nature, they might better try to understand how and why their views differ from a large chunk of society. Hillary Clinton’s comments, that Trump’s supporters were ‘a basket of deplorables’, catches this failure perfectly. In a democracy, this has electoral consequences for politicians, as Clinton now knows.

    Boris’s populism (for that is how it is going to be spun by some) has taken on two arguments, on which he may very well be proved right. First, that the nation state is the primary (perhaps the only) object of an individual’s loyalty to a larger whole. Second, that Brexit is a huge economic opportunity.

    Nationalism is condemned by some as an outdated concept. It certainly can be used for harm and is a necessary condition of most wars. But what if Boris is right and there is no equally effective substitute for the nation state? Perhaps, like religion, it can show people at their worst, but it may, too, bring out their best. Perhaps human nature and the love that many people have for their country cannot be easily overwritten by loyalty to a twenty-seven member semi-democratic club.

    Those of us who remember the rapidity of the collapse of another undemocratic, economically illiberal and unpopular multi-state coalition in 1991 would not be surprised if the EU disappeared equally quickly. I am not suggesting that the EU is anything like the Soviet Union but it does share at least those three characteristics with it. All history tells us that multi-state coalitions are fragile things. And the Soviet Union was also the subject of quasi-religious veneration by some lefties.

    By standing up to the EU, Boris may show it to be the paper tiger that sceptics have always suspected it to be. For the EU, Brexit presents an existential crisis – if Britain leaves and make a success of it, it is the beginning of the end for it. Others will surely follow, as squeaking rats scurry over the side of a sinking ship. For that reason, they were never going to make it easy for us to leave and May should have been prepared for a battle to the death – which means leaving without a deal.

    If Boris can get us out and then call to that basic, decent patriotism across Europe – to countries, rather than Brussels – he could be a figure of the same international weight as his heroes Churchill and Thatcher, both politicians with a visceral connection to the nation state.

    We know that Boris has prepared for being PM by studying the greatest of all his predecessors – what better preparation could there be than studying Churchill? – and perhaps what he says, and does now, could lead all Europe into broad, sunlit uplands. I wonder if we are now in one of those tides-in-the-affairs-of-men moments? Perhaps these are great days not just for him but for all of us.

    The second argument that has taken him to power is his articulation of a vision of Brexit as a huge opportunity, a giant Singapore, a free trade superpower off the coast of Europe, with a free trade deal with America and a free trade with Europe. Remain did not have such a powerful idea – all those who want Britain to stay in the EU can say is that it’s not possible to leave or that bad things would happen if we did.

    I spent a year living in Poland with a fairly prominent continental pro-EU politician and all the arguments I heard from him were: ‘It’s too difficult for you to leave’, rather than any concrete advantages to Britain. Other arguments were silly: ‘When you reapply we will make you drive on the right’. But these suggested that Leave had disrespected something sacred.

    Boris started that lese-majeste with comic Daily Telegraph stories on the Eurocrats’ anathema towards wrongly-shaped bananas or their supposed attempts to axe the much-loved figure of the Oxford college chaplain. But if there are concrete benefits to membership of the EU to counterbalance its costs (and there are some) let’s hear them.

    Theresa May conducted a masterclass in how not to negotiate. In future, business school students (and I used to be one) will be taught her EU negotiation strategy in order to avoid it. The textbooks of negotiation tell you that you need a BATNA: the Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement. In this case, leaving without a deal. But while May said no deal was better than a bad deal, she showed no sign of being prepared for this and it seems that Sir Humphrey and the Establishment had told her that it would be disastrous.

    How successful a PM is is often out of his or her hands. If the Falklands had not been invaded, then Mrs Thatcher would probably not have won the 1983 election. She would have been a female Edward Heath without the laugh. Instead, she became a great figure.

    So let’s see whether events will fall favourably for Boris. But Boris does have the personal qualities that could make him into a great PM. He has what Aristotle called greatness of soul – generosity of spirit, a desire to believe the best of people, a lack of pettiness and envy which is rather uncommon – so I do not think that the greatness of the office will find him out. It will come down to events and that means luck.

    Does Boris have luck, the quality Napoleon looked for in his generals? Well, so far, yes. He bet everything on the EU referendum and, against the odds, won. He has the great good luck of facing someone as spectacularly unelectable as Jeremy Corbyn, just as Mrs Thatcher did with the much more intellectually serious figure of Michael Foot; both of whom espouse a political philosophy that, for most people, was proven wrong long before its final collapse in 1991.

    I wrote to Boris a few days ago to congratulate him. I finished by saying: ‘Remember, Caesar, you are mortal and all political careers end in failure’. But you have a hinterland, a life of the mind and, like Cincinnatus, can retire when the battle is done to the cool and solitude of a library in Oxford and write more books, although you won’t be popular with the dons.

    I'm reading Boris Johnson is the EU’s nemesis. But could he be Europe’s saviour? via the app
    https://app.spectator.co.uk/2019/08/...r/content.html
    Very nice well-written piece from one who knows him well. BoJo is painted as an optimist and truly wants G.B. to be G.B. again and
    the hell with the Eurotocracy. The globalists will have deal with it, Great Britain prefers its freedom.
    Abortion rights dogma can obscure human reason & harden the human heart so much that the same person who feels
    empathy for animal suffering can lack compassion for unborn children who experience lethal violence and excruciating
    pain in abortion.

    Unborn animals are protected in their nesting places, humans are not. To abort something is to end something
    which has begun. To abort life is to end it.



  10. The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to Stretch For This Post:

    Bigdog (08-18-2019), cancel2 2022 (08-18-2019)

  11. #8 | Top
    Join Date
    Apr 2009
    Posts
    108,120
    Thanks
    60,501
    Thanked 35,051 Times in 26,519 Posts
    Groans
    47,393
    Groaned 4,742 Times in 4,521 Posts
    Blog Entries
    61

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Stretch View Post
    Very nice well-written piece from one who knows him well. BoJo is painted as an optimist and truly wants G.B. to be G.B. again and
    the hell with the Eurotocracy. The globalists will have deal with it, Great Britain prefers its freedom.
    Come the time, come the man.

  12. The Following User Says Thank You to cancel2 2022 For This Post:

    Stretch (08-18-2019)

  13. #9 | Top
    Join Date
    Mar 2016
    Posts
    15,536
    Thanks
    1,378
    Thanked 3,981 Times in 3,024 Posts
    Groans
    130
    Groaned 841 Times in 781 Posts

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Havana Moon View Post
    I knew that BoJo has a devastating wit and uses buffoonery to cover up a huge intelligence. It's wrong footed many in the past, although the likes of the EU and the Labour Party are genuinely terrified of him.
    what i really like about bojo is he understands that it is in the EU's best interest for a failed britain after brexit to keep other rebels in line so he plans according to that.
    is on twitter @realtsuke

    https://tsukesthoughts.wordpress.com/

  14. #10 | Top
    Join Date
    Dec 2016
    Posts
    28,698
    Thanks
    26,453
    Thanked 14,249 Times in 9,794 Posts
    Groans
    563
    Groaned 606 Times in 573 Posts

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Havana Moon View Post
    I knew that BoJo has a devastating wit and uses buffoonery to cover up a huge intelligence. It's wrong footed many in the past, although the likes of the EU and the Labour Party are genuinely terrified of him.
    Do you see any similarities between Bojo and Trump?
    "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man."
    — Joe Biden on Obama.

    Socialism is just the modern word for monarchy.

    D.C. has become a Guild System with an hierarchy and line of accession much like the Royal Court or priestly classes.

    Private citizens are perfectly able of doing a better job without "apprenticing".

  15. #11 | Top
    Join Date
    Apr 2009
    Posts
    108,120
    Thanks
    60,501
    Thanked 35,051 Times in 26,519 Posts
    Groans
    47,393
    Groaned 4,742 Times in 4,521 Posts
    Blog Entries
    61

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Bigdog View Post
    Do you see any similarities between Bojo and Trump?
    I know that some in America want to draw some parallel between them but apart from being blonde haired, tall and have a liking for the ladies I can't see it. Boris is a prolific writer, could have been an academic and is extraordinarily well read. The number of times I seen interviewers, thinking he was easy, being comprehensively destroyed by him.

  16. The Following User Says Thank You to cancel2 2022 For This Post:

    Bigdog (08-18-2019)

  17. #12 | Top
    Join Date
    Apr 2009
    Posts
    108,120
    Thanks
    60,501
    Thanked 35,051 Times in 26,519 Posts
    Groans
    47,393
    Groaned 4,742 Times in 4,521 Posts
    Blog Entries
    61

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by tsuke View Post
    what i really like about bojo is he understands that it is in the EU's best interest for a failed britain after brexit to keep other rebels in line so he plans according to that.
    The Germans especially will miss the Brits, we have always acted as a buffer between them and the Frogs.

  18. #13 | Top
    Join Date
    Mar 2016
    Posts
    15,536
    Thanks
    1,378
    Thanked 3,981 Times in 3,024 Posts
    Groans
    130
    Groaned 841 Times in 781 Posts

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Havana Moon View Post
    I know that some in America want to draw some parallel between them but apart from being blonde haired, tall and have a liking for the ladies I can't see it. Boris is a prolific writer, could have been an academic and is extraordinarily well read. The number of times I seen interviewers, thinking he was easy, being comprehensively destroyed by him.
    Boris is also a follower. No offense but he is a weathervane when it comes to politics. The closest the Brits have to Trump is Farage. Both are real leaders with a vision and work towards it. Farage with leaving the EU and Trump with taking on China.
    is on twitter @realtsuke

    https://tsukesthoughts.wordpress.com/

Similar Threads

  1. The Boris Johnson latest scandal thread
    By moon in forum Current Events Forum
    Replies: 47
    Last Post: 10-09-2019, 11:50 AM
  2. Boris Johnson calls the French 'turds'
    By Tranquillus in Exile in forum Current Events Forum
    Replies: 32
    Last Post: 06-30-2019, 06:05 AM
  3. Replies: 15
    Last Post: 03-14-2016, 07:45 AM
  4. Donald Trump, Meet Boris Johnson
    By Minister of Truth in forum General Politics Forum
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: 02-24-2016, 05:58 PM
  5. Boris Johnson for President
    By cancel2 2022 in forum Current Events Forum
    Replies: 8
    Last Post: 09-18-2012, 08:31 AM

Bookmarks

Posting Rules

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •