“We gotta get that solved. Gaza is—it’s a tragedy and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] wants to get it solved, and I want to get it solved, and I think the other side wants to get it solved. A lot of hate, long-term hate, but we think we’re going to have it solved pretty soon—hopefully with a real solution, a solution that’s going to be holding up.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Get it solved:

Make other people do things that correspond to the solution you want to see, irrespective of their or anyone else’s interests. The opposite of solve.

Contextual note

Trump’s language with reference to time must never be taken literally. What does he mean when he promises to “have it solved pretty soon?”

The peace candidate of 2024 promised to resolve the war in Ukraine “within 24 hours” once he had the keys to the White House in his hands. Not only has that not happened, there has been no progress on the various verbal initiatives he has taken. Most experts now believe that the war will either continue for years or end when Ukraine’s army and government collapse.

Trump can be quick and decisive, however. Didn’t he successfully apply his “in, boom, out” Trump biographer Michael Wolff claims he had announced days before “obliterating” Iran’s nuclear program by dropping multiple bunker-buster bombs?

Most serious observers believe that the current pause in hostilities after the “12-day war” is due to a on the part of Netanyahu’s government that had begun to panic at the extensive damage the Iranians were capable of inflicting on Israel’s military installations over the course of that brief conflict. Those same observers expect that the peace will be broken, most probably by Israel at a more convenient time. So long as the idea can be maintained that the US intervention has eliminated any prospect for Iran of advancing with its nuclear program, the “peace” is likely to hold. But even US intelligence appears to believe that the program has only been delayed, not destroyed. Few, however, countenance the idea that either Israel or the US has abandoned its ultimate goal of achieving regime change in Iran.

As for Gaza, Trump’s promise to “get it solved” rang particularly hollow as most experts see no basis for agreement between Israel and Hamas. Journalist Jeremy Scahill at Drop Site what most acknowledge to be obvious: “Since Donald Trump announced on July 1 that a Gaza ceasefire deal was likely, if not imminent, Israel has sought to sabotage negotiations through well-worn methods in an effort to block a deal that would end the war.” �� �� ��

Some attribute to Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, the great French diplomat who not only advised Napoleon Bonaparte but was instrumental in conserving France’s pivotal role after the Corsican’s defeat and banishment, the remark, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” (“The more things change, the more it’s the same thing”). To some extent, diplomacy — when it is applied seriously — serves to defend the long durée by seeking to avoid radical disruption, which rather than bringing about any kind of change tends to produce chaos. The disruptive approach of US foreign policy, especially over the past quarter of a century, offers a perfect illustration of such consequences, especially in the Middle East. Libya and Syria stand as exemplary of the trend.

Trump cannot escape from a mode of thinking conditioned by the reflex now built solidly into US culture: “time is money.” Americans feel the proverbial expression as a permanent pressure on them to act quickly and avoid spending too much time on working things out. They apply it to business as well as politics.

When applied to the realm of diplomacy, we might want to call it the doctrine of “soonism.” If you manage things on the basis of “sooner rather than later” you don’t allow yourself the time to fully understand the issues you’re trying to deal with. Unfortunately, Trump isn’t alone, nor is he the worst example. US President George W. Bush’s insistence on punishing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein for possessing nonexistent weapons of mass destruction with “Shock and Awe” was a far worse example of soonism than anything Trump has done. “We will fight them over there,” Bush, “so we do not have to face them in the United States of America.”

US President Joe Biden’s precipitation in seeking to immediately Russia from the SWIFT network based on the belief that he would reduce the ruble to “rubble,” while at the same time refusing to engage in diplomacy and, at the same time, instructing UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, to ensure that ongoing diplomacy be disrupted, provides another example of disastrous soonism. His team seriously believed that by acting quickly, Russia would not have the time to react. We now know that his calculation was erroneous. As a result, more than a million people have died, with no end in sight.

Soonism is the enemy of diplomacy, a form of traditional human communication based on the principle of taking the time to understand the stakes and hammer out possible solutions to unresolvable conflicts. The current debate around ending the war in Ukraine, which Trump promised to do in 24 hours, turns around two contrasting positions. On the Ukrainian and transatlantic side, it’s a “30-day ceasefire.” Thirty days is a value that corresponds to soonism. On the Russian side, it’s the examination of the “root causes.” Those roots descend deep into the landscape and have grown over time. They don’t belong to any short-term timeframe.

Is any other explanation needed for the easily observable fact that diplomacy has become an extinct art form?

Historical note

History advances through moments that may be short or prolonged. Many students of history, anthropology and sociology have noted the contrast between two extreme orientations of national or regional cultures. At one extreme is the idea that history can be understood as a series of dramatic events, often framed as showdowns between opposing parties or interests. In such cultures, people acquire a view of history as a series of “significant dates” at which different percussive events have redefined the course of history. At the opposite extreme, we find cultures that privilege the idea of the. They see even dramatic events and radical shifts of influence within power structures as blips on the radar. In their view, history plods on with the weight of a civilization’s mass, evolving slowly over time, while maintaining a stable worldview.

Trump, habituated to US business culture focused on short-term decision making, has a habit of seeing future events as happening “soon,” as all his recent comments on Gaza reveal. In typical Trumpian style, apparently referring to events that played out in 2005, he his judgment of Israel’s decision at the time to pull its settlers out of Gaza. “The Gaza strip. I call it the Gaza strip. One of the worst real estate deals ever made. They gave up the oceanfront property. It was supposed to bring peace, and it didn’t bring peace. It brought the opposite. But we’re doing pretty well on Gaza. I think we could have something fairly soon to talk about.”

We might see this “soon to talk about” as a step back from a few days earlier when he said, “we think we’re going to have it solved pretty soon.” Talk is cheap. But the notion of solving generally supposes some kind of lasting duration, even if not necessarily the historiographer’s longue durée. Last week it was about solving, this week about talk. That seems to be a pattern with Trump. He bandies about theoretical solutions, such as , the of Greenland and the of Canada, or building a on the Gaza coast. This makes for animated conversation, but anything resembling a solution somehow fades from our collective memory as a project or even a possibility.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Donald Trump’s “Soonism” and the Death of Diplomacy appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Jeremy Corbyn, the left-wing erstwhile Labour leader, is now no longer in the party. Under Starmer, Labour has moved resolutely to the center even as the Tories (as British Conservatives are called) have imploded into post-Brexit fratricidal bloodletting.

Related Reading

Keir Starmer – My Prime Minister, Member of Parliament and Friend

The UK has a parliamentary, first-past-the-post system. The candidate with the most votes becomes the member of parliament (MP) in each constituency. The party leader who commands a majority in the House of Commons becomes prime minister and governs the UK from 10 Downing Street.

The first-past-the-post system can lead to strange results. For instance, the Liberal Democrats won a lower percentage of votes than Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, but the former won far more seats than the latter in these elections. However, the Tories and the Scottish Nationalists were the big losers in 2024 while smaller parties flourished, as the table below demonstrates.

Unusually for any British government, the new Labour government is led by former civil servants rather than professional politicians. Starmer is a centrist who aims to bring back stability to the UK. Before his political career, Starmer was the head of the Crown Prosecution Service. His new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, worked in the Bank of England. Both have a reputation for competence and prudence. Like previous prime ministers Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss, Boris Johnson, Teresa May and David Cameron, Starmer and Reeves went to the University of Oxford. However, they did not come from affluent backgrounds or go to elite schools. They beat the odds to rise to the top.

Unlike leaders of the Left in many other parts of the world, Reeves is not promising any increased government spending. Instead, she is advocating supply-side economics to boost growth. In her first major , Reeves promised to make economic growth the number-one priority for her government through increased private investment, labor participation and productivity. Both Starmer and Reeves are fiscally prudent, which should lead the British economy to stabilize after a rocky eight years following the 2016 Brexit referendum.

Fund managers and business leaders in New York and London say that the risk premium for UK assets will go down because of the Labour government’s reputation for responsibility. They believe that Starmer and Reeves will steer a closer relationship with Europe, reduce frictions in UK–EU trade and give a fillip to house-building. In contrast to most other democracies, this party of the Left has won a thumbs-up from markets and business leaders.

Conservative meltdown facilitated Labour victory, now what?

As this author predicted in 2016, Brexit turned out to be “a damn close-run thing,” and what followed was madness. Prime ministers came and went with alarming frequency; Truss enjoyed less than the shelf life of a head of . Post-Brexit Britain could not make up its mind whether to become Singapore-on-Thames or a revived manufacturing power with rejuvenated northern cities. continued to be a problem. migrants to Rwanda did not excite the public. Johnson’s during the COVID-19 pandemic turned public chafing against draconian government restrictions into open anger. Sunak had the charisma of a dead mouse and demonstrated a gift for fatal political gaffes such as D-Day celebrations early for a meaningless television interview. In a nutshell, the Tories screwed up so badly that a Labour victory was obvious long before the elections.

Related Reading

The World This Week: A Troubled Marriage in Europe

Labour’s victory is massive. Yet it is a shallow one. Only one in five Britons voted for the party. Importantly, voter turnout fell from 69% in 2019 to 60% in 2024. In 2017, nearly 12.9 million people voted Labour. In 2019, this figure fell below 10.3 million. This year, a little fewer than 9.7 million voters cast their ballots for Labour. A graph by , a political and geopolitical risk advisory, tells an interesting tale of voting numbers and parliamentary seats over the last two British elections.

British politics have become extremely dynamic. New trends are worth noting. The significant vote shares of the right-wing populist Reform UK Party — second to Labour in 92 constituencies — and the Green Party — second to Labour in 41 constituencies — put pressure on Labour to improve immigration and environmental policies, respectively. Recent all across the UK show that voters are concerned about migrants flooding the UK. The Starmer government will have to restrict arrivals. In fact, immigration was a key reason why voters chose Brexit in 2016.

During the election campaign itself, Labour promised a more effective approach to tackling illegal immigration and a plan to bring net migration down by training British workers. Labour threatened to block non-compliant companies from sponsoring visas for their overseas employees. On his first full day as prime minister, Starmer the outgoing Conservative government’s plan to deport illegal migrants to Rwanda, saying, “I’m not prepared to continue with gimmicks that don’t act as a deterrent.” Instead, his government aims to curb small boats crossing the English Channel by hiring investigators and using counter-terror powers to “smash” criminal people-smuggling gangs.

On the renewable energy front, Starmer’s government has promised to accelerate the development of large projects by assessing them nationally, not locally, and ending an effective ban on onshore wind farms. The of the Green Party, as mentioned earlier, and the resurgence of Liberal Democrats (the party for the nice Tories of the shires) will make Starmer’s Labour more environmentally friendly than Sunak’s Tories. (As an aside, the Liberal Democrats’ in Tory heartlands saw them win seats held by five former Tory prime ministers.)

Most political parties with such a large majority would enact a far more radical agenda. Starmer is determined to do no such thing. Those close to the prime minister reveal that he is playing the long game and aims to be in power for at least two terms. Starmer is determined to win back Labour’s credibility as the party of responsible government after 14 years in opposition and the damage suffered under Corbyn’s leadership.

The country is now led not by alumni of the famous public schools (the curious British name for expensive private schools) but by leaders who hail from the working and middle classes. They are more self-reflective, grounded and rigorous than their Conservative counterparts. To put it in English Civil War parlance, Starmer and Reeves are Roundheads, not Cavaliers. After years of posh public schoolboys from Eton and Winchester ruling the roost, no-nonsense commoners are on top.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Left Won Big in the UK — But Look Deeper appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Brexit, a carefully orchestrated psychodrama fueled by the ambition of Boris Johnson, played out during a period spanning nearly four years. The British nation could finally affirm not only that it was no longer part of Europe; it had equally lost any sense of connection with the rest of the world.

Things have taken a further dire turn over the past ten days with a spate of extremely violent xenophobic riots spread across the “scepter’d isle.” Is the world witnessing the death knell of English culture, that for centuries fed and stimulated European and even world culture? John Donne famously told us that “no man is an island,” affirming that “if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less.” Has Britain now become that clod washed away into a state of utter irrelevance?

Events of the past week demonstrate that significant numbers of English men and women are willing to organize, demonstrate, assault, burn and destroy to prove that what unites their nation and defines their identity is essentially race and a skewed notion of national origin.

Britain’s new Labour prime minister, Keir Starmer will not have it. Leading the resistance, Sir Keir he is intent upon building “a ‘national capability’ across police forces to tackle violent disorder.” He believes it should include such as facial recognition. That should make average citizens feel safer and protected. What better way to defeat xenophobia than provide new pretexts for paranoia?

Others in Starmer’s government have identified non-technological solutions to the visibly degraded situation. The Guardian the approach of Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, who “said she was launching a review of the curriculum in primary and secondary schools to embed critical thinking across multiple subjects and arm children against ‘putrid conspiracy theories.’”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Critical thinking:

1. The opposite of conformist thinking, an ideal around which most national educational programs and curricula are designed in the interest of making sure citizens never become too curious about how their behavior needs to be controlled.
2. The single most important life skill that has traditionally been excluded from all national educational programs and curricula that have been crafted to promote conformist thinking and, though sometimes regretted, is unlikely to reappear.

Contextual note

One is left wondering what Philipson means when she says she will “embed critical thinking across multiple subjects.” Is she intending to build critical thinking into the learning process as a fundamental feature or simply add some new techniques aimed at spotting disinformation?

This is an important distinction. Critical thinking for learning can be framed as either a discipline unto itself — with its own rules, built on the grounds of epistemological reflection and logic — or as a useful gadget for categorizing things like “putrid conspiracy theories” and rejecting them as sources of disinformation.

The Secretary’s drift tends to suggest the second solution, which bears little resemblance to authentic critical thinking. It consists of providing a system for recognizing clues that something might be disinformation because of its apparent resemblance with officially identified conspiracy theories. But such a practice is the contrary of critical thinking. It is nothing less than propaganda.

When faced with insufficient evidence needed to account for a known problem, a disciplined scientist first constructs and then tests one or more hypotheses. Some of them may seem far-fetched, but truth is sometimes far-fetched. In contrast, when your aim is to identify and reject “putrid conspiracy theories,” correct hypotheses can be dismissed before being tested. This violates the basic premise of empiricism, the basis for scientific critical thinking.

Philipson explains, “One example may include pupils analysing newspaper articles in English lessons in a way that would help differentiate fabricated stories from true reporting.” If there was a serious method to what she proposes, this would certainly represent a much desired breakthrough in any nation’s approach to education. The first problem to recognize is that, contrary to her belief in something called “true reporting,” all reporting contains some bias. Here the notion of “true reporting” can only be a chimera.

Historical note

Let’s take a case from recent history to test Philipson’s suggestion. An interesting place to begin might be a slew of stories published by The Guardian starting in 2016. All were designed, in typical conspiracy theory fashion, to make the British public believe a falsehood: that because Jeremy Corbyn had expressed criticism of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, he should be labeled a rabid anti-Semite. The problem with determining that these were examples of false rather than true reporting is that it would require not only reading dozens of articles over a period of several years just to deal with one specific case, but studying the various objective reports on, for example, Israel’s policies that appear to be similar to apartheid. Can we expect school children at any level to engage in that kind of research and then apply their skills of critical thinking?

The other problem with that example is that it could create confusion about the meaning of “conspiracy.” The standard notion of antisemitism, citing the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” as the incriminating piece of evidence, is that anti-Semites are conspiracy theorists. But a study of The Guardian’s anti-Corbyn campaign might reveal something else: that The Guardian may have been part of a conspiracy organized by Britain’s powerful Israeli lobby so brilliantly (and controversially) exposed in a daring by Al Jazeera? Making such a suggestion about The Guardian might easily get one thrown into the basket of those who fall for “putrid conspiracy theories?”

Just to be clear, The Jewish Voice for Labour actually did explore the of that anti-Corbyn campaign. “In March 2016, the Guardian published a column by Jonathan Freedland with the title ‘Labour and the left have an antisemitism problem.’ If we could identify any single article as the starting point for the whole controversy, this was it.”

This and other articles to follow effectively led to the shaming of Jeremy Corbyn. “By the second half of 2019, bigoted views of Palestinians were so pervasive in British public discourse as to pass unnoticed.”

The self-inflicted wounds of Labour helped set the scene for the election of Boris Johnson. It was deemed a cautionary tale that established a simple principle, applicable anywhere: Criticizing Israel is a cardinal sin and a clear indicator of antisemitism. This principle is still in force for a majority of politicians of all parties. It has served to excuse what the International Court of Justice called a plausible genocide in January. Since January, the level of plausibility has significantly risen.

Britain’s Secretary of Education is right in principle, even if the practice she recommends is likely to be aberrant. Yes, it’s time to put in practice critical thinking at the core of our curricula, or simply bring it back after a long historical exile. Nurtured by Greek philosophers two and a half millennia ago, Western thinkers practiced it in various forms, from the disputio dear the scholastics in the Middle Ages and the inquiring minds of the French Enlightenment. But with the Industrial Revolution the cultivation of critical thinking was banished from our schools. The future for today’s youngsters is not open, critical dialogue. As everyone should know by now, it is about coding… or maybe trading or banking, something useful and cash positive for the practitioner. 

Look at the world of “public debate” today. What dominates in both politics and the media? Monologue. The college essay represents little more than proving one’s skill at the art of monologue. Critical thinking is born of… critical talking, or at least of active and even interactive exchange. But this is an age that conducts international relations as a zero sum game. It has abandoned diplomacy — which requires dialogue — in favor of waging war to impose “inviolable” principles. Talking itself has adopted the unique model of monologue. You’ll find it everywhere on commercial as well as social media.

Anyone interested in Plato’s monologues?

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Your Solution to Riots: Technology or Critical Thinking? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Once that brief period was over, the violence and destruction became so extreme and persistent that a literally burning question emerged in the form of speculation about whether there might be another one, hopefully of longer duration and — why not? — the prospect of a resolution of the conflict.

Hamas put together a plan that for a few days last week appeared to have some chance of success. US diplomats, led by both Antony Blinken and CIA Director William Burns, appeared to be assiduously mobilizing interested parties in the region to provoke a negotiated version of the proposal. The problem was that the warring sides — Israel and Hamas — had fundamental objections to what the other side was proposing. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu simply the proposal “delusional.”

Just as in the case of the Ukraine war, where the two warring parties — Russia and Ukraine — were joined in the fray by a third, non-combatant but thoroughly engaged party located thousands of kilometers away in Washington, the role of the third party was likely to be pivotal. Thanks to the testimony of multiple players in the negotiation round that took place in March 2022 between Ukraine and Russia, we now know that the third party, represented by its messenger British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, stepped in to make the decision to scotch an agreement that had been thrashed out and even initialed by the Russian and Ukrainian negotiators.

The Gaza situation contrasts with Ukraine in one significant way. The third party, again the US, appears to be promoting negotiations instead of seeking to prevent them from taking place. But rather than interfere in the decision-making and dictate the outcome, as Johnson did in Ukraine, the US has preferred the less engaged role of offering friendly advice rather than laying down the law. This attitude appeared in a The New York Times article US Secretary of State Tony Blinken’s reading of the situation. “It will be up to Israelis to decide what they want to do, when they want to do it, how they want to do it.” 

The article added this significant comment. “Shortly after that, Mr. Blinken delivered his own, much more measured, assessment of the Hamas offer at a news conference in Jerusalem, saying that while it had ‘clear nonstarters,’ it also left space for an agreement to be reached.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Clear non-starter:

The statement of a position whose rhetoric not only dispenses from the obligation to explore solutions through negotiation to avoid the effects of war but also limpidly explains the aptitude of the US government to justify the pursuance of genocide. 

Contextual note

A year ago our Devil’s Dictionary defined the term “non-starter” as used by Tony Blinken in the runup to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Secretary of State felt it necessary to explain why he felt it was useless to negotiate with Russia if the only trivial goal of such negotiations might be avoiding a war. The war, as we all know, not only was not avoided but has been prolonged, leading to an estimated death toll of 500,000 Ukrainians, whose interests the US claimed to be representing when it opposed negotiations.

Here is our definition of “non-starter” a year ago:

“A convenient term of dismissal of an adversary’s negotiating position as a reason to avoid engaging in negotiating. A particularly useful technique for anyone who seeks to aggravate a problem rather than solve it.”

The language adopted by the US State Department should not only surprise, but startle, anyone familiar with the traditions, rules and laws of diplomacy and more broadly in conflict resolution. In instances of hostage-taking, for example, negotiation is the required procedure. It has the status of what German philosopher Immanuel Kant would a categorical imperative: “an objective, rationally necessary and unconditional principle that we must follow despite any natural desires we may have to the contrary.” police department on the face of the earth knows that, at least in so-called enlightened democracies.

Israel clearly does not follow the rules of enlightened democratic police departments. It has notoriously formulated a military tactic called “the Hannibal Directive.” In the of former senior US defense official and ambassador Chas Freeman this doctrine “basically says that rather than get into bargaining over a hostage exchange, you should just kill the Israeli hostages along with their captors.”

Tony Blinken’s repeated insistence on refusing to negotiate to avoid or resolve a conflict because of the subjective perception that an announced position is a “non-starter” can legitimately be compared to the Hannibal Directive. It says, “If we don’t like what you’re suggesting, we prefer seeing the situation worsen, but in all cases, we refuse to consider your point of view, even in the hope of modifying it.” 

Historical note

Future historians will most likely note that Washington’s qualification of Russia’s proposals for negotiations in December 2021 as a “non-starter” made Russia’s invasion two months later more likely, if not inevitable. That doesn’t remove responsibility from Russia for the invasion, but it clearly implicates the US, who cannot pretend to be an innocent observer. The “non-starting” position of the US is a key element in the reasoning that led international relations expert John Mearsheimer to that the US was directly responsible for the war.

Historians will also note that the same logic that consisted of refusing negotiations in December 2021, prior to the invasion, applied three months later. There was a slight difference, however. In March 2022, negotiations had not only “started” without the US intervening to abort them; the two warring parties had reached what appeared to be an acceptable conclusion for both. At that point, the new diplomatic logic that gave us the term “non-starter” seemed to generate a new idea: non-finisher. Boris Johnson’s instructions to pursue the war and his promise of Western backing ended any hope of a lasting or even temporary peace.

The real tragedy here goes beyond the unspeakable human, political and geopolitical catastrophe visited upon Ukraine over the past two years and more recently on Gaza, with no end in sight for either conflict. A nation and a people’s homeland are being reduced to a in Ukraine and, according to some, a in Gaza.

The more general problem, the one that has made these recent wars possible, is the failure of diplomatic ideas and language. The retired French diplomat, Gérard Araud, published an entire book on the history of that decline and transformation in 2022,. His respect for language appears in the book’s title itself, where he plays on words, since histoire in French means both “history” and “story.” Araud tells multiple stories that define the history of diplomacy and trace its current decline.

In his concluding chapters, Araud explains that “in every conflict both parties are intimately convinced they are ‘right’ or acting within their rights. History,” he writes, “is a cemetery of lost causes that nevertheless represented the ‘right thing to do’ (“le bon droit”) or, to use a related bromide in contemporary English, ‘being on the right side of history.’”

When the language of diplomacy becomes indistinguishable from the language of propaganda, we enter into a world of forever wars. History generates its own organic laws that rarely conform to the kinds of abstract principles that enable a faux diplomat to invoke “non-starters.”

I’ll finish with another quote from Araud’s book. “History is a far more powerful force than all the virtuous sentiments or mercantile interests in the determination of a foreign policy.”

Refusing to listen to history is the ultimate “non-starter.”

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post A Postmortem on the Language and Reality of Diplomacy appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Should such activists, in that period and now, be termed “fringe Conservatives,” “ultra-Conservatives,” “radical right,” or “hard right”? The authors prefer “radical right,” since it encompasses the gamut of all such rebels.

Origins of the Neo-Right in the Brexit Debate

In those years, shrill advocacy for the Brexit concept quickly emerged. Tory Members of Parliament (MPs) had founded the European Research Group (ERG) in 1993 to counter, if not eliminate, EU influence on Britain. During the coalition years, the ERG, along with its supporters in business, the media and radical-right advocacy bodies, placed intense pressure on Prime Minister David Cameron to hold a referendum on Brexit. In 2013, Cameron agreed to offer the electorate a non-binding referendum on whether Britain should remain in the EU. Since, out of some 355 Conservative MPs, the ERG’s membership and subscribers in total are never thought to have exceeded 60, the outsize influence demonstrated by their success is evident. The ERG tail has continued to wag the party dog, or try to, ever since.

Campaigning both for and against Brexit was robust. However, the overall pro-Brexit campaign was on the whole better organized, better funded, and used far more advanced digital, online and social media methods to persuade voters. Crucially, it was also far more ruthless, employing blatantly alarmist “.” The official Vote Leave campaign also applied large-scale data mining techniques similar to those later used by Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign in the US. This was done under the direction of Dominic Cummings, whom Cameron once reportedly referred to as “” (see later). The 2016 vote delivered a small but clear majority preference to leave the EU.

While Brexit arguably had lofty objectives, its implementation and subsequent realities have witnessed and major long-term .

Radical-Right takeover of the Conservative Party

Since 2016, the Brexiteer/ERG agenda has morphed into a generalized . The insurgents not only espouse uncontrolled free market economic priorities and harbor a revulsion for the EU, but also gleefully and noisily assert a right-wing authoritarian stance on law-and-order issues. They display an unmistakable animus against the welfare state, benefit claimants, those suffering from social and economic deprivation, immigrants, asylum seekers, ethnic and religious minorities, and victims of human rights abuses and other injustices.

Such proclivities, which pander to populist reactionary sympathies, have more in common with those of far-right parties and groups outside the Conservative Party—such as Reform UK, Reclaim, Far Right For Britain, the British National Party, the English Defence League, Britain First and other fringe groups—than with traditional party values.

Although it is somewhat less extreme, this conversion of the traditional Conservative Party is analogous to the radical-right of the US Republican Party over a similar time frame. The “new” Conservative Party of the 2020s is thus Conservative in name only. Disturbingly, much of the electorate is unlikely to be aware of this radical change from its One Nation heritage.

The authors were both One Nation Conservative supporters for over 30 years until the scale of the Brexit debacle and the increasingly authoritarian nature of the Johnson administration became clear in 2019. There is substantive evidence of a concerted and sustained effort by Britain’s ruling Conservative Party since 2019 to impose permanent, illiberal, radical-right governance on the nation. Some of the top-down subversion and coercion (such as proroguing Parliament in 2019) is done openly, as if were perfectly normal and morally acceptable, while other examples involve long-term stealth against the public interest. Although One Nation Conservative MPs still exist, their numbers and influence have been all but obliterated by the dominance of the ERG, its derivatives and its fellow travelers. 

Case 1: Imposing Costly Private Healthcare

As we reported in detail last year in 51�Թ�, deliberate underfunding of the state National Health Service (NHS) and social care system over 13 years has brought these services into not just a state of chronic dysfunctionality but also virtual collapse. While publicly appearing to champion the NHS, in reality the long-term Conservative policy is to have free market private provision become the only viable alternative in the vast majority of cases. Their ideological imperative appears to be to place the delivery of such services under the primary control of private companies and to ensure that, in effect, state provision withers on the vine.

UK’s NHS is Broken: Is Private Medicine the Answer?

The NHS and private provision have had a long and largely successful symbiosis since the 1980s, with the primacy of NHS provision assured by state funding paid for by patients via general taxation and National Insurance. Private provision contracted to the NHS has been a vital contributor. However, with the Health and Care Act , the government appears to be pressing ahead with their new “healthcare salvation” model to replace the current NHS model with a direct pathway for private care companies, many of them foreign-based, to access NHS funds. Far from salvation, the impact is likely to be catastrophic for the level and amount of healthcare the NHS can provide, since NHS post-Covid recovery money and other funds will be diverted to boost the preferential use of private care. 

Until now, the limit has always been that private care providers had to be awarded an NHS subcontract in order to access funds for clinical procedures. However, recent indicate that NHS patients are now being given a direct choice of where to obtain their clinical procedures: either private hospitals (with weeks to wait) or NHS hospitals with months or even years to wait. This choice decision is now taken at the (ICB) level, much lower down the managerial hierarchy than previously and apparently without regard to budgetary limits and fair distribution of funds.

Whilst this sounds like good news for patients, the cost differential between private and NHS is huge, and some ICBs have already spent their annual budget as a result of this new relaxation. The NHS patients budget—worth about £200 billion (around $250 billion) per year and funded by tax monies and National Insurance contributions—is now unprotected and vulnerable to profiteering by private corporations. Ultimately, the public will pay the price out of their own pockets via additional taxation and private medical insurance premiums. Speed of provision is likely to improve for those who can access it. However, the new system does that private clinical provision itself will be superior to NHS provision, nor does it guarantee that affluent patients or those with private medical insurance will not be given preferential treatment. 

The Tories have more or less that the high likelihood of electoral defeat in 2024, their long-term rundown of the NHS, their drawn-out reluctance to reach a negotiated pay and conditions settlement with exasperated NHS staff, and an accelerated policy push for private healthcare have all merged into what some argue is a deliberate “scorched earth” mess to hand over to an incoming opposition government.

Case 2: Flagrant Attacks on the Judiciary, Civil Service, and Human Rights

The law is under attack by the radical right, which is trampling over the public interest and human rights. For example, in 2019 the Conservative government tried to prorogue (temporarily close) Parliament for five weeks to facilitate executive processes without scrutiny. The unanimously held that this action was unlawful, as it would have prevented Parliament from supervising the executive. Since then, the Conservative government has vowed to put a stop to what it regards as “judicial interference” in its governing activities.

Determined to push through its political agenda unhindered by judicial scrutiny, the Tories are proceeding in 2023 with legislation to (1) automatically and rapidly deport asylum seekers while denying their access to legal representation or appeal, contrary to international law and UN Convention (more specifically, to deport them —a destination with a highly dubious human rights record—if they cannot be returned rapidly to their country of origin or last known country), and (2) of the Supreme Court and the judiciary to intervene in this or other controversies. The Public Order Act 2023, for example, changes the fundamental right to to one of limited freedom, with police making preemptive arrests on suspicion of a protester’s intent.

In June 2023, the Parliamentary Privileges Committee (with a majority of Conservative MP members) found that former Prime Minister Boris Johnson on several occasions to Parliament—a cardinal sin—and to the Committee. He was disingenuous in his evidence to the Committee by denying that he had many times broken COVID social distancing rules: the so-called Partygate Scandal. The report was scathing in its conclusions. Johnson, adopting a blusteringly Trump-like response, made wild and derogatory allegations about the Committee and individual members, making himself look more like a spoiled, self-absorbed brat than a former prime minister.

The parliamentary on the report resulted in a huge majority in favor of its acceptance (354 to 7), with House Leader the only Cabinet minister attending. With dignity and clarity, she clearly why the report should be accepted. Many now hope that Johnson’s humiliation may signal an end to his style-over-substance brand of politics in Britain. After years of his buffoonery, charm and dishonesty, the public wants grown-ups as political leaders.

The Cabinet also sought to block certain judicial by Baroness Heather Carol Hallett, a retired Court of Appeal judge. Hallett serves as the chair of the Cabinet’s own official Partygate inquiry into Johnson’s possibly unlawful social distancing conduct and subsequent . In addition, the government has sought to impose a Cabinet override on the House of Lords (the upper chamber of Parliament) to prevent objections and protective modifications to its illegal Migration Bill. Subjugation of and contempt for the judiciary, as well as Parliament, has become a cause célèbre for this radical-right regime.

Since 2019, Tory government ministers and MPs have frequently attacked their own civil servants, variously accusing them of disloyalty, laziness and obstruction both of government policies and of the ministers’ determination to reform the Civil Service. For example, Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former Cabinet Office Minister and unashamed champion of the radical right, referred to Foreign Office officials as “” who “prefer to idle away their hours.” Justice Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab also blamed his enforced resignation for bullying on an alleged by civil servants.

Conservative anger has been directed at what ministers have called “,” whereby they assert that senior civil servants have closed ranks to obstruct the government’s agenda, even accusing them of supporting political opposition parties. What this government wants is to make civil servants its executive subordinates, to be its absolute obedient drones, rather than fulfill their traditional role as “honest brokers” and “devil’s advocates” trying to ensure that draft policies and legislation are lawful, feasible and as low-risk as possible, while steering ministers safely towards implementing their policies.

Unlike in some other countries, British civil servants are not political appointees. They are state employees whose work and posts normally transcend each change of political administration and thereby help to ensure governmental continuity and stability. Their overriding allegiance is to the Crown (i.e., the constitutional head of state) and not to any particular political administration; they are to remain politically neutral in their work for ministers of the day. Authoritarian Tories refuse to acknowledge this inconvenient subtlety and seem determined to remove it permanently.

Case 3: Cancelling of Inconvenient Expert Opinion

The Conservative government’s Cabinet Office has been accused of operating a political blacklist introduced in 2022 against acknowledged subject experts whom the Cabinet Office believes do not share the government’s views.

The government is now vetting such specialists by, among other things, screening their posts over the past 3-5 years on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn for “criticism of government officials or policy.” Such selective politicization and removal of inconvenient expert information and advice may result in the failure of decision-makers failing to improve their work. As a Times leader comment noted, these rules “are scandalously vague and flimsy” and “were never debated in Parliament nor publicly announced.”

The former Cabinet Office Minister Jacob Rees-Mogg is credited with introducing the new rules, with the Times headlined “Rees-Mogg’s Blacklist is Positively Soviet.” Others liken it to the US McCarthyist political blacklists of the late 1940s and 1950s: “Are you, or have you ever been, disrespectful to British Conservative Party policy or personnel?”

Case 4: National Impoverishment Caused by Tory Recklessness

Demands for pay raises in the UK public sector have risen on an unprecedented scale since 2022, with workers inflamed by domestic rising by 200% or more and double-digit annual percentage increases. Some basic foodstuff prices too have more than doubled since early 2022.

NHS doctors are fighting for a 30-35% increase just to neutralize the claimed fall in their salary value over the past decade. Nurses, ambulance drivers and ancillary staff, schoolteachers, and many other sectors have similarly high wage demands with similar justifications. The Royal College of Nursing, the UK’s largest nursing union, is on strike for the first time in its 100-year history. Large-scale strikes have escalated in the face of the government’s various offers typically capped at some 5-7%.

Government ministers are accused of demanding that public sector workers should, in effect, personally subsidize government coffers, and learn to budget and manage their meager personal finances better. One radical-right Tory MP (formerly of the Labour Party!) and Deputy Party Chairman, Lee Anderson, has even at the reality of significant numbers of public sector workers now reliant on food banks and charities and suggested that they could easily feed themselves on 30p (or 38¢) per day! Even some armed forces personnel are using food banks.

Another ERG luminary, , the shortest-lived British Prime Minister in history (44 days in 2022), disgraced and forced to resign by her catastrophic “growth by corporate tax cuts” policy that nearly collapsed the British pound, believes that poor people would somehow benefit quickly from the “trickle-down effect” of corporate tax cuts. Neither she nor her successor Rishi Sunak has ever publicly acknowledged that her ignorance of basic national economics and her ideologically driven certitudes recklessly damaged the immediate and long-term wealth and prosperity of the entire population. Emergency alone are estimated to have cost taxpayers over £30 billion ($38 billion).

Reckless endangerment, resulting from ignorance, incompetence, self-interest above national interest, and breathtakingly naïve ideological certitudes, has been the overriding hallmark of the past 13 years of Conservative rule.

A Collapse of Moral Standards in Public Life

There has been widespread evasion by Tory MPs and ministers of ethical standards in public life, established as a formal code by the Committee in 2001. The current government has been beset by a culture of sleaze similar to that which engulfed the Tory government in the 1990s, when the term “Tories-and-sleaze” became a national catchphrase. The following examples illustrate the breadth of the scandals since 2019 alone: 

— , former Secretary of State for Northern
Ireland: improper paid lobbying of government on behalf of a
food company; forced to resign).

— Nadhim Zahawi, former Conservative Party Chairman: evasion of
millions of pounds in tax liabilities; forced to resign
chairmanship and from government.

— Baroness Mone, Conservative Peer: alleged receipt into
offshore accounts of £29 million ($37 million) in bribes for
facilitating a contract for major COVID-related supplies with
commercial supplier PPE Medpro; forced to suspend herself
from House of Lords; under investigation by National Crime
Agency.

— Boris Johnson, former Prime Minister: multiple scandals e.g., (1) an
£800,000 ($1 million) loan guarantee for himself while Prime
Minister, facilitated by Richard Sharp, shortly before Johnson
recommended him for the BBC Chairman post (Sharp failed to
declare to the BBC a conflict of interest and resigned his BBC
chairmanship); (2) controversy over the scale of costs for internal
redecoration of the 10 Downing Street prime ministerial
residence and the source of funds to pay for it; (3) the Partygate
scandal involving multiple staff parties hosted or attended by
Johnson at Downing Street contrary to strict Covid protection
rules, and then whether he lied to or misled Parliament about
this.

— Scott Benton: accused of paid lobbying of ministers on behalf of
the gambling industry and leaking confidential information.

Other Tory MPs have been accused of sexual harassment, sexual assault or rape, including some convictions and jail sentences: , , Andrew Griffiths, and David Warburton, and .

A catalog of bullying cases has included Tory ministers (e.g., , ) mistreating civil servants, as confirmed by independent inquiries and forced resignations. Such “right of abuse” prerogatives are positively feudal. This bullying trait even extended to particular ministerial advisers, most notably Dominic Cummings, who was appointed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson as his Chief of Staff. The rise of Cummings is profiled by . describes Cummings as someone who has undoubted intellectual skills but also presents as “a hyper-authoritarian, driven, fixated, intellectual narcissist … a great believer in himself, his ideas, and his self-certified superior intelligence and … very disparaging of those he considers intellectual weaklings or who might attenuate or interfere with his mission.” It should be noted that Cummings was neither an elected MP nor a civil service employee, but rather a contracted consultant. Nevertheless, Cummings adopted a forceful, and by all accounts overbearing and contemptuous, stance towards Cabinet Office staffers, civil servants in ministries and, indeed, MPs and even Cabinet ministers. 

Cummings clearly held many in terrorem and apparently was not averse to physical violence, such as the in 1999 on a former of the Confederation of British Industry. As the leading adviser to Prime Minister Johnson, he created a major scandal by appearing to flagrantly ignore Covid protection rules that applied to every citizen and to which he himself contributed as Cabinet adviser. The scandal went from bad to worse as Cummings not only refused to apologize but in effect that he had been a paragon of virtue and had done nothing wrong. The court of British public opinion rejected such obvious sophistry. The damage to public trust and confidence was evident via a huge slump for the Conservatives in the polls. Eventually, after further misconduct, Johnson decided that Cummings .

Boris “BoJo” Johnson, who took over as Prime Minister in 2019, was very much a political opportunist rather than a radical-right zealot. Reliant on , photo-op flim-flam and the chutzpah that charmed many people, policy and strategy were never Johnson’s strong points. So, he left to Cummings such matters as “Get Brexit Done,” radical subjugation of the civil service and removal of independent judicial scrutiny of government. To many, it appeared as if Cummings was PM and Johnson was his lapdog.

Cummings did not go quietly in November 2020. True to form, he quickly launched into an ongoing against Johnson via online blogs and social media. Cummings’ powerful position is gone, but he remains an isolated and embittered radical-right fanatic.

Radical-Right Fellow Travellers

Some on the radical right exist within the Conservative Party (e.g., the ERG), while others operate externally in a variety of more hard-line nationalist parties and far-right entities, e.g., Reform UK, Reclaim, Britain First, Patriotic Alternative, and Far Right For Britain. Some radical-right supporters and agitators transcend the distinction between the Conservative Party and far-right nationalist organizations. The (NC) organization, for example, enjoys vocal support from Conservative Party Cabinet Members and MPs, particularly ERG members, as well as supporters of Reform UK and other parties. NC is in revolt against what it regards as a weak Conservative government, its neo-liberal economic and global markets policies, its “soft” immigration policies, and other “liberal” social policies. Three current or former Cabinet Ministers (Braverman, Gove and Rees-Mogg) spoke at the NC’s two-day conference in May 2023.

The NC identifies closely with the US-based , which strongly backs the Republican Party and big business. This foundation exudes authoritarian nationalism, right-wing moralizing certitudes and white Christian supremacy. Its high-profile radical- and far-right nationalist supporters include Giorgia Meloni, the Italian premier, Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian premier, and Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News presenter—all of whom have attained notoriety for their harsh and uncompromising “illiberal democracy” comments. 

A number of senior Tories (e.g., MPs Lee Anderson, Priti Patel, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and Marco Longhi) have been variously linked to such far-right organizations as the anti-Islam group UK. Other Tory MPs also alleged to have far-right sympathies Bob Blackman, Nadine Dorries, and . 

The fanatical Lee Anderson, MP, has an abrasive and insulting style, e.g., his conduct towards the Metropolitan Police Commissioner in a parliamentary select committee , and his dismissive let-them-eat-cake rhetoric towards impoverished public sector workers. Home Secretary with her florid rhetoric has led the anti-immigrant, anti-asylum, anti-woke “culture war.” There is some irony in the fact that her jibes about “woke political correctness” are themselves a truth-is-what-we-say-it-is expression of political correctness. By constantly blaming all Britain’s problems on a so-called woke culture (i.e., seemingly anyone who dares disagree with her radical ideas and policies), she is in effect blaming the 56.4% of the electorate who did not vote Tory at the last General Election. Sneering and jeering at voters is a bold tactic indeed!

Populist anxieties about thousands of asylum seekers entering the UK by boat have led to such spine-chilling rhetoric as “let them drown” or “send them to Rwanda”—shades of the infamous plan, perhaps? Few would disagree that there is indeed a control problem and that organized human trafficking criminals continue to challenge and thwart UK authorities’ efforts to stop them. However, the “solution” proposed by and her predecessor Home Secretary, Priti Patel, to the problem of cross-Channel small-boat asylum seekers is : treating them as if they were a priori criminals, locking them up without trial or access to lawyers or the courts, and then swiftly deporting them to Rwanda in Central Africa with no right of appeal and a permanent UK expulsion order against them. These two Home Secretaries have proclaimed loudly that such treatment is inherently humane and compassionate, and that it is compliant with international law and the UN Convention on asylum, despite the bluntly challenging that assertion.

Their grinning faces and glinting eyes when advocating the “Rwanda solution” have betrayed a lack of empathy or remorse and an unmistakable glee, almost as if they actually enjoy inflicting as much harm and distress as possible on unfortunate souls. Understandably, puzzled observers wonder if these particular ministers may be suffering from some form of pathological personality disorder.

Mass Political Brainwashing via Internet and Social Media

Some social media outlets have been criticized as being detrimental to democracy.  According to , “The world of social media is more conducive to extreme, emotionally charged, and divisive types of content than it is to calm, principled considerations of competing or complex narratives.”  points to failures of the  that have allowed outrage to be disguised as news, contributed to citizen apathy in confronting falsehoods and engendered further distrust in democratic institutions.

However, as  notes, social media presents the opportunity to inform more people, amplify voices and allow for an array of diverse voices to speak. Social media has allowed vast new sectors of society, especially young people, to be engaged politically.

Politicians of all persuasions are using social media, whether via written statements or, more commonly, direct-to-camera, talking-heads or controlled interviews. These are infrequently shared by other outlets; while they address a choir of faithful supporters and an echo chamber of fellow travelers, such content and messages avoid refutation by others. Among UK parties, the Conservative Party has become relatively expert in this kind of use of social media to garner electoral support.

All such attempts at mass indoctrination and manipulation, in essence, are merely following the acknowledged father of such principles, the Nazi propaganda minister . His strategy was to propagate false reality and false assertions by engaging the mass German public unwittingly in the process via radio, cinema, newspapers, public meetings, rallies and cultural organizations. He was enthusiastic about the deliberate use of lies for political objectives. The end-justifies-the-means character of the past few years of Tory government is eerily similar. Goebbels would probably have been ecstatic about the way these latter-day disciples put the latest technology to use. Regrettably, opposition parties, notably Labour, are also rapidly moving towards using similar methods.

The Damage is Ongoing

The latest Corruption Perceptions International Index shows that the UK fell to its lowest-ever position in 2022. The report observes that this sharp fall reflects a recent decline in standards in government and insufficient controls on the abuse of public office.

With its sleaze and corruption and its reckless endangerment of the economy and healthcare, the extant radical Conservative government has imposed an increasingly harsh, intolerant and authoritarian regime on the population and on democratic institutions such as the independent judiciary. Unchecked, such conduct is bound to accelerate. Liberal democracy, already becoming illiberal, will drift into authoritarian diktat. Government propaganda and public brainwashing, seeking to normalize its dreadful abuses, grow apace.

The strident dogma and stealthy maneuverings of Conservative leaders, and the overall radical-right caucus demanding permanent radical-right governance, have already laid the groundwork for what would effectively be a coup establishing an elective dictatorship. The plot appears to be underway, whether the Conservative government and party remain intact and under radical-right domination or the party is rent asunder by infighting and joins the motley bunch of radical- and far-right fringe parties that are already vying for supremacy.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Elective Dictatorship: The Plot by Britain’s Radical Conservatives appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The second reason is similar, but more extreme. It consists of the media’s refusal even to consider that anything significant happened before what they have agreed to call the “unprovoked invasion” of February 24. Characterizing the invasion as unprovoked has served to create the illusion that everything was coasting along smoothly until Russian President Vladimir Putin got the crazy idea to attack a neighboring country. The ensuing drama to handle in the news was simply the brave resistance of Ukraine as it refused to be dominated by an evil regime.

In January 2022, citing US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, The New York Times on the state of possible negotiations with Russia, whose troops were massed at the Ukrainian border. According to reporters Michael Crowley and Andrew E. Kramer “Mr. Blinken seemed to suggest that, by taking positions the West considers ‘absolute non-starters,’ Russia was making it hard to discern what it actually thinks it can achieve through diplomacy.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Non-starter:

A convenient term of dismissal of an adversary’s negotiating position as a reason to avoid engaging in negotiating. A particularly useful technique for anyone who seeks to aggravate a problem rather than solve it.

Contextual note

Blinken’s statement that what he considers non-starters makes “it hard to discern” Russia’s position should leave anyone with a logical mind speechless. If you want to “discern” something, you use the opportunity to explore it, rather than reject it. Even more illogical is Blinken’s qualification of what is literally a starting position –  a place to begin – as a non-starter. It is equivalent to complaining that the first round of a 12-round boxing match isn’t the concluding round.

The Contradictory Musings of Biden’s Speculator of State

In other words, Blinken refuses to try to discern tomorrow what he doesn’t discern today, even in the face of what appears as a potential catastrophe. With hindsight, we know that 2022 produced a catastrophe, not just for Ukraine and Russia, but for most of the world. Wasn’t that eventuality worth investing in a bit of discernment in January 2022?

We now know that in the early months of the conflict Blinken’s refusal of discernment continued. Direct negotiations that had begun between Ukraine and Russia were sabotaged, at one point quite explicitly by then UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. Negotiating positions that had already evolved in March and April thus became recategorized as non-starters.

In a change of approach, the 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary has taken the liberty of consulting the future global expert on all aspects of international relations… as well as everything else: ChatGTP. Here is how the AI app explained Blinken’s choice.

In the language of diplomacy, the term “non-starter” is often used to describe a proposal or idea that is considered to be completely unworkable or unfeasible. Recently, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken used this term to describe Russia’s positions on various issues, suggesting that by taking positions that the West considers to be “absolute non-starters,” Russia is making it difficult to understand what it hopes to achieve through diplomacy.

But what exactly does it mean for a proposal or idea to be a “non-starter”? In the world of diplomacy, where negotiations and compromise are key, the term implies that a particular proposal is so fundamentally unacceptable that it cannot be the basis for any kind of discussion or negotiation. It is a statement of finality, an assertion that the matter is closed.

However, it is important to remember that what one party considers to be a “non-starter” may not be viewed the same way by another. The label of “non-starter” is often used as a shorthand for dismissing an idea without much thought or consideration, and it can be used to shut down important conversations and debates before they even begin.

It’s also important to note that the term non-starter is often used in political context, and it can be used as a way for one side to assert dominance, or to avoid the real substance of the matter.

In conclusion, the word “non-starter” is a useful tool for describing something that is unlikely to succeed. But it is important to remember that the term can also be used to dismiss something prematurely, and it is important to consider all options and perspectives before making a final judgement.”

We should note that the AI app appears to know nothing and care less about the context of Blinken’s statement. In that it may be successfully aping the work of most mainstream journalists. It’s worthwhile noticing, however, that its conclusion correlates with my own observations.

Artificial Intelligence: Silver Bullet in a Pandora’s Box

I shall have more to say about our AI friend’s purported wisdom and writing ability in a future column dedicated to recommending ways teachers can harness its power effectively, essentially by working on context and perspective.

Historical note

As ChatGPT notes, those who possess power and refuse to share it are particularly inclined to qualify an adversary’s attempt to clarify very real issues as a non-starter. This is a recent historical trend evident over the past quarter of a century. When, after 9/11, the George W Bush administration refused to discuss with Afghanistan’s Taliban government their offer to capture and try Osama Bin Laden on the grounds that refusing to deliver him to the Americans was literally a non-starter, a futile war began that lasted 20 years and Bin Laden himself survived for another decade.

Israel consistently refuses to negotiate with Palestinians by branding them as terrorists. Since 9/11, that has become the most convenient ploy for applying Blinken’s non-starter attitude. In what might be described as today’s Cold War II culture, the world has clearly taken a step towards systematic intransigence that goes well beyond the aggressive incomprehension of the original Cold War. US President John Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev both possessed a famous “red telephone” that they actually used in moments of dangerous tension, such as the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. In 1963 the Kennedy administration established a permanent “hotline” with Moscow that still exists, but instead of being a personal connection between leaders it is a piece of strategic communication infrastructure between command centers of the two nations.

Stanley Kubrick’s movie, Dr Strangelove, certainly the greatest comic catastrophe film ever made, featured a scene where the two leaders –  the US president played by Peter Sellers and the Soviet premier –  attempt to resolve an impending nuclear conflagration cleverly engineered by a mad brigadier general empowered to launch a nuclear attack. Sixty years ago, at least some Americans and many in the media still believed dialogue was a normal way of addressing geopolitical crises.

The Ukraine war has brought the world closer to a nuclear brink. In such cases, and especially before the first critical step is taken, even if politicians cling to the idea of non-starters, responsible media should use such occasions to call their public’s attention to two things: the gravity of the problem and the possible hypocrisy of refusing a gambit when those risks are identifiable. In the runup to the Russian invasion, Western media did neither of those things. What it did do was focus on the decision-making of one individual, Vladimir Putin, as if it was the only significant variable in the situation. In so doing, they reduced a grave geopolitical drama to two dimensions: a single personality, Putin, as the cause and a single event, the actual invasion as an effect.

Geopolitics should not be reduced to two dimensions. The very idea that it might be reduced to two dimensions should be considered a non-starter.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Can ChatGPT Do a Better Job than Tony Blinken? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Like many foreign scholars before me, I debated at the Oxford Union. I met fiendishly clever debaters such as Ewan Smith, Sarah Munby (then Monroe) and Tom Hay. I also ran into knaves who are best left unnamed. In conversations with both the clever and the cads, a name came up repeatedly in discussion: Boris Johnson.

As a foreigner, I failed to see the charm of Johnson. To me, he seemed a pathological liar. Johnson was so transparently dishonest that it was surprising, if not shocking, to find clever people dance to his tune. Even then, he was truly a Pied Piper, especially for young Tories. They swore by The Spectator, used his phrases in debates and waxed lyrical about Boris’s brilliance.

Over time, I began to understand Johnson’s appeal. As I wrote on July 24, 2019, “this Old Etonian is a lovable Falstaffian rogue.” He is Lord Flashheart of the comedy classic Blackadder, a modern Henry VIII and even a portly James Bond known for derring-do and top-level shagging. Johnson breezes through life as the ultimate smooth-talking amateur, cool as a cucumber under pressure. In brief, Johnson or BoJo, as he is often called, is a British cultural archetype. It is for this reason that, in the words of fellow Old Etonian Cameron, Johnson “ all forms of gravity.”

A Supremely English Cad

Ken Clarke was once known as the big beast in British politics. Today, the big beast is Boris. Persistent lies, numerous scandals and even illegitimate children have failed to sink BoJo. Like a phoenix, he has repeatedly risen from the ashes.

Yet it would be churlish to deny that BoJo has managed historic achievements. He made Brexit possible. Nigel Farage alone could not have led the Brexiteers to victory. As inflation, rising interest rates and mounting debt increase strains within the EU, Boris might emerge as the modern day Henry VIII who paved the way for the great escape from Europe.

Henry’s reasons for creating the Church of England were not quite honorable but, arguably, the breach with Rome led to the British Empire. Brexit might not lead to Empire II but it could save the UK from a disaster-headed EU. Many equanimous Brits see the current turbulence as a passing phase. After all, German cars, French cheeses and Italian wines are still sold in the UK. In Ukraine, Brits are playing a role second only to Americans in taking on Vladimir Putin. And they can thank BoJo for it. There is life in the canny old dog yet.

Arise King Boris, Father of Brexit and Foe of Brussels

READ MORE

BoJo has proved to be a winner. In 2019, the Conservatives won 365 seats out of 650 in the House of Commons.  Under Boris, the Tories smashed the “red wall” of solid Labour seats in northern England. Not since Margaret Thatcher has anyone led the Tories to such a victory. Scandal and the loss of two key by-elections led to a palace coup. Conservative MPs ousted Johnson in much the same way as their predecessors defenestrated Thatcher. 

After a protracted leadership election, Truss won. Her government to have “the shelf-life of a lettuce.” Unfunded tax cuts and energy-price guarantees spooked markets, put the pound in freefall and caused bond yields to rise. The Bank of England was forced to intervene . Truss resigned after 45 days, becoming the shortest-serving prime minister ever. Some would argue that, like Thatcher and Theresa May, Truss was a Roundhead. Cameron and Johnson are Cavaliers. The English Civil War of the 17^th century continues within the Conservative Party with full-on blue-on-blue conflict. Now that a doctrinaire low-tax, high-growth Roundhead is out, Big Boris might be dreaming of returning à la the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

Dishy Rishi Stands in the Way

Even as Johnson is cutting short his holiday and flying back from the Dominican Republic, Sunak has already managed to get 93 MPs lined up behind him. Unlike Truss, Sunak is a Cavalier. He might be the son of immigrants but he went to Winchester College, a boarding school even older than Eton. Founded by William of Wykeham in 1382, the school’s former pupils are called Wykehamists or, as a wag remarked, the special ones. So special is Sunak that he confessed to not having any working class friends, causing some during his campaign.

Sunak is not only a Wykehamist but he is also a PPEist. He worked at Goldman Sachs, did an MBA at Stanford and became a partner at The Children’s Investment () Fund Management, a top-level hedge fund. At Stanford, Sunak met Akshata Murty, the daughter of an Indian software billionaire, and went on to marry her. Unlike Johnson, Sunak is a family man. There is not even any rumor of an affair. As a mutual friend remarked, Sunak is smart and can count. An affair would be far too expensive a proposition. He has a taste for fine things in life and his natty suits have won him the nickname Dishy Rishi.

In the leadership election debate, Sunak was on the money when he that the most pressing priority for the new government was inflation. He opposed any “unfunded spree of borrowing and more debt,” which he predicted would make things worse. When Truss said that inflation was because of loose monetary policy, Sunak declared, “borrowing your way out of inflation is a fairytale.” Sunak has been proved right. Many are convinced that this Goldman Sachs golden boy is the best man for the top job.

Big and beefy Boris faces slim and sexy Sunak on his return to 10 Downing Street. Some hold that BoJo will back out, let Dishy Rishi deal with the mess he has created, let Labour win the next election, screw it up and then ride back to power on a triumphal chariot as the savior of the Tories. Others argue that he will never let Sunak, the snake he picked out of obscurity, slither into 10 Downing Street. Dishy Rishi’s resignation led to Big Boris’s downfall. Now, BoJo is plotting revenge.

Like last time, most MPs will back Sunak. They want a safe pair of hands on the tiller. However, the 172,000 of the Conservative Party have the final say. They tend to be older and whiter in comparison to today’s multicultural and multiracial Britain. As a friend remarked, it is hard to get grannies in Dorset or Somerset to vote for a brownie fuzzy wuzzy even if he is rich and posh. The fact that Sunak’s wife had claimed non-domicile status, saving millions of pounds in tax, also makes many old school Tories suspicious. They have doubts about Dishy Rishi being entirely British.

Despite all his sins, the Tory rank and file adore Boris. They are likely to vote for him, not Sunak. If he can squeak through the parliamentary vote. Big Boris could well be back.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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There have been rumblings of possible mutiny within European circles. Even the head of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg recently, with a sense of anticipation, the necessity of reaching a negotiated settlement. He dared to ask the forbidden question: how much “territory, how much independence, how much sovereignty” might the Ukrainians be “willing to sacrifice for peace?” No sentiments of that kind and no allusion to Stoltenberg’s reflections were allowed to emerge at the summit. The leaders were certainly aware of Russia’s success in the east of Ukraine and Stoltenberg’s remarks.

But summits are not about weighing the issues, exploring the context and orientating a constructive policy. They are about political alignment and ultimately, for each of the leaders, electoral optics. The Guardian it as an occasion to sign a contract of solidarity in what is clearly framed as a proxy war against Russia. “The leaders are committing to supporting Ukraine for the long haul at their summit, with help for Kyiv and further economic action against Russia under discussion.”

Jokes about nudity

But all is not well in this unified assembly saddled with the task of representing the interests of populations that are beginning to express some doubts. The best demonstration of a troubled spirit is the Western media’s choice of a particular moment to focus on. It was a moment of levity that appeared to demonstrate the good spirits and unassailable solidarity of the group. The Washington Post the details of what the participants clearly intended as witty banter as the leaders of the Western world conversed in a moment of informal exchange while awaiting the official photographers for a group portrait.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, quite naturally, felt impelled to break the ice by demonstrating the quality of his aristocratic schoolboy wit acquired in his Eton days. He opened with a verbal gambit aiming at reassuring the others that the leaders collectively represented a privileged elite for whom anything goes. “Jackets on? Jackets off?” Johnson wondered out loud before creatively suggesting, “Shall we take our clothes off?” Evoking, but not displaying, nudity will always be the sure-fire means of provoking laughter among the crème de la crème, most of whom are in their 50s or 60s, but still need to remind themselves that their cream hasn’t quite yet curdled.

To make sure that he had no intention of going pornographic, but was instead focused on serious geopolitics, Johnson explained, “We all have to show that we’re tougher than Putin.” Everyone around the table was aware that politics always boils down to showing how tough you are. Disparaging humor towards one’s common enemy is always the most effective way of disguising one’s discomfort or fear.

Keen on demonstrating his adherence to the culture of wit expected in such an aristocratic assembly, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau kept the conversation alive by adding some graphic precision: “We’re going to get the bare-chested horseback riding display.” He knew this was a safe allusion, since the media long ago made sure that humanity had processed the meme of Putin riding bare-chested on horseback and turned it into an icon summing up the Russian president’s personality.

Trudeau’s scintillating remark couldn’t fail to impress. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen seized on the opportunity to shift the focus from Johnson’s obsession with nudity to horses. “Ah, yes,” she said. “Horseback riding is the best, though!”

But just as the one female at the table appeared to have diverted the topic towards horses, Johnson made sure that the point of his schoolboy humor emphasizing nudity would not be lost. “There you go! There you go! We’ve got to show them our pecs!” Johnson inclusively added. His “we” presumably included an invitation to Ursula to get off her high horse and join the boys’ locker room antics.

Johnson’s clever strategy to save his naked hide

Whether he exposes his pecs or not, Johnson is scrambling to use anything within reach to save his premiership. The Telegraph offered the that “Volodymyr Zelensky may be invited on a state visit to the UK to bolster Boris Johnson’s leadership credentials.” The Ukrainian president has become the political rock star of the year. Every leader in the West is now seeking photo ops with the 2022 superhero. Commenting on the scoop, Johnson excluded the idea of the Ukrainian superhero appearing on England’s green and pleasant land, at least so long as a war is raging in Ukraine. And Johnson has done everything in his power to keep the war raging. For the past three months, he has relentlessly opposed even the idea that the war might end with a negotiated settlement. 

Politico that, at the G7 summit, Johnson told the notoriously impenitent pacifist French President Emmanuel Macron that “to settle the conflict in Ukraine now would only cause ‘enduring instability.’” Johnson hates instability, which is why for the past six years he has promoted Brexit and, in so doing, snatched the premiership from Theresa May. Wars are moments of supreme stability proven to be particularly useful in protecting the careers of Tory prime ministers, a lesson Maggie Thatcher taught everyone 40 years ago with her glorious victory in the Falklands.

While all this is going on, Boris appears to be relying on his seductive good humor (that has brought him “brave brood”) and wit to convince his European jokester friends that his attempt to unilaterally cancel the crucial agreement concerning the border of Northern Ireland in the wake of Brexit is also a minor matter that merits no more than a few weak jokes and an indulgent chuckle.

“At the G7 summit,” The Guardian, “Boris Johnson said there had not been a row about the Northern Ireland protocol summit. He said there had been ‘little’ talk about it.” Is this Boris once doing his best, this time, to put a fig leaf over the naked truth of the vehement opposition coming from both Ireland and the continent? Even fellow Tory, Andrew Mitchell, complained “that the bill brazenly breaks a solemn international treaty, trashes our international reputation, threatens a trade war at a time when our economy is flat and puts us at odds with our most important ally.”

Boris Johnson’s culture of sophomoric wit and masculine bravado deceptively masquerading as aristocratic humor has been well served by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. No one today would dare not laugh at a Putin joke, whether it’s funny or not. Johnson’s own pecs that most observers would admit better merit the appellation man boobs ( as the NHS website tells us), if put on display, might very well outweigh Putin’s, but that wasn’t the point Big Boris was making. It was more of a “thank you, Vladimir for making it possible to use everyone’s indignation about your illegal invasion to help them forget about the mess I’ve created in Britain.”

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The most striking bit of gossip that I picked up was that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has knocked up his nanny and is expecting what might be his twelfth child. As rumors go, this might be as fictional as Nessie, the Loch Ness monster. After all, rumors have swirled in London and various capitals around the world for ages about the salacious private lives of the great men of the realm.

Yet I could not help but think that rumors about Johnson are taking this green and pleasant land back to the future. The current prime minister is supremely powerful. All Tory grandees have been defenestrated. The likes of William Hague and Kenneth Clarke may still go around giving speeches but they do not matter anymore. Unlike Winston Churchill or Margaret Thatcher who surrounded herself with big beasts in the cabinet, Johnson is now the only big beast among pygmies. Unlikely though this may sound, such concentration of power harks back to a bygone era.

Falstaffian Churchill-Worshiping Henry VIII

Johnson may play the buffoon but he is a classicist with a keen sense of history. He is one of the great characters of Eton, a great school that produced the likes of the Duke of Wellington and Orwell. As a child, young Johnson wanted to be . Later, he downgraded his ambitions and gunned to be prime minister. Not only has Johnson got to 10 Downing Street, he has got there in style and has etched his name in the history books. This Falstaffian figure fond of wine, women and song has delivered Brexit and won a thumping reelection.

In many ways, Big Boris is the modern Henry VIII who has broken with Europe. It may turn out to be a jolly good thing in the future as debt-ridden aging Europe fails to deal with its mounting debts, stubborn unemployment and now rising inflation. In the long run, Brexit might still turn out to be a jolly good thing after all. Johnson might end up like the historic Henry VIII figure who set England on the path of glory and empire.

Johnson, who is obsessed with Winston Churchill, is doing quite well out of the Russia-Ukraine War. Like his hero, the prime minister is enjoying his finest hour. He has boldly taken on the transparently villainous Vladimir Putin and turned the screws on Russian oligarchs who, until not too long ago, bought houses, yachts and football clubs. A few weeks ago, BoJo (a popular nickname for Johnson in the UK) dashed to Kyiv for a with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Yet not all has been going well for Big Boris since he moved into 10 Downing Street. Brexit was a long drawn-out affair. The Partygate scandal continues to rumble on. Tory grandees and the notoriously savage British press continue to hammer Johnson. The Economist has “foot-dragging, hard-heartedness, ineptitude and dishonesty”to be  typical of BoJo’s government. The venerable 1843 publication has gone on to say repeatedly that the Johnson “government is a fundamentally unserious government led by fundamentally unserious people.”

Most recently, BoJo lost what Al Ghaff and I have called “the most consequential local elections in decades.” Yet he remains firmly in the saddle because this “sly fox as a teddy bear” has chewed up the little rabbit coming out of the Tory hat named Rishi Sunak.

Cummings and Goings

The recent rumors about Johnson’s latest amorous adventure might be much ado about nothing. After all, nothing has stopped BoJo in the past. He is the great survivor of British politics. Nearly 18 years ago, Michael Howard BoJo for lying about an affair. BoJo came roaring back and is still riding high.

Yet there is always a sneaking suspicion that one day BoJo might not be able to manage yet another James Bond-style close shave. As the adage goes, even the canniest of cats have only nine lives. It is not without reason that Dominic Cummings, once an unlikely ally of Johnson, him “a shopping trolley smashing from one side of the aisle to the other.” Some of BoJo’s critics point to his private life as proof of Cummings’ observations and has repeatedly taken the mickey out of BoJo for never taking . 

Two years ago, when BoJo’s now wife and then girlfriend was expecting their baby, mocked Big Boris for fathering what was rumored to be his tenth child. Carrie Johnson has now given birth to another child, bringing that number to 11. BoJo has produced enough progeny to form a football (soccer for Americans) team. Now, rumors emerge that the man to “lock up [his] willy” might have failed to do so again. This time, his nanny is the lady in question.

Already, BoJo’s nanny has been in the . Apparently, Conservative donors have been ponying up the cash to pay for his lifestyle. This allegedly includes the salary of the nanny. Early this month, The Times — the real one in London, not The New York Times that is a target of my learned colleague Peter Isackson — asked, “Can Boris Johnson afford to be prime minister?” 

Given BoJo’s posh lifestyle and, presumably, “off the record, on the QT, and very hush-hush” payments for his many children, The Times’ question is most pertinent. Another Boris, the blond tennis superstar Boris Becker, once known for his booming serve and partying lifestyle, is in jail over bankruptcy charges. BoJo is unlikely to end up like Becker but he is clearly a prime minister under strain. If rumors of another child with the nanny are not just smoke without fire, then the BoJo shopping trolley might be careening completely out of control.

When is Private Life a Public Issue?

Rumors about BoJo’s child number 12 for the man in Number 10 raise a key issue about the private lives of public figures. In puritanical America, politicians were and, with the exception of Donald Trump, still are generally damned for what many Europeans might term moments of weakness or mere piffle. Gary Hart’s presidential campaign imploded when a lissome model was on his lap. David Petraeus had to as the director of the CIA for an extramarital affair and the ensuing kerfuffle. Such errant behavior is seen to be a reflection of poor character that disqualifies people from public office.

In France, presidents have long had mistresses. It almost seems that it is a prerequisite for the job and perhaps demonstrates nimble management skills required of any inhabitant of the Élysée Palace. BoJo has long maintained that his private life is his private life and that is that. In 2013, a British judge disagreed. He refused BoJo a gagging order concerning an illegitimate child taking the view that the public had a right to know about BoJo’s “reckless” conduct.

As my dear Dutch friend Jarst de Jong put it best, BoJo’s private life is a matter of public importance. It gives insight into the character and judgment of the British prime minister. A Jarst said pithily, anyone can cheat once because no one is a saint. A second time may be understable as well. But when someone cheats repeatedly and lies about it, then it reveals their lack of trustworthiness. BoJo seems to repeatedly betray those who love and trust him. That might not be the most desirable trait for any leader. 

BoJo’s repeated scandals also reveal a certain lack of awareness and understanding of risk. Taking risks is part of leadership but taking risks without understanding what consequences they entail is a dangerous habit. BoJo has long had a reputation for recklessness but has got away with the risks he has taken so far. Maybe, the twelfth child might inspire a play like The Twelfth Night.

Perhaps the UK could heed the words of , a man who first hired Johnson and packed him off to Brussels. Hastings also gave BoJo the “lock up” advice, which has so far gone unheeded. In 2018, Hastings wrote, “Johnson’s glittering intelligence [was] not matched by self-knowledge.” Calling BoJo, “Blackadder in a blond wig” with “remarkable gifts,” Hastings called Big Boris “flawed by an absence of conscience, principle or scruple.” The contrast with Gaitskell whose tombstone says fortitudo et integritas could not be starker.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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As the ballots are counted and results are declared across the country, a clear picture emerges: these local elections are the most consequential local elections in decades.

If the results of the local elections were to be replicated in a general election, we will find ourselves in territory where several scenarios could emerge, primarily based on and dictated by the number of seats secured in the House of Commons by the Labour and Liberal Democrats.

Bumbling Boris

Boris Johnson’s leadership of the Conservative Party has been a controversial one. The Conservatives and the country have not experienced a leader like Johnson before. His career as a journalist and politician is littered with transgressions and . 

Boris Johnson is the ultimate Teflon politician. In the words of his lifelong friend and rival David Cameron, “always been able to get away with things that mere mortals can’t”. Cameron certainly did not get away with the Brexit referendum that led to his downfall as prime minister. In contrast, Johnson has sailed through one scandal after another and won a thumping majority in the 2019 elections.

Before those elections, Johnson’s unconventional leadership of the Tories in its first few months involved unlawfully and removing the whip from 21 of his who voted to block a disastrous no-deal Brexit that the prime minister was pursuing at the time. Those MPs included party grandees and bigwigs such as former chancellors of the exchequer Ken Clarke and Phillip Hammond, and former ministers Dominic Grieve, Oliver Letwin, Rory Stewart, Ed Vaizey, and even Nicholas Soames, the grandson of the revered wartime Conservative Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Johnson’s leadership of the Conservatives involves an implicit pact between himself and his party. His history of transgressions and misdemeanors, and economic relationship with the truth and facts as well as his antiques are tolerated as long as he wins elections. In the 2019 elections, Johnson upheld his side of the bargain and delivered an 80-seat majority for the Conservatives.

In the wake of the 2019 election results, Tory strategists and spin doctors claimed that Boris’ antics and his scandalous personal life were always ‘priced in’ by large parts of the electorate. Last week’s local election results dispute this Tory claim. It turns out that voters repeatedly raised the scandal when campaigners and journalists turned up at their doorsteps.

The Conservative Party is extraordinary at winning . They are good at stealing the clothes of other parties and doing what is necessary to win. That involves ruthlessly knifing their leaders when they stop winning. No Tory leader has been exempt from this rule, including Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher. Yet Tory knifing is a clinical cold-blooded affair. MPs knife their leader when credible successors lie in wait to mount the saddle.

Boris Johnson: Bumbling Buffoon, Pied Piper or Churchillian Statesman?

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So far, Johnson has ensured that there is no successor lying in wait. Despite partygate and the , Johnson’s position is secure because he has ruthlessly eliminated all potential rivals. Rishi Sunak, the current chancellor of the exchequer, was once touted as a potential prime minister but, like Icarus, he has come down to earth. Johnson is a Balliol classicist who wanted to be “world king” when he was young. Cloak and dagger palace intrigues come naturally to him. Sunak and his wife have been thrown to the wolves by the so-called Bumbling Boris whose team have leaked juicy tales of the couple’s domicile, tax and financial affairs, causing outrage among voters. Sunak can now kiss goodbye to ambitions. A career managing his father-in-law’s billions from sunny California seems more probable.

The local elections have been nothing short of disastrous for the Tories. Nearly were in play. They were voted out in a quarter of the seats they were defending. Losing so many seats should put pressure on Johnson. His fast and loose reputation with the truth has finally come to haunt the Conservative Party. However, the Tories do not have any potential successors in sight and Johnson is secure for now.

Johnson is not like Cameron who resigned after losing the Brexit referendum. He has thick skin and no sense of shame. Johnson is not going to resign because he is found guilty of wrongdoing, misconduct or misjudgment. As one cabinet ally puts it, “He’s not going anywhere, his fingernails have been dug into the Downing Street window frames and he would be taken away kicking and .”

Johnson is certainly in the mood to fight back against any attempt by Conservative MPs to remove him from power. For now, he still has the support of the press. Tory-sympathizing journalists have gone into overdrive to spin the disastrous local elections as largely inconsequential and irrelevant for the Conservative Party. They take the view that these local elections were not a referendum on Johnson.

There is another key factor to note. The prime minister has a track record of resorting to unconstitutional methods, unlawful actions and top-level deceit to save his skin. At the moment, the only way Johnson will leave 10 Downing Street is through an election defeat.

Starmer Stakes All

Elections are complicated affairs. They are not as simple as one party or candidate beating the other. In general, power changes hands only when the ruling party loses energy, direction or cohesion or any combination of the three and the opposition party gets its act together to emerge as a ruling party in waiting. In the British system, any change in power takes two to tango. When John Major lost in 1997, the Tories were divided, discredited, exhausted and bereft of new ideas after 18 years in power. In contrast, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown offered fresh energy and projected competence. Like the 1997 elections, other changes in power were also such dual acts involving both ruling and opposition parties.

Currently, Keir Starmer is the leader of the Labour Party. He is a distinguished barrister who headed the Crown Prosecution Service. He took over in April 2020 after two failed leaders. Jeremy Corbyn presided over five turbulent and disastrous years. Before him, the uninspiring Ed Miliband squandered another five years. Starmer seemed like a sane and surefooted choice for the Labour Party. Here was a safe pair of hands who would  return competence and order to the office of the of Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition.

Unlike most of his predecessors, Starmer is not a political animal. His approach to politics is measured and forensic. His early performances during the weekly Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) caught Johnson off guard. Starmer’s lawyerly approach and mannerisms were in direct contrast to that of Johnson’s populist, colorful, and theatrical political style. This rattled some Tory nerves in the early days and cheered Labour backbenchers.

Starmer’s star has waned since. His back-handed political operations and communication blunders have not helped. Starmer is comfortable with big decisions but has a blind spot for the minutiae that drive modern politics. Some of these big decisions have long been necessary. Starmer has removed the from Corbyn and purged Corbynistas from key offices. Starmer has also worked hard to make Labour electable again.

On Monday, May 9 — three days after the local elections — Starmer rolled the dice to take the biggest of his political life. The Labour leader announced that he will step down if found guilty of breaking the stringent lockdown rules when he visited Durham, a historic city in Northeast England, in 2021 during the election campaign.

Starmer’s announcement is a very bold move. If he is cleared by the Durham Police, Starmer will stand tall next to a prime minister alleged to have parliament over partygate, a resigning matter under ‘normal’ circumstances. If Starmer’s move comes off, it will be the political equivalent of checkmating Boris Johnson. If Starmer is found guilty and resigns, his leadership will come to a premature end and it is unclear if the next Labour leader would benefit from such a move. The fate of British politics lies in balance on the Durham Police investigation.

Old Wine in New Bottle

Regardless of what transpires in Durham, the recent local elections provide a roadmap to toppling Tories from power. Starmer and Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey are carefully treading a once charted by their charismatic predecessors in the 1990s. Then Blair and Paddy Ashdown forged a Labour-Liberal non-aggression pact to unseat the Tores from power. Starmer and Davey hope this may be a winning model for the next parliamentary elections.

While Starmer only became an MP in 2015, Davey first entered parliament in the historic elections of 1997. He benefits from the advice of Baroness Olly Grender, a veteran of the Ashdown years known for her political nous. Starmer lacks Davey’s long history and subconscious memory but the Labour leader is proving to be ruthless and flexible in his pursuit for power.

Starmer and Davey might find it hard to replicate the Blair and Ashdown deal. However, the current leaders are well aware of the dividends such an arrangement could bring. If both their parties can avoid bloodletting, they could mount a challenge to Tories discredited by Johnson’s repeated shenanigans.

If the results of the recent local elections were replicated in the next parliamentary elections, the UK would have a hung parliament with no party having a clear majority. If Labour and Liberal Democrats can build on what they have done, they could oust the Tories. Both opposition parties have a strong incentive to cooperate and their leaders seem to be sensible enough to do so.

Brexit Dividend

Even though Brexit is now fait accompli, it continues to haunt British politics. The Brexit business model championed by hardline Brexiteers is flawed, irrational, contorted and thus bound to malfunction. The so-called Brexit Dividend of their dreams has so far failed to materialize. In fact, the Boris-led Brexit is turning out to be an expensive deal for the country. The independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has estimated “the in trade volumes to bring about 4% reduction in the size of Britain’s economy over the long run, in line with its pre-Brexit forecast”. Elsewhere, experts have calculated that Brexit is currently costing the economy to the tune of a week — and counting.

So far, the Tories have managed to hide the economic self-harm caused by Brexit. They argue that the economic downturn is due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the squeeze on household budgets and the cost-of-living crisis is chipping away at this Tory narrative. Voters might not yet be in the mood to punish the Conservative Party for Brexit, but they will certainly punish Tories for the pain they are suffering thanks to economic mismanagement.

Arise King Boris, Father of Brexit and Foe of Brussels

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For the foreseeable future, the Conservative brand will be intimately associated with Brexit and its economic consequences. The recent elections demonstrate that the national backdrop provides the mood music even for local voter choices. Westminster and Wandsworth Councils, two historically and symbolically significant Tory councils, were won by the Labour Party in the early hours of the morning of May 6. Safe Tory seats in affluent parts of Southwest England such as Richmond and St Albans fell to the Liberal Democrats. In the words of George W. Bush, the Conservatives have taken a “.”

The Disunited Kingdom

Bush never quite recovered from that 2006 midterm thumping. He left the US divided over Iraq and in the throes of a global financial crisis. Under Bumbling Boris, the Tories have embraced a disastrous Brexit business model and a toxic English ethnonationalism that threatens the integrity of The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland itself.

On May 5, Sinn Féin achieved a historic victory in the Northern Ireland Assembly elections. This has sent shockwaves through the Unionist Movement that seeks to keep Northern Ireland in the UK. Sinn Féin’s victory has caused further embarrassments, anxiety, and alarm for the Conservative and Unionist Party — the full name of the Tory Party — in London.

The Irish Question dominated British politics a century ago. After World War I, Ireland won its long-cherished independence from the UK and disintegrated into civil war. Northern Ireland remained in the UK but the broke out in the late 1960s. A violent sectarian conflict between Protestant unionists and Catholic nationalists caused much tragedy in this picturesque land till the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. This period of peace might be coming to an end.

Britain’s Still Got It

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Never before have Catholic nationalists who aim for the reunification of Northern Ireland with the Irish Republic wielded power in Belfast. The unionists are unlikely to accept the dominance of the republicans in Northern Ireland.

The election results in Northern Ireland have put into stark relief the Northern Ireland Protocol negotiated by Johnson with the EU. It was backed by his unionist allies, especially the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). In these elections, the unionists were divided and Sinn Féin trumped DUP to emerge as the top dog in Northern Irish politics. Together, the unionists have a greater vote share but the specter of a reunion with Ireland looms large.

Even as Northern Ireland threatens to slip out of the UK, so does Scotland. The Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) has campaigned for independence from London before. The SNP is now the natural ruling party of Scotland and is chipping away at the foundations of the union. In the long run, the SNP wants a second referendum and to turn Scotland into an independent nation. In the Brexit referendum, Scots voted to stay in the EU. Leaving the UK and entering the EU is the SNP ambition. Bumbling Boris and political gravity are helping their cause.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Tories Get a Thumping in Local UK Elections appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Even the borders of nations, the ultimate criterion for defining a nation-state, had become hard to understand. The idea of each nation was built on a mix of geographical, cultural, linguistic, ethnic, religious and ideological considerations. These became infinitely complicated by shifting relationships of dependency spawned by the dominant colonial model they all accepted as normal. And not just normal. Colonialism appeared to both Europeans and Americans as an ideal to aspire to.

Coming to Terms With the Game Being Played on the Russia-Ukraine Border

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Two world wars in the first half of the 20^th century had the effect of seriously calming the obsession of Western nations with their individual images. For most of the nation-states emerging from the Second World War, an air of humility became the dominant mood. Two hegemons emerged: the United States and the Soviet Union. But even those powerhouses accepted to work within the framework of an idealized system, the United Nations. That forced them to respect, at least superficially, a veneer of outward humility. The Cold War’s focus on ideologies — capitalism vs. communism — served to hide the fact that the new hegemons were the last two political entities authorized to assert the geopolitical power associated with the previous century’s colonial nation-states.

The current showdown between the US and Russia over events at the Ukrainian border shows signs of a return to the ambience that preceded the First World War. The Soviet Union disappeared 30 years ago, leaving a weak Russian state in its stead. The US has been on a steep decline for two decades since the confusion created on 9/11.

That should signify the existence of an opportunity for non-hegemonic nation-states to reemerge and potentially vie for influence on the world stage, as they did before World War I. After a century of adaptation to the consumer society on a global scale, however, the similarities may only be an illusion. 

Still, some people appear to believe in an idea definitively discarded by history. The New York Times’ on the latest posturing of Great Britain proves that the illusion is still alive in some people’s heads. In recent days, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been diligently seeking to drag his isolated, Brexited nation into the fray of Eastern European border disputes, conjuring up reminiscences of pre-1914 Europe.  

Over the weekend, British intelligence spread the “intelligence” that President Vladimir Putin is seeking to install a pro-Russian leader in Kyiv. Times reporter Mark Lander cites unnamed “British officials” who “cast it as part of a concerted strategy to be a muscular player in Europe’s showdown with Russia — a role it has played since Winston Churchill warned of an ‘Iron Curtain’ after World War II.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Muscular player:

An actor or performer whose wardrobe and makeup teams have the ability to turn the player into an image of Atlas or Hercules during a performance on a stage

Contextual Note

In the games that precede a major military conflagration, nations feel compelled to adopt attitudes that go well beyond their ability to perform. Lander quotes Malcolm Chalmers, the deputy director-general of a think tank in London, who explains that Johnson’s Britain “is differentiating itself from Germany and France, and to some extent, even the U.S.” He adds this pertinent observation: “That comes out of Brexit, and the sense that we have to define ourselves as an independent middle power.”

There’s much that is pathetic in this observation. In a totally globalized economy, it is reasonable to doubt the idea of a “middle power” has any meaning, at least not the meaning it once had. Outside of the US and China, Russia may be the only remaining middle power, because of two things. First, its geography, its sheer landmass and its future capacity to dominate the Arctic. Second, its military capacity carried over from the Soviet era. The rest of the world’s nations, whether middle or small, should not even be called powers, but “powerlessnesses,” nations with no hope of exercising power beyond their borders. Alongside the middle and small, there may also be two or three “major” powerless nations: India, Brazil and Australia.

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But, of course, the most pathetic aspect of the description of Britain’s ambition is the fact that Johnson’s days as prime minister appear to be numbered. He is already being hauled over the coals by his own party for his impertinent habit of partying during a pandemic. 

In a press conference in Kyiv on February 1, Johnson deployed his most muscular rhetoric. For once finding himself not just on the world stage but in the eye of the hurricane, he felt empowered to to the occasion. “This is a clear and present danger,” he solemnly affirmed. “We see large numbers of troops massing, we see preparations for all kinds of operations that are consistent with an imminent military campaign,”

The hollowness of Johnson’s discourse becomes apparent with his use of the expression, “clear and present danger,” a locution that derives from a US Supreme Court case concerning the limits on free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment. Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes used the phrase in his draft of the majority decision in 1919. It became a cliché in American culture, even reaching the distinction of providing the title of a Hollywood action movie based on a Tom Clancy novel.

As for his analysis of the clear and present danger, Johnson, who studied the classics at Oxford but maybe missed Aristotle, seems to ignore the logical inconsistency of assuming that if A (military buildup) is consistent with B (a military campaign), it does not make B predictable and even less “imminent.” That, however, is the line the Biden administration has been pushing for weeks. Johnson’s abject adherence to it may be a sign of the fact that Johnson is incapable of doing what Chalmers claimed he was trying to do: differentiate Britain — even “to some extent” — from the US.

Historical Note

The Times’ Mark Lander is well aware of the hyperreal bravado that explains Johnson’s move. “The theatrical timing and cloak-and-dagger nature of the intelligence disclosure,” Lander writes, “which came in the midst of a roiling political scandal at home, raised a more cynical question: whether some in the British government were simply eager to deflect attention from the problems that threaten to topple Prime Minister Boris Johnson.”

Lander goes on to cite Karen Pierce, the British ambassador to the United States, eager to remind people of the historical logic of Johnson’s move. She refers to a British tradition rife with cloaks and daggers. “Where the Russians are concerned, you’ll always find the U.K. at the forward end of the spectrum.” She wants us to think back to Britain’s active participation in the Cold War, punctuated by an occasionally embarrassing episode such as the 1961 Profumo affair, starring model and escort Christine Keeler. But she knows that what best illustrates that glorious period for Britain in its holy struggle against the Soviet Union is James Bond, who has long been “at the forward end” of the Hollywood spectrum. In our hyperreal world, Pierce knows that fiction will always dominate and replace our understanding of reality. 

We need to ask another question in a world conditioned by the image of Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson. Does the world really need muscular players today? The ancient Greeks imagined Heracles as a naturally muscular hero, who built up his bulk through his deeds, not through his workouts in the gym or to prepare for body-building competitions. Heracles was about killing lions with his bare hands, slaying Hydras, capturing bulls, and even cleaning stables — that is, getting things done. For the Greeks, Heracles was a muscular being, not a muscular player. 

When Greek playwrights actually put Heracles on the stage, he could be tragic (Euripides, “The Tragedy of Herakles”) or comic (Aristophanes, “The Frogs”). In that sense, Arnold Schwarzenegger, from “Conan the Barbarian” to “Twins,” fits the role. The difference is that Heracles was a deity (the son of Zeus with the mortal Alcmene) and, thanks to the completion of his seven labors, became a god on Mount Olympus. When Schwarzenegger completed his labors as a muscular player in more than seven films, he became a Republican politician in California.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Boris Johnson’s Convenient Bravado appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The Uncomfortable Presence of US Politicians at COP26

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Cox is not an isolated case. It follows that of MP Owen Paterson, who was forced to resign. Reacting to what The Guardian as “revelations about the private earnings of his party colleagues,” UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson expressed his faith in his nation’s integrity. “I genuinely believe,” Johnson insisted, “that the UK is not remotely a corrupt country, nor do I believe that our institutions are corrupt.” 

�մǻ岹��’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Believe:

When used affirmatively, as in “I believe,” to accept an idea or proposition as credible and even probable

When used negatively, as in “I don’t believe,” the verb serves to deny what is both credible and probable. This is especially true when preceded by adverbs such as “genuinely,” “sincerely” or “truly.”

Contextual Note

The Guardian sums up the nature of the scandal as “a flurry of claims about MPs’ lucrative second jobs and whether they create conflicts of interest.” How on earth, Johnson appears to be wondering, do the self-appointed moralists imagine that earning large sums of money from other sources could possibly influence the integrity of public servants? Don’t they know — as billionaire Donald Trump insisted during his presidential campaign in the US — that good government can only be carried out by people so flush with money that they can think and act with total independence? The reason they seek massive amounts of supplementary income is precisely to ensure that they will not be influenced by the pressures typically felt by people who have no idea where their next meal will come from.

Reaffirming what many Western politicians like to cite as the founding principle of their brand of civilization — the ethics of a “rules-based order” — Johnson affirmed his belief that the solution would be simply to apply the rules. “I think what you’ve got is cases where, sadly, MPs have broken the rules in the past, may be guilty of breaking the rules today,” he said. “The most important thing is, those who break the rules must be investigated and should be punished.” His distinction between “must” (be investigated) and “should” (be punished) would itself be worth investigating.

Pushed further, Johnson insisted that “‘it is crucial that MPs follow the rules’ by devoting themselves primarily to their constituents and avoiding ‘paid advocacy.’” Paid advocacy is a synonym for lobbying. Paterson chose to resign, which could be called one way of respecting the rules. He blatantly lobbied “the government on behalf of two companies paying him more than £100,000 a year.” How indiscreet!

American politicians — for example, Senator Joe Manchin — can only be astonished at Paterson’s amateurism. In a democracy, as opposed to Britain’s monarchy, there is no upper class that supposes traditions will allow it to get away with abusing its privileges. American ingenuity has crafted much more sophisticated ways of doing it. It works through campaign financing and revolving doors, insider or, as in Manchin’s own case, having a major stake in companies that may be the object of legislation or getting his daughter appointed CEO of a pharmaceutical company.

Commenting on the scandal of 44 US legislators “who’ve failed to properly report their financial trades as mandated by the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012, also known as the STOCK Act,” Business Insider that ethics “watchdogs and even some members of Congress have called for stricter penalties or even a ban on federal lawmakers from trading individual stocks, although neither has come to pass.” 

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Nor are they likely to come to pass. Not because members of Congress are thought of in the same privileged terms as the UK’s upper class, but because in the American value system, speculating on the stock market is considered not just a legitimate activity, but also a healthy sport on a par with baseball. People see investing in the stock as a patriotic act. Taking advantage of the (insider) knowledge that falls into your lap is little more than exercising “good sense” or, at worst, assertiveness. You can never accuse an American of being too patriotic or too assertive, even when the behavior amounts to breaking the rules.

One thing that differentiates British from American political corruption is the traditional British upper-class sense of honor that has been largely adopted by the nouveau-riche upper-middle class. True to the style required of people of his standing, rather than adamantly denying the facts, after being found out, Cox accepts to humbly submit to the judgment of his peers. To maintain his dignity, it suffices that he “not believe” in his culpability, just as Johnson doesn’t believe Britain is corrupt.

“He does not believe,” The Guardian notes of Cox, “that he breached the rules, but will of course accept the judgment of the parliamentary commissioner or of the committee on the matter.” American politicians deny, contest or eventually appeal their way to the Supreme Court. Alternatively, if they fear the inevitable, they can propose to enter rehab. They are not likely to patiently await and respect the judgment of the authorities who accuse them.

Historical Note

As both an outsider and insider of Britain’s upper-class culture, Boris Johnson may not believe that the UK and its institutions are corrupt, but he has had multiple opportunities to see it at work, even in his own career. In 2019, he was the subject of a corruption scandal. It wasn’t on the scale of the millions of pounds Sir Geoffrey Cox and Owen Paterson seem to have earned.

Moreover, Johnson was the giver rather than the receiver of favors. But what most differentiates his public case of corruption is the fact that it was about sexual attraction to a blonde, ambitious American businesswoman who apparently had some sort of “relationship” with Johnson. Jennifer Arcuri, The Guardian at the time, “was also given thousands of pounds of sponsorship by the mayor’s promotional agency London & Partners and access to trade trips with Johnson despite failing to meeting the criteria.” In other words, Johnson’s most visible personal experience of corruption can be deemed shockingly minor league.

A scandal that emerged this year proved to be slightly more significant. Johnson’s former protégé, Dominic Cummings, provoked a formal investigation of possible public financing of an expensive plan to renovate the prime minister’s apartment. The conducted by the independent adviser on ministers’ interests, Sir Christopher Geidt, ended by clearing Johnson of the principal charges but found “‘reasonable grounds’ to suspect that multiple offences might have been committed.”

These incidents help to clarify why Johnson doesn’t “believe” specific corrupt acts reflect a general state of corruption. Except in the rarest occasions, a truly corrupt system tends to be skilled at finding ways of dismissing scandals whenever they emerge or forgetting them once the media loses interest. True political corruption is crafted by expert hands so as to remain invisible to all but the truly inquiring. 

In 2002, one of those inquirers, The Observer’s chief political commentator, Andrew Rawnsley, accused Tony Blair of systemic . He called Blair, the UK prime minister at the time, “the rentboy of Number 10, cruising Downing Street, available for hire to any kerb-crawling businessman with enough of the folding stuff?”

Rawnsley added that the Conservatives, eager to attack Blair, were “vestigially conscious that they have to tread cautiously on the subject of sleaze,” implying a similar taste for corruption. For the Tories, Blair’s crime was to practice it in an ostentatious, in-your-face way that violated their own carefully cultivated discretion. Blair, in his way, was a precursor of Donald Trump. After abandoning politics, he showed a similar talent for accumulating personal wealth, capitalizing not on a gift from his father, but on his extensive experience of capitalizing on fame and buying and selling political influence.

Johnson insists on respecting “the rules.” Superficially, he is responding to the resoundingly negative reaction to his initial to “protect Paterson by hastily voting to change the rules” of Parliament. At a deeper level, British politicians, financiers and business people have their own set of rules that never need to be changed.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post What Boris Johnson Doesn’t Believe appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Go to extreme and unreasonable lengths:

An expression that those who habitually go to extreme and unreasonable lengths in everything they do like to apply to those who oppose any of their extremely unreasonable acts

Contextual Note

We live in an era in which extreme and unreasonable discourse and action have become the most reliable tool for those seeking political, economic or social success. It explains how purveyors of extreme and unreasonable discourse have won recent elections in nations as diverse as the US, the UK, India, the Philippines and Brazil, to mention only those countries. 

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Whether their names are Johnson, Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, Silvio Berlusconi, Rodrigo Duterte, Elon Musk or Kanye West, each in his own patented way has perfected the art of outrageous hyperreality that thrives on projecting a personality that is extreme and unreasonable. The phenomenon goes beyond politics. In fact, it originates in the world of entertainment. West, an American rapper, did as much to inspire President Trump’s approach to politics as Trump did to convince West he could have a future in politics.

The Guardian’s readers may be left wondering what kind of exceptionally outrageous behavior could merit Johnson, the British prime minister, calling European negotiators’ behavior “extreme and unreasonable.” Even during his career as a journalist before moving into politics, Johnson specialized in extreme and unreasonable exaggeration in his reporting of the news.

In 2016, Johnson also went from the extreme of preparing an article for publication in The Telegraph in which he in favor of Britain remaining in Europe and warned that leaving the EU would provoke an “economic shock,” to leading the wing of the Conservative Party in the “leave” campaign for Brexit. That permitted him to identify himself with the cause of Brexit and assume the leadership of that faction of a party officially committed to remaining as a member of the European Union. He sensed that it would be the shortest route to Downing Street as he witnessed the wavering fortunes of David Cameron, the prime minister at the time.

So, what terribly extreme and unreasonable actions are the Europeans guilty of in Johnson’s eyes? Very simply, they disapprove of his “internal market bill,” which calls for unilaterally overturning the withdrawal agreement Johnson signed last year to presumably settle the initial political conditions of the UK leaving the European Union. On Johnson’s own initiative, that agreement drew a border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, which together make up the United Kingdom. 

The law he is now proposing would permit him to effectively erase that border, leading to the necessity of creating a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Keeping that border open as provided by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement — a deal that ended the violence between Catholics and Protestants — was the required condition for reaching any kind of permanent solution to the withdrawal of the UK from the European Union.

Now, key members of Johnson’s cabinet have begun to revolt, as this is a clear violation of the terms of the withdrawal agreement that took so long to hammer out. Britain’s former ambassador to the US, Kim Darroch, now out that the bill will be “hugely damaging to our international reputation.” He warned that “it could deter other countries from entering into agreements with the UK in the future.” He wasn’t alone. Five former British prime ministers have also expressed concern over the move. Darroch speculated on what might happen “if people think the Brits are just going to say: we didn’t like this on reflection, and we would like to rewrite this part unilaterally.”

Historical Note

During the centuries when the British dominated the world and owned an empire on which the sun never set, as a people they acquired the reputation of being committed to “fair play.” The French, who never had an entente with the British that was deeper than merely cordial, to this day identify the British as a people who want to be respected for maintaining the cultural value of fair play, at least as it applies to sports.

The French have never been naive. They have always recognized that their British neighbors were perfectly capable of perfidy. To this day, the French will ironically trot out the expression “perfide Albion” to explain Britain’s positions concerning other nations. But Albion’s traditional perfidy was always subtle, carrying an air of reasonableness and delivered with what appeared to be a complicit smile. Boris Johnson’s is both extreme and unreasonable.

Empires will always be suspected of perfidy, if only because everyone understands that they can, on a whim, betray treaties and agreements — and even their own stated principles and values — as they rely on their military prowess and financial clout to carry them through. To some extent, this becomes the law of empires, their way of indicating that the countries they deal with have a greater interest in being nice to them than they do in being nice to the others. 

The irony this time — and some see it as a tragedy — lies in the fact that Britain hasn’t been an empire for at least 70 years. Johnson has become little more than Shakespeare’s “poor player who struts and frets his hour upon a stage” and someday soon will be heard no more. The burning question, when it comes to Johnson, Rodrigo Duterte and Donald Trump — whose exit may be announced in November — is this: What will the damaged landscape look like when those leaders specialized in upending their own cultures are gone?

As the world breathlessly awaits the major events that affect every nation in the world — starting with the US presidential election in November and including the unabating drama of the waxing and waning of hopes to see the end of the COVID-19 pandemic — the British have the added angst of speculating about just how irreparably damaging what appears to be an inevitable “hard Brexit” on January 1, 2021, is likely to be. One thing seems to be sure: it will be both extreme and unreasonable. 

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Boris Johnson Pushes Unreason to an Extreme appeared first on 51�Թ�.

How do we know this? Simple. Ask Boris Johnson. Or Joe Biden. Or Emmanuel Macron. They are all looking to Franklin D. Roosevelt for inspiration, the man credited with finding a response to the first Great Depression in the 1930s and thereby saving liberal capitalism from the communist wave that had already taken over Russia and the fascist tsunami that was spilling across Germany, Italy and the Iberian Peninsula.

For years, Bernie Sanders has been recommending the Rooseveltian model as a preventive measure in expectation of unnamed disasters to come. But no one feared a depression while believing that our leaders know how to handle recessions. Politicians, pundits and bankers could dismiss Senator Sanders as an out-of-touch old politician playing the role of pied piper by attracting gullible youngsters to his antiquated cause.

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The “squad” that emerged after the 2018 midterm elections in the US, led by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, modernized Sanders’ theme. In a brilliant rebranding exercise, they picked up the reference to Roosevelt’s New Deal and dropped the color “Green” in front of it. Critics, nevertheless, dismissed it as an irrelevant example of tree-hugging whose principal purpose was to hamburgers as well as people’s guns.

In December 2019, Boris Johnson, the UK’s favorite post-Python political agitator, handily defeated the hyper-Rooseveltian Jeremy Corbyn, proving once and for all the insignificance of the historically discredited Keynesian reasoning applied by Roosevelt. Margaret Thatcher’s legacy was destined to live on once Prime Minister Johnson managed to “get Brexit done.”

Then, just as the world was resigned to witnessing the final chaotic act of Brexit and four more years of Donald Trump in the White House, COVID-19 crashed the party and brutally changed everyone’s perception of the economy. Digging out their cookbooks from the 1930s, the leaders of the West suddenly went searching for FDR’s secret recipe.

The New York Times the fruit of Boris’ research: “Mr. Johnson, regrouping after a rocky three months of dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, has invoked Roosevelt’s name and the legacy of the New Deal in promising that the British government will intensify its plans for ambitious public works projects and other spending to recover from the outbreak.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

New Deal:

Something more modern than old deals and different from any of the fanciful deals contained in Trump’s “Art of the Deal,” an idea originating in the world of poker where the truly competent dealer knows how to deal from the bottom of the deck without being detected

Contextual Note

Writing for The Guardian, Heather Steward and Larry Elliot their doubts about Johnson’s sincerity: “Some observers derided Johnson’s suggestion that his plan bore any resemblance to the 1930s White House.” One commentator, Professor Anand Menon, deems that the notion that Johnson might “turn himself into FDR seems absolutely fanciful.” This wouldn’t be the first time Johnson has made fanciful claims for political purposes.

Most progressives in the US remain highly skeptical of Joe Biden’s bid to be the FDR. The fact that he has surrounded himself with personalities such as the former head of the Treasury, Larry Summers, and the chief of staff under the Obama administration, Rahm Emmanuel, justifies their suspicions. Both men are proponents of Wall Street-style democracy, which generally means socialism for the banks and capitalistic risk for the people. They are “New Democrats,” not “New Dealers.”

The New Democrats, under Bill Clinton in the 1990s, expurgated the last traces of Rooseveltian logic from the Democratic Party in their quest to define a “third way.” It ultimately boiled down to embracing the trickle-down economics that had long been the orthodoxy of Republicans, dating back at least to Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover.

On June 28, France’s Emmanuel Macron suffered a potentially debilitating humiliation at the polls in the final phase of local elections, which had been brutally interrupted by the lockdown that began the day after the first round in March. Contrary to the expectations of some, President Macron’s centrist party isn’t being overtaken by the traditional right that seemed on the verge of taking over the government in 2017. Nor is he being challenged by the traditional French left that had gone through its own phase of “third way” style accommodation of dominant financial interests before being discredited for doing so under the presidency of Francois Hollande of the Socialist Party. Instead, the Green party has emerged as the channel the people have chosen to express the emotions that were visibly present in the yellow vest movement.

And so, the day after watching the Green party take over numerous major towns in France, Macron is reduced to : “The time has come to do something.” He promises that he wants “to go further.” He hasn’t yet mentioned Roosevelt, but at the beginning of the pandemic, Macron evoked the spirit of World War II and the vital importance of the welfare state. The reinforced opposition has proposed a French version of the Green New Deal, but without the radical scope of the American one. Macron has now verbally accepted to act on nearly all of its hundreds of demands.

As of today, the next American FDR, Joe Biden, has no power to act. As the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, he simply hopes the trends continue culminating in his election in November. How he will elect to play the FDR role nobody can foresee. The only thing certain about Boris Johnson is that he will remain a fanciful politician. Emmanuel Macron has the best chance of succeeding, not because of his own position or authority, but because he may manage to move the poker game to the European level with the help of Angela Merkel, the German chancellor. The obstacles are great, but if the two accomplices can make some headway, there’s a slight chance that Macron can stabilize things, provided he finds a way of meeting what may be a bigger challenge: bringing the ecologists on board.

The only thing that’s certain is that uncertainty reigns at a moment in history where the price to pay — in the case both of success and failure — is going to be prodigious.

Historical Note

The idea of a “new deal” arose somewhat spontaneously in American literature in the 1880s as the awareness of the injustice and inequality bred by the excesses of what Mark Twain called “The Gilded Age” began to trouble the minds of creative writers. In his novel, “The Princess Casamassima, Henry James had the princess make this comment: “I’m one of those who believe that a great new deal is destined to take place … I believe, in a word, in the action of people for themselves … and I’m ready to act with them — in any intelligent or intelligible way.”

In his satirical narrative, “A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court,” Twain’s time-traveling hero, a modern American transported to Arthurian Britain, attempts to transform the economy along modern lines and at one point says: “I was become a stockholder in a corporation where nine hundred and ninety-four of the members furnished all the money and did all the work, and the other six elected themselves a permanent board of direction and took all the dividends. It seemed to me that what the nine hundred and ninety-four dupes needed was a new deal.”

Whether some 40 years later Franklin D. Roosevelt was aware of what two of the nation’s greatest writers were thinking in the face of the excesses of industrial capitalism, the idea of “a new deal” had clearly taken root in the American psyche. Now, nearly a century after FDR, can the leaders of the developed nations find a way of reshuffling their cards and offering a new deal? The answer to that question will depend on whether they can manage to get the deck in their own hands. For the moment, it seems to be held firmly in the grip of those who control the flow of money. Most governments lost that control long ago, even before Roosevelt.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Click here to read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Who’s the Dealer and What’s the Deal? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

COVID-19 Makes Johnson and Trump Reject Thatcher and Reagan

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Yet some asked a serious question: What lies ahead for the post-Brexit trade talks between the UK and the European Union? The 11-month transition period, which ends on December 31, was considered too short by pretty much everyone except the UK government even before the world came to a standstill. During this period, the United Kingdom remains in the EU customs union and single market.

The fact that the EU’s Michel Barnier and the UK’s Boris Johnson came down with COVID-19 was just the cherry on the cake. There have been  and legitimate from UK industries, charities and Welsh and Scottish politicians, calling for talks to be put on hold and for the transition period to be extended. This would allow the UK government and the EU to focus on getting the situation with the coronavirus pandemic under control first. So why, in some sort of 2019 re-run, is Prime Minister Johnson insisting that the UK will end the transition period by December? 

Getting Brexit Done at All Costs

The most incredible thing about Brexit is just how sacrosanct it has become. I cannot help but compare this to the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993, much as it was based on a deep-rooted and long-standing wariness of one side toward the other. In both cases, the divorce was first and foremost a political move.

What is different about Brexit, however, is that an election promise adhered to a little too religiously has become the grand symbol of the will of the people — the litmus test by which British democracy is measured. If the election promise in 2010 to not raise university tuition fees had been adhered to with at least half the vigor, we would all be literally better off and the Liberal Democrats wouldn’t be wondering if they will ever regain their political influence ever again. But that’s another story.

The point is that the only thing that came to matter was that Brexit was done at all costs. Brexiteers were convinced it was right and just, and most “remainers” — despite the exasperated “it was all nonsense anyway” remarks on social media — resigned themselves to the reality of leaving the EU.  

Johnson is the person who promised the British public that Brexit can and will be done and, what’s more, that it will be beneficial, easy and quick. He is the last in line of politicians around whom a Brexit-anchored cult of personality has developed and which has carried him through to Number 10. I still remember his “independence day”  on a BBC-televised debate in June 2016 as the moment I knew the “vote leave” campaign was going to win the Brexit referendum. He has been there from “take back control” to “get Brexit done,” which won him a resounding electoral victory in December 2019.

By then, Johnson managed to convince most — including myself, despite my best intentions — that he was the only man for the job. Seemingly, nothing was going to stand in his way, domestically or internationally, in finishing the Brexit story and moving onto the process of “healing,” among other priorities. And then, just like that, a global pandemic requiring literal healing has pulled his perfectly placed rug out from under his feet.  

For around half a decade, Brexit has been pretty much the only thing that mattered in the UK. Even now, there are enough Britons out there who see the postponement of trade talks as a ploy to keep the UK aligned with the EU for longer. For some, the European Union’s response to the coronavirus pandemic is further proof that the UK is better off out of the union. (The EU’s failure to communicate properly about what it is doing, why it matters and how it benefits its citizens is once again a subject in itself.)

Facts and Reason

Yet something has finally shifted. Facts and reason were forced back into fashion, leaving behind a sense of perspective — everything the Brexit debate has missed from the start. A global pandemic has turned people’s attention away from the Brexit boogeyman hiding under their bed to a real threat with potentially deadly consequences. Brexit is being exposed for what it is at this stage: a nation pulling out of a series of treaties, not an identity-making moment. This task has now been brushed aside by a monumental challenge for the world. 

This is not to say the task is insignificant. Despite the rhetoric coming out of Number 10 in the run-up to January 31 that the Brexit story was over with the UK leaving the EU, both sides know the hardest part still lies ahead. The idea that Britain could leave the union with no trade agreement would have caused chaos a couple of years ago, never mind now with the inevitable global recession that’s coming. 

Despite the health crisis taking center stage, the EU tabled a full proposal of a draft treaty on March 13. The UK, meanwhile, has only put down a handful of documents covering trade, transport, aviation and nuclear cooperation, all the while insisting on getting a final agreement by the end of the year. Regardless of when and how the talks continue, the days when Brexit commanded the sole attention of the UK and the EU are over. 

Prime Minister Johnson knows this. The fact that he is not yet agreeing to prolong the transition period indicates two things.

First, just like the rest of us, he is adapting to the current situation, trying to hold on to the hope that life will, at some point, go back to normal — at least partially. As prime minister of a country that is outside of the EU with no agreed trade deal during a pandemic that is bound to be followed by a global economic crisis, even Johnson can be cut some slack for being slightly disoriented.

Second, Johnson has been aptly as “a man who waits to see the way the crowd is running and then dashes in front and says: follow me.” He is biding his time to either strike fast should the coronavirus suddenly abate and still just about deliver on his promises, or to wait for a moment when the public mood is just right for him to announce that emotion must give way to reason.

Having watched Boris for the best part of a decade, I believe he can wear the suit of a crisis manager just as well as he wore the habit of a high priest of Brexit, if that is what the situation calls for.  

*[ is a partner institution of 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Brexit Transition Period Will Be Extended appeared first on 51�Թ�.

One Antidote to Coronavirus: More Multilateralism

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Throughout the 1970s, the British economy had been ailing. The 1973 oil crisis had triggered a global recession and high inflation. The British government tried hard to be fiscally responsible, control inflation and avoid a large increase in unemployment. The only way to achieve all three goals was to curb wages. Sadly for Jim Callaghan, the then British prime minister who hailed from the Labour Party, the workers revolted and the economy wilted.

Sensing Labour’s weakness, Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative leader of the opposition, pounced. She tabled a motion of no-confidence that Callaghan lost by a single vote on March 28, 1979. A general election followed in May. Thatcher won a historic victory with 5.2% of British voters swinging from Labour to Conservative. Not since 1945, when Clement Attlee became prime minister, had so many voters switched sides.

No Such Thing as Society

Unlike Tony Blair or David Cameron, Prime Minister Thatcher was a conviction politician. As an undergraduate at Oxford, she was deeply influenced by “The Road to Serfdom,” a 1944 classic by the Austrian economist , a friend and rival of the legendary John Maynard Keynes. Von Hayek made a sophisticated case against socialism, arguing that it “tends always to totalitarian outcomes, regardless of the intentions, professed or real, of its proponents.” Thatcher was one of von Hayek’s true believers.

It is easy to forget today that von Hayek was largely forgotten after 1945. World War II marked the triumph of Keynesian ideas. The commanding heights of the economy were occupied by the state in an all-out war effort. As a result, a full employment economy emerged that left the ravages of the Great Depression behind. Attlee’s 1945 victory led to the establishment of the National Health Service (NHS). Henceforth, regardless of whether a Labour or Conservative prime minister occupied 10 Downing Street, the British economy was run on Keynesian ideas.

In von Hayek’s , “Keynes died and was raised to sainthood” while he was discredited and forgotten. It was only the economic crises of the 1970s that brought von Hayek back into fashion. Thatcher went on to put his ideas into practice. The grocer’s daughter believed in enterprise, thrift and self-reliance, not handouts from or dependence on the government. She did not want people to cast “their problems on society.” In fact, she forcefully that “there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families.”

In the Thatcherite worldview, obligations came before entitlements, governments can do nothing except through people, and people had to look after themselves first. As per the Iron Lady, “It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours.” The fact that some people did not work because they could go on state benefits infuriated her.

Thatcher’s moral clarity set the UK on a fresh course. She broke the back of unions, rolled back the state, let uncompetitive British industry die and brought in “Big Bang” reforms that made the City of London a rival to New York. Thatcher pulled not only her fellow Conservatives but also the rival Labour Party to the right. In the 1990s, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown created New Labour by abandoning their party’s cherished old principles. The duo became Thatcher’s children and venerated markets when they ran the government between 1997 and 2010.

Government Is the Problem

In 1980, the US emulated the UK in moving to the right by voting in Ronald Reagan as president. Throughout the 1970s, the US suffered from low economic growth, persistent inflation and . The Iran hostage crisis of 1979-80 destroyed faith in the government and in Jimmy Carter’s credibility, paving the way for Reagan.

The new president believed in supply-side economics. As per this theory, economic policy must focus on increasing the supply of goods and services for consumers. This can best be achieved by lowering taxes and decreasing regulation. Once businesses produce more goods and services that consumers purchase, employment rises, wealth increases and the economy booms.

Unlike Thatcher, Reagan was not an educated man. He is not known to have read many books. Yet this Hollywood actor for whom Franklin D. Roosevelt was a “” had a Damascene conversion and turned against government. Like Thatcher, President Reagan believed in individual enterprise and free markets. In his view, that “get government off our backs” and “out of our pockets” lead to more jobs and a better economy.

In his inaugural address, Reagan  that “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” Now, Reagan is venerated by American conservatives as a prophet. Along with Thatcher, he changed the global zeitgeist. For him, the mighty Soviet Union was the “evil empire” and free markets were the best way to protect individual liberty. To this day, his iconic words hold : “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.”

The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, vindicating Reagan’s faith in markets, not government. When Bill Clinton became president in January 1993, he acted as Reagan’s dutiful son, signing off on welfare reforms and on the repeal of the Roosevelt-era Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. This monumental legislation separated investment banking from retail banking and was a reaction to the terrible stock market crash of 1929. Yet despite warnings of dire consequences from the likes of , the North Dakota senator at the time, Clinton gave Glass-Steagall an unceremonious burial.

There Really Is Such a Thing as Society

Unlike the financial crisis of 2007-08, the current coronavirus pandemic has changed the trajectory of politics and economics. The response to the 2007-08 crisis was fiscal stimulus and monetary easing. The global economy did avoid collapse, but the gains of the bailout ended up in the pockets of the wealthy. In fact,  of US taxpayer money went to top executives in the form of salaries, bonuses and other benefits.

The bailouts were nothing but socialism on the downside and capitalism on the upside. The wealthy kept all their returns while the public was left with the risk. Unlike Roosevelt, President Barack Obama proved too pusillanimous to take on Wall Street. As a brilliant  has chronicled, the Obama administration prosecuted small fry but steered clear of the big fish. It is widely whispered that Obama did not want to be seen as an angry black man and prized stability over reform.

The failure of the US president and the legislators to act left a searing sense of injustice that fueled both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements. Eventually, it paved the path to the White House for Donald Trump in 2016. At the time, the government just made the big banks bigger and business went on as usual. Central banks hosed economies with cash, which boosted the price of assets. The rich became richer. Even as stock markets surged, inequality soared.

In 2020, the coronavirus pandemic has brought markets around the world to their knees. Governments have imposed lockdowns and the global economy is in recession. Instead of individuals taking care of themselves and their neighbors, governments are stepping in. The Conservatives have announced a  ($433 billion) stimulus for the British economy.

On March 17, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak declared: “This is not a time for ideology and orthodoxy, this is a time to be bold, a time for courage. I want to reassure every British citizen this government will give you all the tools you need to get through this.” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is self-isolating due to contracting the coronavirus, has gone further. In a video message, he the “coronavirus crisis has already proved … that there really is such a thing as society.”

Unlike Blair and Cameron, Johnson has an acute sense of history. He studied classics at Oxford, has written a biography of Winston Churchill and began his career during the Thatcher era. Like the Iron Lady, Johnson has won a historic election. Now, this politician of “blundering brilliance” has publicly buried Thatcher.

Instead of the austerity that Cameron and George Osborne imposed on the country in 2010, Johnson and Sunak have opened all taps to give people relief. From paying workers’ wages and giving businesses grants to tax holidays and mortgage relief, the Johnson government has decided to run wartime deficits to combat a public health crisis. Johnson is proving to be the child of Clement Attlee, not Margaret Thatcher.

The US has emulated the UK by passing its own stimulus package of over . It is the  in US history. With a record 3.3 million people claiming unemployment insurance, no Republican senator or congressman is now arguing that government is the problem. Instead, they have sanctioned one-time $1,200 payment for every American earning less than $75,000 per year and another $500 per child. More importantly, the Congress has increased unemployment insurance by an extra $600 per week. Americans expect relief and the government, not Goldman Sachs or Bill Gates, is answering their call.

President Trump has done what Obama was reluctant to do. He has  “time-wasting” General Motors to make ventilators for coronavirus patients after attacking the company’s chief executive. He invoked the Defense Production Act, a legislation from the era of the Korean War, which gives the president the power to force companies to make products for national defense. In a land where elections cost an arm and a leg, politicians are wary of taking on companies. Trump has done so publicly.

Obama once that “Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that, you know, Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not.” Abandoning Reaganomics, Trump and Congress have gone back to Roosevelt’s economics. The coronavirus has achieved what Clinton or Obama did not.

The two Anglo-Saxon democracies, the superseded and the predominant superpower, have largely created the world we live in. In both these lands, the mighty winds unleashed by Thatcher and Reagan have now changed direction. Make no mistake: A new world is about to be born.

[This article was updated on March 31, 2020 at 8.00 pm GMT]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post COVID-19 Makes Johnson and Trump Reject Thatcher and Reagan appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The News Media and Public Health Crises

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Trump has already been lauded by the media for launching missiles at Syria and Iraq and has consistently, albeit much more discreetly, drone-bombed numerous other countries across the globe. At the same time, his administration has assisted Saudi Arabia in the destruction of lives, mosques and hospitals in Yemen. Yet Trump has, for the first time, unabashedly the coveted status of being a wartime president. 

In 2001, President Bush initiated his “global war on terror” against an elusive enemy adept at making itself invisible. Trump can far more credibly proclaim that he’s at war with an “invisible enemy” — invisible, that is, to anyone not equipped with a microscope. There are, after all, many ways of being invisible. Bush’s terrorist enemies made themselves invisible to ordinary surveillance and military technology. The novel coronavirus, which causes COVID-19, may be visible under a microscope, but people transmit it invisibly to others, which is far more frightening.

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Wartime president:

1. A synonym for president of the United States, a nation that is almost constantly involved in wars (226 out of its 244 years of existence, according to some accounts).

2. An honorary title for specific US presidents who take pride in pointing to what the public perceives as the unequivocally evil nature of their enemy

Contextual Note

CNN notes that when it no longer appeared tenable to dismiss the coronavirus as a minor inconvenience, Trump from reassuring the nation and underplaying the drama to resolutely rising to the occasion in the role of the heroic leader. “Trump now views the crisis at hand as a once-in-a-generation battle — a reality that people around him have been trying to convey for weeks,” CNN reports.

Like French President Emmanuel Macron, who in a recent televised address repeated over and over again the phrase, “we are at war,” Trump seems to have realized that leading the nation to battle can be a winning electoral strategy. It may indeed be the only one possible after weeks of seeming indifference to a challenge he repeatedly called the third major hoax, following the Mueller investigation and his inconsequential impeachment.

Trump’s new discourse and tone represent an attempt to recall the spirit of heroism and solidarity associated with the memories of the nation’s response to World War II. At a White House briefing, he : “Every generation of Americans has been called to make shared sacrifices for the good of the nation.” Calling attention to his duty as president to join Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt in a noble historic mission, Trump added: “Now it’s our time. We must sacrifice together, because we are all in this together, and we will come through together.”

The contrast between the three Western leaders most prominently in news — Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron — in their handling of the struggle to defeat the coronavirus tells an interesting story about the leaders themselves and the cultures of three nations.

Macron was the first to step up. In a televised address, he set the tone a week ago by invoking the spirit of wartime sacrifice that should guide the French as a nation in combating the threat of the coronavirus. He followed up on March 16 with another televised address and his explicit call to war while announcing strictly enforced measures of sequestration for the entire citizenry. His authority — for once appearing “Jupiterian” (an of Macron’s) — was accepted and even welcomed by the population.

Trump at first hesitated, even about the nature of his role, since as US president he has no direct authority over the states and cities. He then realized that as commander-in-chief, the crisis was inviting him to step into a role of authority and at least give the impression of being the knowledgeable leader capable of making things happen. But instead of imitating Macron and defining all the measures, Trump, in his role as capitalist-in-chief, called together the CEOs of private companies whom the population could trust to organize the war against the enemy.

Trump’s verbal hesitation and shaky grammar when he finally did blurt out the idea of being a “wartime president” on March 18 showed that unlike Bush with the global war on terror or Barack Obama when he announced the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011, Trump sees it as more of an electoral roleplay than a mission. Moreover, that Trump “seemed to minimize the urgency of the decision, later tweeting that he ‘only signed the Defense Production Act to combat the Chinese Virus should we need to invoke it in a worst case scenario in the future.’” He added this : “Hopefully there will be no need.’” And by insisting on calling it the “Chinese Virus,” Trump persisted in treating it as somebody else’s problem.

Macron predictably affirmed the preeminent role of the Jacobin state to put things in order. Trump is playing on the quintessentially American political meme of the public sector sounding tough while relying on the private sector to get things done.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson provides an interesting contrast. The Guardian notes that for a man who claims to adulate Winston Churchill and has even written a of the legendary prime minister, Johnson displays a very un-Churchillian allergy to mobilizing the population by appealing to the citizens’ patriotic duty. Instead of “blood, toil, tears and sweat,” Johnson has spent the week standing up for an Englishman’s right to stand at the bar and order another pint (of bitter, of course). 

Writing in The Guardian, political editor Heather Stewart that “nothing in Johnson’s background or political makeup have prepared him for telling the British public to stay out of the pub.” She adds: “He has so far been unable to muster either the dirigisme of Emmanuel Macron or the moral heft of Leo Varadkar when urging the public to do the right thing, and stay at home.”

Historical Note

The lesson of this comparison of two presidents and a prime minister facing a situation they see as comparable to war is as clear as it is amusing.

France beheaded its last Bourbon king in 1793 and subsequently flirted with two dynastic emperors, before settling on the first of five Republics in the course of the 19th century. Yet its culture has consistently remained compatible with the principles of monarchy. Charles De Gaulle, Francois Mitterrand, Jacques Chirac and even Giscard d’Estaing cultivated a certain panache of monarchy in their style of governing, spreading a royal fragrance like pheromones in every corner of the republic. While throughout the Fifth Republic presidents insisted on the principle of democracy, Emmanuel Macron was the first to consciously evoke the idea of the president’s royal prerogatives, giving it a classical twist with his idea of Jupiterian rule.

Boris Johnson presides over the nation that long ago adopted as its motto: “Every Englishman’s home is his castle.” The proverb was 400 years ago but, contrary to the current reaction to the coronavirus outbreak, retreating to one’s castle had nothing to do with social distancing. Instead, it pointed to the sacred rights of individuals who, within their private realms, could be a law unto themselves. When they exercised the same rights in the public sphere, they were simply called “eccentric” and often admired for it. The English will always think of themselves as free as long as they observe the rule of fair play that they believe effectively governs social relations. All of this highlights the fact that Johnson is very much an Englishman rather than a Briton.

Winston Churchill, the half-American British aristocrat descended from a legendary 18th-century general, the Duke of Marlborough, hailed from a different tradition that combined an American “can do” force of will with an atavistic nostalgia for the glory of formal combat that turned him into the perfect wartime prime minister capable of resisting Adolf Hitler (with a little help from his American friends). 

This brings us back to the American, Donald Trump, a businessman-turned-politician, who has consistently bowed to the great 19th-century tradition of the snake oil salesman. He’ll make the promises people want to hear, but never overcommits. He shamelessly backtracks when challenged, claiming that whatever pleases the crowd and appears to be most effective is what he meant all along. As a salesman, he’s all things to all men: a living oxymoron; an anti-racist white supremacist; a wartime president intent on bringing back the troops (and then leaving them on the battlefield); a “grab them by the pussy” man who respects women; and a person concerned with everyone’s health, except those who are weak-willed enough to get sick. Like all Americans, he’s task-oriented and can sacrifice a principle or two to focus on the task and then congratulate himself on getting it done. Trump’s main task today is to get reelected in November. That’s what he is now focusing on.

Trump profits from the federal concept at the core of America’s political system. Not only does that mean a few unrepresentative states (swing states) — rather than the people of the nation — elect the president through the Electoral College, but it also means that coherent and consistent decision-making is no single person’s or even institution’s responsibility because decisions, however cacophonous and poorly coordinated, are every state’s or even city’s responsibility.

That means presidents and even legislatures are free to talk tough and act weak. It ensures that rhetoric becomes not just the primary political activity, but practically the only one. The content of laws and policies is defined by those who have an interest in a particular sector of the economy (lobbyists), not by the people’s representatives, who simply vote on the proposals. At the same time, the executive assumes the job of enforcing the laws thus defined and defending the interests of those same interests who finance their campaigns.

At least that’s how it works in normal times. In a crisis, the people have different, more immediate expectations. They know the rhetoric will be there. They can simply hope that the action evoked in the rhetoric will come to be. And depending on the severity of the crisis, they may at some point try to hold the rhetoricians responsible. That’s what happened after 1929. It nearly happened after 2008, but the rhetoricians managed to hold off the assault (Tea Party, Occupy). This time may be different. 

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post What It Means to be a Wartime President appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Business Insider sums up the : “Wallace told the paper that the UK would increasingly need to turn to other allies that more closely share the UK’s interests.

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Allies:

Nations that, not being your enemy, can in some way help you to oppose your enemies, as soon as you are clear about who your enemies are

Contextual Note

Wallace’s position turns out to be an intriguing development, if only because, as of mid-January, no one is quite sure today what the UK’s interests are. The fact that the defense secretary indicates those interests no longer converge with the US’ interests could lead to some interesting speculation. This is especially true given that Britain’s new government has made it clear that, with its focus on “getting Brexit done,” it no longer senses a convergence of interests with the European Union.

Wallace goes further: It isn’t only a question of no longer being allies, which could be no more than an expression of a vague attitude. He acknowledges that Britain had been part of a formal coalition that he now appears to call into question. “The assumptions of 2010 that we were always going to be part of a US coalition is really just not where we are going to be,” he said.

Does this mean that Prime Minister Boris Johnson will seek a new coalition? But with whom? Could it be Russia or China? According to Business Insider, it was Trump’s “dangerous escalation” when he had General Soleimani assassinated that provoked the rupture with the US. Britain doesn’t want to be associated with a nation that risks being banished from the oil-rich Middle East as a reaction against incessant meddling. Russia and China both have a more neutral profile, and finding common ground with them may be the kind of hypothesis the UK will be forced to envisage now that it is no longer automatically aligned with either Europe or the US.

At the same time, The New York Times that “Britain, Germany and France are taking a step toward more sanctions on Iran to pressure the country back into compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal.” Reuters more titled its article, “Europeans to trigger Iran nuclear deal dispute mechanism,” acknowledging that the three countries have no interest in further sanctions but are seeking a way of keeping the deal from collapsing.

Britain, Germany and France constitute a major part of the coalition of signatories to the nuclear deal, which is officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), along with Russia and China. On this issue, some find it significant that Johnson has chosen to ally with Europe rather than the US. But Johnson is also playing coy with Trump by standing up to Iran and threatening the use of sanctions — Trump’s favorite stick with which to beat nations who don’t follow his lead.

Although tinging his discourse with cutting irony that may well escape American audiences, Johnson appears to know how to handle Trump like a Pavlovian dog. He is fully aware of the fact that Trump salivates at the sound of the word “sanctions” and even positively drools when someone makes a favorable comparison of his politics with Barack Obama’s. And the spaniel in Trump begins howling for more when his talents as a negotiator are praised.

In an interview with the BBC, here is how Johnson of the JCPOA as he attempts to draw Trump’s attention: “From the American perspective, it’s a flawed deal, it expires … plus it was negotiated by President Obama.” Johnson had to throw out that final sop for Trump, who undoubtedly will delight in what he will inevitably see as a justified zinger against Obama.

From that point, Johnson moves on to the key issue: getting a new deal to replace the old one. “Let’s replace it with the Trump deal,” he said. “That’s what we need to see. President Trump is a great dealmaker,” adding, after a pregnant pause, “by his own account … and by many others.” In saying this, Johnson couldn’t suppress a wry smile. The British viewer could certainly discern that Johnson’s final “and by many others” was intended to take some of the too obvious sting out of his reference to Trump’s fabled narcissism. Whether Americans pick it up or not remains to be seen. (For the moment none of the mainstream media seem to have noticed Johnson’s irony.)

Historical Note

Recent events indicate that the historically dominant Western nations — notably the US and the UK — find themselves at a crucial turning point in their relations with the rest of the world. Assessing the outcome of the Soleimani assassination and the events that followed, Johnson found himself playing the optimist. “I think we are in a better place,” he said, which sounds like the US position that racks up the assassination as an act that, for all the grief it has created, made the world a better place. But then, catching himself, the prime minister added, breathlessly, “that doesn’t mean that the tensions aren’t there.” In other words, we are not yet in the best of all possible worlds.

Johnson goes on to praise the Iranian nation for the size of the population (80 million), its youthful demography and its high level of literacy. He then draws the traditional European colonialist’s conclusion: “They should be orientated towards free markets, towards our way of doing things.” He regrets that “they’re the captives, the prisoners of this government they have.” Johnson seems to have forgotten that, in 1953, it was the UK, aided and abetted the CIA, that prevented Iran from realizing its autonomous, democratic ambitions, when the Brits and Americans joined hands to overthrow the elected leader, Mohammad Mossadegh, and set up a sanguinary dictator, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, to do the West’s bidding.

For all his barely disguised ironic criticism of the US president, Johnson clearly shares with Trump the imperial and racist point of view that consists of believing that “our way” of doing things is the best, if not the only way for the rest of the world. Britain lost its empire and its colonial aura 70 years ago, but it still infects its current leaders.��

The real historical irony is that the US may now find itself in a situation similar to that of Britain in 1950, as it begins to realize for the first time that it can’t maintain its empire. The fact that Britain itself is now pulling away from what they deem to be the failure of American global leadership should worry the decision-makers in Washington. Not just Trump and his administration, but the entire national security state and military-industrial complex. The UK drifting away from the US at the very moment many expected it to gravitate toward its North American partner once the rupture with Europe has been sealed tells us a lot about the weakened state of the US empire.

In recent decades, Pew Research has been studying the attitudes of nations across the globe toward the US. Its latest surveys show a significant among countries that have traditionally considered the US an ally on which they depend. One graph bears the title, “In many countries, fewer now see U.S. as top ally.” Kenya (-28%) and Japan (-11%) have seen a major drop in just the past two years. Other traditional allies, such as the Philippines (-19%), India and Indonesia, have seen a steady decline over five years.

The study also points out this worrying trend: “Substantial shares in some countries also perceive Washington as their greatest threat — even in some in which the U.S. is the most named top ally.”

Should we conclude that the UK is now catching up with the rest of the world by suddenly becoming defiant toward Trump’s America? The US may still be Britain’s best ally, but even the most American and downright Trumpian of its prime ministers appears to see the US — and not just President Trump — as the greatest threat to his nation.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Are the UK and US Suing for Divorce? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

360° Context: Britain Faces a Historic Election

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Throughout the election campaign, even pessimists had clung to the hope of an opposition coalition emerging from a hung Parliament. But the likely coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, were decimated, and Labour lost strongholds in northern England it had held for decades. The “red wall” in working-class constituency after constituency crumbled like chalk dust. The vaunted socialist and blue-collar consciousness of middle-class North London found itself dramatically out of touch with a national working class with no sense of historical romanticism.

The Questions to Ask

So, the first question is: What will happen to an abjectly defeated Labour Party? This is particularly pertinent in the event of a two-term Johnson administration looming ahead. Which Labour Party will emerge after another decade in opposition? That will mean 19 years outside of government. Whoever replaces Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn may well no longer be in charge 10 years from now, so all the recriminations and power plays in the party today may be meaningless.

The second question is: What kind of relationship will Britain have with a European Union it has formally left? Not that leaving will be as abrupt as Brexit cheerleaders might imagine. There is still an 11-month transition period in which a trade deal has to be finalized — and it may well take, bravado notwithstanding, much longer. But from the end of January 2020, the UK will no longer have a seat at the high European table, and the EU will be weakened as a bloc in the face of the American and Chinese superpowers.

But if the EU is weakened, how will Britain alone face up to the US and China? If it marries itself to the US, will there be a bride price that will seriously weaken the independence of British institutions? There is much concern about the US “buying into” the National Health Service (NHS) and the rising cost of drugs. But if the future is a Sino-American trade war and power struggle, will Britain — with much Chinese penetration already in its economy — be a pawn in US hands?

The third question is precisely to do with Britain versus any other identity. As the United Kingdom, Great Britain is part of a union with Northern Ireland. As Great Britain, England is in a union with Scotland. Throughout the Brexit negotiations to leave the EU, there were serious Irish and Northern Irish concerns. Yet the first major schismatic fault-line would seem to lie with the Scots — the Scottish National Party swept the polls north of the border on December 12 — seeking another referendum for independence.

A legal vote on Scottish independence can only be sanctioned in Westminster, not in Edinburgh. The Scots will be mulling, nevertheless, a Catalonian-style unilateral referendum and using it as moral leverage in difficult and likely protracted discussions and confrontations with Westminster. The one thing Prime Minister Johnson is unlikely to have is any guaranteed unity in the British project.

So, those are the questions no pundit can immediately answer. All of them point to difficult choices and perilous negotiations. Only if all three areas prove disastrous for Johnson would the Labour Party have much chance to stake a real claim to power after his first term. But what are the Labour Party’s postures and policies on all three issues?

The Future of Labour

The first is to do with a power struggle within Labour, with any outcome not guaranteed to indicate the shape and direction of the party 10 years from now. But a Corbynista party under new leadership would have to distance itself, if not in terms of policy, then in terms of style from the defeated grand old man of the left.

The policy itself, however, bears thought. Not everything can be solved by public ownership and intervention. The move away from one-dimensionality is unavoidable for any more youthful leadership. And it can’t be North London appearing to speak for (and “educate”) the “unwashed” northern masses. The move to the left under Corbyn appeared far too much like a Leninist vanguard party project, in which the working class would be led to its apotheosis as satisfied producers under wise leadership. It was elitist and condescending, but it represented a trenchant vocabulary and conception.

If Labour turns back to the center, however, in what way can this avoid identification with former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s New Labour years? This essentially means there can be no traditional left in a Labour future, and there can be no modern centrism that smacks of Blair. So, what is there left for Labour?

Post-Brexit Relations

As for the UK’s relationship with the EU, that requires punditry amidst terrains of unknowns. The world is in the middle of trade wars that might yet see the UK cling closer to the EU in ways unforeseen in the election campaign.

As food prices rise, European common agricultural policy subsidies are withdrawn, and new food suppliers cannot be found — or found only with great transport costs — the UK agricultural sector looks set to be decimated. New tariff barriers, unless successfully negotiated downward over the next 11 months, would raise the prices on almost all imported commodities in a land with declining manufacturing capacities, alongside agriculture that cannot survive without subsidies.

But to have a “Brexit in name only” would mean a repudiation of a sentiment that was stirred into existence. This did not exist before then-Prime Minister David Cameron’s referendum on EU membership in 2016. Brexit became the bogeyman for all real and imagined dissatisfactions. It was chiefly attractive because it said someone else was to blame, and that someone else was the European Union. That all parties in Westminster were out of touch with the masses and that the referendum result was a slap in the face of elite rule is belied by the huge majority that Johnson has now received.

The European bogeyman label has stuck. But the prime minister must now contrive a relationship that seems distant while struggling to stay close enough to minimize economic shocks.

As for the Labour Party, the time to have fought Brexit hard was during the 2016 referendum. Corbyn was so lukewarm and lackluster at the time that it seemed only a personal conviction toward leaving the EU could explain his continuation of such equivocal lukewarmness toward the European project throughout the administrations of Theresa May and Boris Johnson. If Corbyn betrayed an essential little Englander sense of being on the left — without any outreach to a pan-European working class at all — then he must take the blame at least for being a poor leader of the opposition. He scarcely opposed the government at all in its flagship policy.

The (Dis)United Kingdom

The third issue is whether there will still be a United Kingdom in the years to come. That is perhaps the great historical question. But the union has never been so imperiled. Scottish rhetoric is one thing, but it seems a genuine Scottish nationalism has been stirred from the Cameron years till this day.

In 2014, Prime Minister Cameron only won his referendum on Scottish independence with the help of Labour Party dignitaries like Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband. There is no one left in Corbyn’s Labour Party who can reach out to the Scots. Labour and the Conservative Party were thrashed in the general election results for Scotland.

This third question is an open one, with perhaps a longer timeframe for a final outcome than even the difficult resolutions required for the first two. But it is not a question that will fade away — or even fade very much.

So, this is a historic moment for what is now the UK. There is a sense that the country deserves a reduced sense of self. That sense of self still advertises the outcome of World War II as dependent almost entirely on British heroism — never mind the US, the Commonwealth and the Soviets sacrificing huge armies for the defeat of Nazi Germany, together with the heroism of several European underground and partisan organizations.

Yet the likelihood is that a British reduction in real terms would instead reinforce the myth of the plucky and tiny England against all foes. Such a plucky and tiny England might be the exact apotheosis of all the currents of thought, opportunism and grandstanding that have marked the country in the last decade — with perhaps some decades of rue to come, crouched behind the porous barricade of needless mythology.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Both the United States and the United Kingdom came down with chills and high fever in 2016. In the most optimistic scenario, the passage of the Brexit referendum to leave the European Union and then Donald Trump’s electoral victory some months later would inoculate the general population against an even more serious illness. Surely, once Britons got a foretaste of exiting the EU, they would come to their senses and run back into the embrace of Brussels. Likewise, Americans would experience the horror of a Trump presidency and kick him out of office after his first term (or even before).

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So far, so bad. In the UK general election on December 12, Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party won a decisive victory over both the wavering Labour Party and the more EU-friendly Liberal Democrats. With his commanding parliamentary majority, Prime Minister Johnson will be able to usher the UK out of the EU, and there’s little that anyone can do to stop him.

Meanwhile, across the pond, Congress is impeaching an American president for only the third time in history. That, on the face of it, would seem to be a resolute response to the disease that is Donald Trump. But President Trump isn’t going anywhere. According to a number of indications this week, his chances of reelection in 20202 have even been improved by impeachment — or, at the very least, not adversely affected by it.

Democracy is supposed to be the political system that allows citizens to learn from their mistakes. But what happens when those mistakes are so momentous that they threaten to overwhelm the system and its vaunted self-correction mechanisms? We’ve been suffering from flu symptoms only to learn that just around the corner is the political equivalent of Ebola.

Johnson’s Folly

In the run-up to the recent UK election, Johnson couldn’t seem to stop making mistakes. He threatened to pull the UK out of the EU even without a withdrawal deal, a move so disruptive that members of his own party bolted into opposition. He invoked emergency powers over Parliament to force a vote on his Brexit proposal. He lost vote after vote in the House of Commons.

Through it all, Johnson was his usual buffoonish self, a true English eccentric who has lied and cheated his way to the top. He should have been tossed out of office simply for being an insufferable poser.

But Johnson survived because he knew three things. The Labour Party was a house divided between those who favored staying in the EU and those who wanted out. The leader of the party, Jeremy Corbyn, was deeply unpopular, even in some Labour strongholds. And the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Jo Swinson, was eager for new elections, over the objections of her senior associates,  she could climb over two unpopular parties to reach the top of the political heap.

Johnson was thus able to fall back on his only option: call an early election and hope to repopulate Parliament with his own people. True to form, he has pulled off yet another improbable win.

Labour, meanwhile, suffered an epic fail, losing some seats it had continuously occupied . Corbyn, having presided over this disaster, will be out on his ear. The Liberal Democrats lost ground in Parliament, and Swinson herself couldn’t even hold onto her seat.

Up north, the pro-EU Scottish National Party (SNP) has consolidated its control in Scotland and will be pushing as hard as possible for another referendum on independence from the UK. Johnson has a large enough parliamentary majority to prevent that from happening for the time being. But the United Kingdom may well be the first casualty of Brexit.

The EU leadership, meanwhile, is  that Britain will finally follow through on its plan. The UK has always been a pain in the EU’s butt — demanding innumerable exemptions from EU rules, refusing to join the common currency and serving as a European foothold for American-style laissez-faire capitalism. Finally, there’s an end in sight for the seemingly endless Brexit negotiations, which represented yet another example of British intransigence.

Even though the British population didn’t experience a Brexit backlash in this election, there has been a cautionary backlash within the EU itself. No other country is seriously considering to leave the union at this point. But that’s not necessarily good news. The euroskeptics who were so excited by Brexit have begun to embrace a different strategy: take over the EU. If you were lukewarm about European integration before — because of its neoliberalism, its retreat on immigration, its bureaucratic excesses — you’re going to be even less enthusiastic if the likes of Brexiteer Nigel Farage takes over.

The Brits might have second thoughts about Brexit when their economy tanks, the Conservative Party eviscerates what’s left of the British welfare state, and the removal of EU benefits (like retiring on a British pension to a sunny Mediterranean country) hits home. A future backlash is certainly possible. But crawling back into the EU will not be so easy — and that’s if the EU will have them.

Nevertheless, He Persisted

Jeff Van Drew was a Democratic congressman from New Jersey. He entered the US Congress in 2018 by flipping a district that Trump won two years earlier by five points. The New Jersey legislator positioned himself as a moderate Democrat. He was one of only two congressional Democrats to vote against moving forward with the impeachment hearings.

He hasn’t switched his position on impeachment. But he is switching parties. Despite  that he was a lifelong Democrat, Van Drew decided to become a Republican this month. It wasn’t so much the pull factor from Trump’s party as much as the push factor from the Democrats. The New York Times reported on a poll of Democratic primary voters in his New Jersey district that showed 71% of them less likely to vote for Van Drew if he continued to oppose impeachment.

Van Drew is not leading a rush to the exits. The Democrats, with enough votes to impeach in the House, are not cracking down on dissenters. And public opinion continues to favor impeachment, at least among Democratic voters ().

The problem is that a lot of politicians are calculating that impeachment is not a winning issue in heavily-Republican areas or potential swing districts. If you’re a Republican, you face a revolt among your constituents if you consider voting for impeachment. Fewer than 10% of Republican voters support impeaching the president. Plus, you risk a fatwa from Trump.

Consider the  of Elise Stefanik, a moderate congresswoman who was never gung ho about Trump’s presidential aspirations. When the impeachment hearings began, she became Trump’s attack dog on the House Intelligence Committee. In so doing, she has solidified her Republican Party voter base and gotten a big lift from the president himself. Is it disgusting? Yes, absolutely. Is it politically astute? Yes, unfortunately.

Or what about Carly Fiorina, the Republican candidate for president in 2016 whose looks Trump insulted on his way to the nomination? She  that Trump should be impeached. But she still might vote for him in 2020.

She’s not alone. A majority of Americans , but recent polling puts Trump ahead of all Democratic rivals on a head-to-head basis. According to a , Trump leads Joe Biden by 3%, Bernie Sanders by 5%, Elizabeth Warren by 8% and Pete Buttigieg by 10%. In September, in a , the top five Democratic hopefuls were beating Trump, with Biden up by an astounding 16%, Sanders 12%, Warren 11%, Kamala Harris 10% and Buttigieg 6%. That was only a few months ago. So, yes, there’s a backlash. But it seems to be against the Democrats, not Trump. As I wrote back in September:

“Impeachment of Trump, at this point, is both a legal and moral necessity. It’s also very likely a political trap. 

Trump relishes the role of an underdog, persecuted by the powerful. It’s what enables him to connect to a political base that, aside from his deep-pocket funders, feels disempowered by a rigged economy and a sclerotic political system. Impeachment, for this constituency, vindicates the narrative of the ‘deep state.’ 

Indeed, it suggests that the entire state is out to get Trump — which it is and should. But impeachment is the only thing that can turn the most powerful man in the world into a cornered victim and thus, for a significant number of American voters, a sympathetic character.”

It helps, of course, that the president can point to soaring economic indicators, recently announced trade deals with China and our North American neighbors, and a  included in the recent budget bill.

It’s galling that a scofflaw can remain sufficiently popular to win elections. No doubt Trump is eyeing the example of Rodrigo Duterte, the president of the Philippines who has presided over the extrajudicial killing of thousands of people and yet maintains nearly .

Trump invited Duterte to the White House and praised his deadly war on drugs. Duterte, after all, is the living proof that you can shoot people indiscriminately and still maintain your popularity. Trump, unleashed in a second term, might just try to test the applicability of that model to the US.

A Dangerous Acclimatization

There’s been more than one mass shooting a day in the United States this year: 396 as of December 16, according to the . Despite all the political handwringing and the  shift in public opinion over the last few years in favor of stricter gun control laws, federal policy has barely shifted. No assault rifle ban. No “red flag” law. No universal background check.

What has happened instead? After the mass shootings this summer, companies with names TuffyPacks reported a  in sales of bullet-proof backpacks. Parents are taking prophylactic measures that are pathetically insufficient. Mass shootings are the new normal. Suck it up and move on.

Americans have similarly adjusted to the criminal actions of the president, his violent policies at the border, his verbal abuse of virtually everyone. We haven’t bought TuffyPacks to protect ourselves from the White House. Our skins have just grown tougher.

And that’s the saddest part of all. It’s just a lot harder to generate a backlash when our backs have become accustomed to the lash.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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On December 10, this author took the view that the Tories would be back in power because they seemed to have the most loyal flock. That view has been vindicated resoundingly.

The Labour Party is in complete disarray. Corbyn has been weighed, measured and found wanting. While he has promised to step down, he has failed to resign unlike his predecessors. In defeat, a full-scale civil war has broken out in the Labour Party. In the words of , the only Labour MP from Scotland, “This party must listen and this party must respond or this party will die.”

From New Labour to the Left

To be fair, Labour has problems that go beyond Corbyn. The New Labour that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown created lost its sheen with the Iraq War of 2003 and the global financial crisis of 2007-08. Both Blair and Brown were Margaret Thatcher’s political children. One of them emulated her Falklands adventure by taking the UK into intervention in Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Iraq. The other followed the Iron Lady’s “Big Bang” reforms with “” regulation of the City of London. Both Iraq and light touch ended up in disasters.

Many in the Labour Party were deeply uncomfortable with Blair’s imperial militarism and Brown’s financial capitalism. They saw both these leaders making a Faustian pact with Mephistopheles for the proverbial kiss with Helen. They were both seduced by power and reneged on principles that Labour once held dear. Once Brown lost in 2010, the old guard mounted a comeback. First, Ed Miliband beat his Blairite brother, David, to become the party leader. Then, Corbyn won the Labour leadership election in 2015, marking a major lurch to the left.

Corbyn was an unlikely leader of the Labour Party. In the Blair and Brown years, Labour had turned staunchly European. Yet it is important to remember that Labour campaigned against joining the European Economic Community (EEC) in the 1975 referendum. Thanks to the Maastricht Treaty, the EEC became the European Union in 1993. Corbyn was a part of that Labour campaign even as Thatcher and the Tories argued to join the EEC. It took to modernize Labour and turn it into a pro-European party.

Yet euroskeptic elements remained. Corbyn was one of them. Suspicions abound that he remains opposed to the EU and is a closet Brexiteer. Corbyn certainly did not campaign to “remain” in the European Union with much energy or enthusiasm in 2016. In the general election on December 12, 2019, his position on Brexit was a fudge that tried to reconcile the tension between Blairites who have sworn an oath of fealty to the EU and working-class supporters who voted for Brexit. Faced with the crystal clarity of Johnson’s message “get Brexit done,” Corbyn’s fudge melted spectacularly.

Corbyn’s authoritarian leadership style, lack of nimbleness and terrible public speaking ensured that he was not seen as prime ministerial material. Accusations of anti-Semitism dogged the Labour Party under his tenure. Corbyn’s front bench lacked both experience and talent. Even traditional Labour voters lost faith in their party’s leadership and switched sides to the once-hated Tories. Unless the Labour Party elects a charismatic leader who unifies warring factions and crafts a modern message, it will spend a decade or more in opposition.

The Rest of the Opposition

The Liberal Democrats cast off with great hopes during the election. Unfortunately, their ship has rammed into the rocks. Young leader Jo Swinson lost her own seat and promptly resigned. She lacked the intellectual ballast or silver tongue to be a match for Johnson, and her claim to be a prime ministerial candidate smacked of hubris. Swinson’s bet on opposing Brexit and reversing the result of the 2016 referendum did not cut ice with voters. The Liberal Democrats did split the vote and helped the Tories achieve victory. This led columnist to argue that the party is “ an anachronistic political spoiler” that “should disband.” On current trends, the Liberal Democrats are destined to stay in the doldrums for the next few years.

This election was also notable for the reduced relevance of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party. The Conservatives no longer need the former in the House of Commons and have sucked oxygen from Farage’s mob. The DUP’s loss to unionists and republicans has long-term implications. A majority in Northern Ireland has voted for parties that favor union with Ireland, putting the unity of the UK at risk.

In fact, and numerous pundits are pontificating about the break-up of the UK. The Scottish National Party (SNP) won 48 of the 59 seats in Scotland. If Johnson has the mandate in England, Nicola Sturgeon has the backing of Scotland. During the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, the UK was part of the EU. During the Brexit referendum, Scots voted to remain in the EU. Sturgeon is making a credible argument that Scotland “” in the UK “against its will.” She has sounded the clarion call for another independence referendum by declaring that “the will of the Scottish people cannot be ignored.” The union of England and Scotland of 1707 vintage is certainly at risk.

And the Tories?

What is not at risk is the future of the Conservative Party. The natural party of power has reinvented itself yet again. Some members of Johnson’s team are bullish about life outside the EU. They are already plotting to attract the insurance market from Hong Kong to London as the Asian metropolis suffers from incessant protests that are making business onerous if not impossible. They want London to be a Singapore-style safe haven for capital from around the world unconstrained by EU rules.

Like Singapore, they want the UK to invest in public infrastructure, state schools and the National Health Service (NHS). Apart from a supply-side boost, there is a demand-side policy too. Brexit will enable Tories to ease pressure on public services and scarce resources by curbing immigration. Dominic Cummings, the Svengali figure in Johnson’s team, is now the dominant intellectual force in British politics. After shifting politics to the right, he plans to shift economic policy to the left and steal Labour’s clothes, leaving the opposition naked for the next election or two.

Andrew Sullivan, a former president of the Oxford Union who knew Johnson in those days, recently wrote an article on the prime minister’s . The Pied Piper has managed to “engage and co-opt rather than dismiss and demonize” the Brexit discontent. In a little-watched , Cummings spoke about the strategy the Tories followed to do so. As per Johnson’s strategist, the EU-project was “driving the growth of extremism” and Brexit will “drain the poison of a lot of political debates.” All four of Cummings’s grandparents served in World War II. For all his faults, this shadowy figure genuinely cares about schools, hospitals and the working class.

Johnson might be a cavalier but, as Sullivan observes, he can connect with people from other backgrounds. He was successful as mayor of London and won a second term in a city with a natural Labour majority. Unlike David Cameron and George Osborne, Johnson never believed in austerity and opposed “” of the poor in London. As prime minister, he is promising higher public spending and lower taxes while acting tough on crime, terrorism and immigration. In fact, Cummings and Johnson might be about to move the Tories and the UK away from its Thatcherite roots. If they do so successfully, the UK might have a good shot at staying united.

What Happens to the EU?

Make no mistake, Johnson’s emphatic victory is terrible news for the European Union. The eurozone is in trouble. It is experiencing anemic growth and high unemployment. Productivity is stubbornly refusing to rise. In fact, the contradictions of a single currency are threatening to derail the entire European project. There is a strong argument to be made that Greece and Germany should not have the same currency. They are far too different from one another. The same monetary policy for the two countries does both of them a disservice, exacerbating existing imbalances.

Even as the euro currency creates new tensions, the sovereign debt crisis is straining common bonds. The Europeans and the International Monetary Fund might have bailed out Greece with its economy a little over $300 billion. Italy with its economy of about $2 trillion and a debt-GDP ratio of is too big for anyone to bail out. German taxpayers are going to balk at the bill.

Instead of honestly tackling its financial crisis, Europe has elected to take the “” approach of prolonging payment timetables and believing in the fiction that countries like Greece or Italy will pay back their debts. Instead, Europe has been practicing “socialism for the financial sector and austerity for everyone else.” Naturally, this is causing resentment. In Italy, Matteo Salvini rose to power on the basis of public anger against Brussels.

Countries such as Poland and Hungary are also rocking the EU boat. Even in France and Germany, euroskeptic parties are on the rise. The democratic deficit in Brussels does not help. Neither does the red tape. While some European officials are outstanding, many are utterly inefficient if not corrupt. Brussels is simply too removed from Marseille or Munich and Europeans still do not feel an emotional connection with it.

If Johnson and Cummings pull off a successful Brexit, centrifugal tendencies in Europe will increase. Italy might join the UK in opting to leave the EU and so might other countries. If that happens, Johnson would be a modern-day Henry VIII. He would have taken back control from Brussels just as the portly 16-century king threw off the yoke of Rome. Brexit might seem like yet another case of British pluck, foresight and cunning.

Of course, Europeans could come together to form a closer union. A fiscal union might emerge to complement its monetary union. Structural reforms might resolve its contradictions. Yet that seems unlikely. In the short run at least, the EU will suffer.

What Happens to the US?

In the US, commentators often compare Johnson to President Donald Trump. Johnson’s victory has sent shivers down liberals and enthused conservatives. Both are drawing their own lessons.

Roger Cohen sounded the bugle in and warned that Trump could win in 2020. In a rambling piece, he called Brexit “a national tragedy” and asserted that the triumph of emotion over reason in the age of Facebook queers the pitch for the likes of Johnson and Trump. Cohen’s comparison is superficial and does Johnson a disservice. Johnson may be a lying scoundrel, but he is no Trump.

Jon Sopel of the also got in on the act. He warned Democrats against choosing Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren who might be American counterparts of Corbyn. He pointed out that Blair won a third term despite voters seeing him as “smarmy, George W. Bush’s poodle, in the pocket of big business – and a war criminal.”

Corbyn lost despite promising more money for NHS, nationalization of key industries and free broadband for everyone. The fact that working-class workers turned their backs on Labour in a class-divided society is a key lesson for Democrats. The Green New Deal and the Medicare for All plan might smack of socialism. Bigger government and higher taxes are not easy sells in Anglo-Saxon lands. In the US, socialism is a dirty word and Democrats could gift the election to Trump by flirting with it.

On , Cal Thomas argued that Johnson’s victory is similar to Thatcher’s triumph in 1979. It presages a second term for Trump just as the “Iron Lady” paved the path for Ronald Reagan. The news headlines, social media chatter and liberal outrage will be trumped by a booming economy, soaring stock markets and healthy job numbers. In 2016, the vote for Brexit was followed by a mandate for Trump.

The 2020 presidential election is some way off and these commentators might be premature in their predictions. The immediate item on the agenda for both countries is a US-UK trade deal. Johnson and Cummings plan to wrap up trade deals around the world and strengthen their hand against the EU. They will be bending their backs to get a trade deal done by next year.

They might have an ally in the White House. Trump is embroiled in impeachment proceedings. He has been a vocal supporter of Brexit and an opponent of the European project. A trade deal with the UK will take away attention from the proceedings and spite EU bigwigs. In an election year, it would make for good political theater. Waving a “great trade deal” around might bolster Trump’s image in the eyes of his supporters. Anglo-Saxon democracies have much in common and Johnson’s victory will inevitably affect politics across the pond.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Castigating those who failed to forecast and believe in Johnson’s resounding victory, Cummings complained, “All these better than average educated Remainer campaigner types who have waved around for eight weeks, for the last four months and didn’t understand what was going on and didn’t understand they were driving everyone mad.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Educated:

Politically irrelevant and incapable of understanding reality

Contextual Note

It’s true that taken literally, Cummings seems to express respect for “average” education. That may sound like a very democratic attitude, but it could also be read as an elitist way of saying that it’s easier to govern people who don’t do too much thinking. His message can be translated as: Wake up, eggheads, you live in an increasingly uneducated world, so get in line, drop your pretensions and enjoy life in the new world order where you won’t be tempted to distract the ignorant masses who can live very happily without the bother of complex thought.

According to , Cummings, who lurked in the background during the election campaign, intends to play a very active role in Johnson’s government. He will be entrusted to shape and transform the intellectual culture of the new administration. “Cummings will aim to stuff the Whitehall machine with scientists, mathematicians and ‘creators’ from the startup world in a bid to turbo-boost activity,” Politico reports. In other words, post-Brexit Britain can expect to be subjected to a seriously technocratic drift, with the aim perhaps of duplicating the success of the US military-industrial complex. “Cummings floated bringing in Cabinet ministers from outside parliament and shaping government agencies in the mold of a U.S. military research team.”

This is the traditional Pentagon to Silicon Valley model of the US military-industrial economy, built on combining military logic, technological innovation and privileged entrepreneurship into a dominating economic force that stretches its fingers across the globe. Many suspect, with good reason, that British political and economic culture is ill-adapted to that model. But when forced by Brexit to rethink everything, that may seem as good a way to go as any other.

It does seem to confirm what many predicted and others feared that once cast off from Europe, Britain will drift into US territorial waters. Whether that means a gradual or even sudden takeover of Britain’s beloved National Health Service (NHS) by American health care corporations remains to be seen. After first entertaining the prospect of a US takeover of the NHS as a condition for a comprehensive trade deal, both Johnson and Donald Trump have vehemently denied any such intention. But once negotiations begin, there is no guarantee that movement in that direction will not take place.

Historical Note

In fairness to the man and his plan, not only would Cummings never oppose the idea of education, but he champions it. Educated at the prestigious Durham School and Oxford, where he earned a first in ancient and modern history, Cummings knows the value of a traditional, humanistic education that has always served to define Britain’s elite. With his deep knowledge of history, he understands better than anyone that educating the elite is not quite the same thing as educating the masses, especially in this age of high tech.

Cummings has plenty of ideas about education. He even sees it as the key to redefining Britain’s place in the world. Politico states it in these terms: “His ultimate dream is to make Britain the ‘school of the world’ — a leading nation in education and science, in a bid to help civilization counter existential threats such as nuclear war and resource conflict.” His goal is to “‘change our economy for the better, making it more productive and fairer’ by boosting long-term productivity, science, technology and helping the regions.”

This plan aims at creating what we might call a secondary US-style elite, rather than the primary elite that will continue to be supplied by Oxford and Cambridge. These two universities (especially humanistic Oxford) have populated the political class with leaders like Cummings and his former boss, Michael Gove, who is remembered as possibly the in modern British history. Gove is also a pillar of Prime Minister Johnson’s team.

The new secondary elite that follows the American model consists of skilled workers and business-minded entrepreneurs. The educational infrastructure Cummings is promoting focuses on STEM instruction (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), which is the opposite of his own background. The new programs will serve to populate promising tech startups with up-to-date coders, while simultaneously launching brilliant entrepreneurial careers of tech-minded business people intent on bolstering the British economy, driven by the noble dream of becoming billionaires. The Oxbridge elite, with its deep understanding of history and the psychology of the masses,  will continue to sit above this secondary elite and manage the big issues of society, including government itself and investment in high tech.

In other words, Cummings’ grand vision of education, which he in 2013 (calling it “Odyssean Education”), is largely inspired by American models. This appears to reflect his obsession with applying and cashing in on recipes created in the US to run its ever-expanding military-industrial empire.

If Cummings’ influence on the Johnson government turns out to be as significant as Politico suggests, two hypotheses emerge concerning the implementation of his vision of Britain’s future contribution to history.

The first is that the UK joins the American imperium as a junior partner. Cummings has bought into US business and political culture, lock, stock and barrel. Rather than attempt to rival an immensely powerful competitor, it would make more sense to join forces, though to some extent that is already the case through NATO.

The second is that, given what most observers recognize as the decline of America’s global leadership — borne out by the very statistics Cummings seem enamored of (falling life expectancy, an opioid crisis, a growing suicide rate, student debt, permanent gun violence, rising inequality, religious fundamentalism) — Britain could once again take over its leadership of the English-speaking world and be a beacon for humanity. He may be counting on Johnson’s charisma to carry this one off. 

This may sound like plagiarism. Isn’t that the dream Steve Bannon had for Donald Trump, a certified ignoramus who, for the past three years, has had the unexpected narcissistic pleasure of seeing himself at the head of what is still the most powerful political, economic and military-political entity on earth?

Bannon has moved on to spearhead an attempt at the conquest of Europe, though this has met with ambiguous results. He dreams of pulling together an international coalition of populist, nationalist movements that logically could have included Johnson but will probably have to settle with the other Brit who made Brexit:. The Brexit Party leader contributed to Johnson’s victory in a gesture of self-sacrifice by pulling away from challenging the Tories in constituencies where they might have been weakened by splitting the pro-Brexit vote. Farage has now that he will come to the US to help Trump’s 2020 campaign.

Many have depicted Cummings as Boris Johnson’s Steve Bannon. In contrast with Bannon’s relationship with Trump, Cummings probably sees the literate, erudite Oxford-educated Johnson — author of a book on the Roman Empire and another on Winston Churchill — as providing the springboard for a new English Renaissance in which even some of the traditional working-class people will benefit from an “average” STEM education to bolster the development of a Silicon Valley-style economy for the UK.

With Johnson’s comfortable majority in Parliament, Cummings may feel he has a boulevard in front of him to achieve his plan of turning Britain into the “city upon the hill” that the US can no longer credibly claim to be. This may be (in his mind) the opportunity for Old England to take over New England’s nearly 400-year-old legendary title.

This assumes that Johnson can control his own Conservative Party’s currently silenced “remainers,” find ways of flattering the voters of Labour’s former “red wall” in the North, manage the difficult and lengthy negotiations for a new trade agreement with the EU from a position of weakness, and find a way of defusing Scotland’s seething anger. He will also have to deal with the disturbance to the economy as soon as Brexit kicks into effect, while also finding clever ways to deflect the blame from himself.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The old adage that the opposition never wins elections, but it is the government that loses them, could well apply in this instance. But it was never on the cards leading up to the UK general election. Nobody truly expected that the people of Britain would make their decisions in the way they did, electing the Conservative Party in significant numbers and putting Labour firmly in second place, now in the position of having to comprehend such a heavy defeat.

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Yet the Labour Party membership is bigger than ever, the manifesto was largely popular — even seen as revolutionary by some — and there was enough will against Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the Tories. However, that was supplanted by the very negative campaigning against Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in much of the media.

For anyone not having met the man, forming an adverse opinion of him was the only outcome. Too many people branded Corbyn as anti-Semitic, a terrorist sympathizer or a communist — and many believed this. Too many voters felt the need to “get Brexit done” and believed it was Labour standing in the way.

The Tories

On the other side, the Tories have weaponized every electioneering technique available to them. From the famous Saatchi & Saatchi advertisement boards in the 1980s that helped Margaret Thatcher secure thumping victories to today’s world of micro-targeting wavering voters in marginal seats, this has been the main strategy to swing the electorate. And as the big tech giants continue to support most political advertising unchecked, these kinds of problems will remain.

So, what happens now is the $64,000 question. After a minor cabinet reshuffle, Johnson will attempt to get Brexit done soon after Christmas. The very right wing of the party wants the UK to leave the European Union without both a withdrawal agreement and a trade deal, and the prospect of that has increased because of this election outcome. The implications of a no-deal exit have been discussed at length for months if not years, yet a very limited few remain hell-bent on the result.

With a weakened opposition, the Tories will feel galvanized, exuberant and well up for all the hardest battles to come. With a majority in Parliament, they will have the numbers to push through the Brexit deal that only they want.

The Opposition

But for any functioning democracy, the opposition is fundamentally important, and so it is absolutely right that Labour works out its failings and comes to terms with it quickly. A momentum that has been the backbone of the party’s resurgence is not going to go away.

So many people who believe in the ideas of wealth redistribution; taxing the super-rich disproportionately higher than everyone else; equality of opportunity and outcome; social care and social protection; social trust and social cohesion; community development, diversity and multiculturalism; and strong public services that are efficient and appropriate for today’s needs in a complex, interdependent economy have to stick to their guns. One possible scenario is that the minimum period of a five-year term in office could be reduced if the Tories make a complete hatchet job of Brexit and the people begin to rise up and the opposition parties get their acts together.

It is not all doom and gloom just yet. The election results suggest a bloody smack on the nose of the Labour Party, but it can heal and work out its direction again quickly enough. Without a doubt, change is required at the top and there needs to be greater clarity of messaging and content for the centrists and the party membership.

In many ways, it seemed as if there were three Labour groups that failed to work together as one party. The membership is youthful and pro-left on many fronts, but MPs are unsure of their positions and some are still tempted by Blairism, while the leadership that is relatively hard left had a bigger fight on their hands from within their own ranks.

There will be many challenges ahead. The new Conservative MPs will feel emboldened, almost drooling at the prospect of what awaits them. For the opposition parties, theirs is a need for rebirth. For the people of the country and for all who have a stake in wanting it to remain a beacon of light and hope, there is always the opportunity to make some kind of difference. It is not time to give up, but the time to reflect and then rebound. The fight is not over yet.

*[This article was cross-posted on .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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This is all too much for the London-encamped, Oxbridge-educated, pseudo-liberal intelligentsia, some of whom feel free to brandish Corbyn a threat to national security. Who the people of Britain are going to believe and follow will invariably reflect on their predilections. Let us first examine some obvious truths.

Anti-Semitism and the Labour Party

The recent furor in relation to accusations of anti-Semitism within the Labour Party deserves particular scrutiny. This is not just because anti-Semitism in any of its forms is completely abhorrent, but because the question of anti-Semitism in Labour is a particular line of attack for the pro-Tory press and for those who wish to silence criticism of the dominant, neoconservative economic and political outlook.

The fact is that questions of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party have been investigated and are being dealt with. In general, issues of anti-Semitism in the United Kingdom are relatively limited, although any kind of violence or intolerance toward minority groups needs to be addressed fully. Corbyn and the Labour Party are invested in a fight against racism, intolerance and bigotry, but the details are never fully elaborated on in the media. As a result, the general perception is that anti-Semitism is rife, that it is unchecked or that it persists in spite of all the utterances against it.

This is nefarious mendacity at some level. At another, it is deeply disingenuous — an attempt to do one thing: to ensure that Corbyn never becomes prime minister. The reality of the matter is that there is far more anti-Semitism among the Tories than Labour. Left-leaning critics of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians are far more capable of separating this from the trouncing of people of the Jewish faith per se, which many on the right often do not.

Why is there is so much enmity toward the possibility of Corbyn as prime minister? Is it because of his lifelong commitment to the cruel injustices meted out against Palestinians at the behest of various Israeli governments that have been tilting further to the right? Is it because Corbyn has been a staunch anti-war campaigner, specifically in relation to the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003?

We now know that the war in Iraq was a neoconservative project based on lies and deceit at the highest levels of public office, and all in an effort to maintain control over key energy supplies in the Middle East when Saddam Hussein wanted to shift away from petrodollars and toward the euro. The unnecessary invasion of Libya in 2011 had much to do with the ambitions of Muammar Gaddafi in wanting to switch to trading the country’s vast oil reserves in a new African dinar.

Seducing Politicians

Sadly, there are large international conglomerates with interests in energy, technology and the financial sector whose ambitions are to ensure further deregulation of economic policy at home and a neoconservative foreign policy abroad. These interests seduce politicians.

Too many of today’s Westminster MPs are vacuous. Their desires to increase their net worth after their lives in politics are over is thoroughly palpable. It has a significant impact on the democratic process, with politicians looking ahead for a future career propped up by these very same international players. It is a generational corruption of the political classes. Conservatives, Blairites, Liberal Democrats and other sycophants of the new world order have fallen foul of the ambitions of wealthy and highly-organized others.

This is not to provide a conspiratorial air to the discussion here. The corruption of politics is not new to the “global north.” Oligarchic powers and the military-industrial complex dictate US politics.

In the UK, findings on the Russian oligarchic influences motivating the likes of Johnson are suppressed in case they might reveal unfortunate truths. The ambitions of the Conservative Party to introduce further deregulation of taxation policy while opening up new markets and trade laws under the guise of Brexit — with all of the lies around “taking back control” or managing “our own laws” — are means to suppress the truth to support those who would wish to exploit further opportunities for the very few. Corbyn stands in complete opposition to all of these concerns and has done consistently over the years. Various dark and dishonest interests want to prevent exposure of their ill-gotten gains.

Who Will Win?

The battle lines are drawn. Divisions are increasingly set in stone. But who will win the election on December 12 is as unclear as ever. The chances are that it will be a hung Parliament, leaving a radical new economic plan offered by Labour, supported by leading economists, dead in the water.

If the Tories form a government of sorts, and with Johnson at the helm, do not expect it “to get Brexit done.” This mere focus-group-derived slogan is targeted to appeal to the frustrated and the flummoxed to move matters swiftly forward. In reality, to undo 40 years of trade laws and regulations with the European Union could take up to a decade of hard and painful negotiations where only the ordinary people of Britain suffer.

So, what is the point of this general election — the third in five years? The answer is that there is no point at all. It is happening because Brexit will not go away with any clarity or purpose for anyone, least alone for the people who instigated the sorry, sad, sordid and unnecessary affair in 2016. But the election has come and it is time for Britain to decide.

The Tories intend to drive Brexit through no matter the cost or the wider implications for society as a whole. But there is a chance to make a change to the status quo in this election. The electorate is getting wiser to the machinations of elitist political interests. And perhaps there is a surprise awaiting us all. Somehow, though, I am not holding my breath.

*[An earlier version of this article was published on .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The debate about the Irish backstop means that the British themselves are now unsure about the answer to that question. Even more mysterious to non-Brits is the question of how a declared “constitutional monarchy” with a high-profile royal family is governed. Many who wonder about what is united in the United Kingdom also ask themselves the question: What is great about Great Britain? The nation is on the fringes of Europe and about to drift out to sea, guided by its new and as yet unelected navigator, Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Can it really be called both great and united?

Never has the official name of a nation contained a more misleading description of its reality. It’s true that every so often — thanks to the mysterious and anonymous Electoral College that, in recent years, elected two luminous US presidents, George W. Bush and Donald Trump, who actually lost the popular vote — the world is reminded that the 50 states of the US have, from the point of view of pure democracy, never been formally united. But no one inside or outside the US entertains any doubts about the unified power and universal purpose of the nation, however chaotic its leadership and however contradictory its policies.

The Crisis of Cultural and Political Authority

In contrast, the UK clearly lost both its sense of power and unique purpose with the dissolution of the British Empire following World War II. It has been struggling to find it ever since. After a decade of “angry young men” who appeared to be lost souls, The Beatles, Carnaby Street and Monty Python brought what was once remembered as “Merry England” back to life in terms of cultural impact in the second half of the 1960s. In the 1980s, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, embracing the sobriquet of the “Iron Lady,” profiting from the windfall of North Sea oil, endowed the nation with a form of ideological leadership that helped define the belief system of late 20th-century globalized capitalism.

But Thatcher couldn’t have done it alone. She thrived in the shadow of US President Ronald Reagan. Whereas she earned her stripes and achieved her glory thanks to the skirmish called the Falklands War, Reagan stepped up in front of the microphones and TV cameras to lead the war against an “evil empire.” Eventually (some people say) his policies defeated it because that empire imploded in 1989.

Thatcher nevertheless committed Britain to a position of relative strength in the expanding European Union largely because of her belief in the commercial value of the European single market. She never believed in the EU as a political entity. For a while, though, she felt there was a real  “Thatcherism on a European scale.” The ambiguity of her attitude set the stage for the drama of Brexit that would unfold under David Cameron’s premiership a quarter of a century after her departure from politics.

Following Thatcher by a decade, Tony Blair reconstructed Labour partly in Thatcher’s image, profiting from the renewed prestige the Iron Lady had earned for the nation. Just as Thatcher’s authority depended on her game of mirrors with Reagan in the White House, Blair prospered by becoming the accomplice of Bill Clinton and then, slightly less comprehensibly, George W. Bush. In contrast with other prime ministers, both Thatcher and Blair excelled at rhetorical leadership in the absence of global political power.

Can the Omelet Return the State of Whole Eggs?

Now, after nearly four years of Brexit melodrama, the lingering divide over “remain” versus “leave” has produced and prolonged an existential debate around the identity of a kingdom that is manifestly no longer united. To complicate things further, after the seemingly never-ending cliffhanger of Theresa May’s negotiated EU withdrawal agreement, the nation is now in the throes of preparing for a general election on December 12 in the hope of achieving some form of closure. Unlike the straightforward electoral battles of the past, this campaign puts on full display the visible, profound disunity of the two dominant parties, the Conservatives and Labour. Divided by Brexit, the internal wrangling of the parties has significantly contributed to the general, rudderless disunity of the nation.

The two parties are not only divided between “remain” and “leave,” but the “leavers” themselves, especially among the Tories, are divided over a hard and soft Brexit. As if that wasn’t enough, they are further divided over the personalities of their two leaders: Boris Johnson — an ambitious, mendacious and narcissistic upstart — and Jeremy Corbyn, apparently too puritanically socialist for the taste of some in his party (especially the Blairite loyalists who truly believe in the merits of capitalism).

Then there are the parties that actually know what they want — the Liberal Democrats, on one side, and the Brexit Party, on the other. But even those who agree with their relatively simple electoral credo (“remain” for the Lib Dems and “leave” for the Brexit Party) appear, according to , to be drifting away from parties that have no chance of governing and even less of bridging the growing divide if called upon to govern.

Adding to the confusion is the increasingly doubtful status of Northern Ireland and Scotland within a future version of the unified kingdom. In Johnson’s new “acceptable” draft of a withdrawal treaty from the EU, Northern Ireland will effectively remain within the European customs and tariffs zone while remaining politically “united” with the UK government in London. At least during a period of transitioning to something else, it will retain a soft border with the Republic of Ireland and acquire a hard border with its own nation.

It required great British ingenuity to come up with that solution, much more than  seven maids with seven mops could have done when planning to clear the sand from a beach. At the same time, Scotland — a country but not a nation — whose population voted to remain within the EU, will most likely hold a new referendum for independence, with the ambition of having its own place in Europe once the government in Westminster finalizes Brexit. That will give new life to , possibly provoking a fit of jealousy on the part of Donald Trump who could well end up accusing the Roman emperor of stealing his ideas.

Can Gravity Restore Its Dissipating Force?

In short, the picture of the nation that emerges is that of a complex series of powerful centrifugal forces pushing away from the unified center, with no gravitational force to pull any of the elements back together. Unless, of course, we are to believe that the magnetic personality of Prime Minister Johnson can somehow provide that missing gravitational force. If toward the end of the 17th century the Englishman Isaac Newton could offer the world gravity — until then an unknown concept — a modern Englishman with a strong sense of mission, a charismatic personality and an unkempt mop of blond hair that demonstrates the ability to defy gravity might also find the resources to make it work for the political benefit of his people.

Until recently, the polls seemed to point to this hypothesis. If Johnson were to be elected with the resounding majority that some  (366 seats to Labour’s 199), perhaps the prime minister would find himself in a position of allowing him to play the dominant role he has so long coveted. He may even be dreaming that, with the requisite amount of power and influence, with the dissociation of the union, he could envisage abolishing the anachronistic name of the United Kingdom and calling it, say, “Johnsonia.” And because even a megalomaniac like Johnson would quickly realize that what’s left of the formerly united kingdom could hardly survive on its own after definitively cutting its ties with Europe, eventually the prime minister would have the option of applying for Johnsonia to become the 51st state of the “United States of Trumplandia,” which some predict will be the fate of the US if President Trump wins a second term in 2020.

The absurdity of the reflections in the preceding paragraph serves only to demonstrate the degraded state of democracy today. The idea that impetuous, inveterate liars — including Trump, Johnson, Rodrigo Duterte and Jair Bolsonaro — have discovered the secret to winning elections in populous nations that play a significant role in geopolitics tells us something about the health of democratic institutions today. If democracy is only about who can mobilize the means to win elections and referendums, then it’s time to admit that democracy isn’t just imperfect but, in its current form, it has become perverse.

Democracy has never sat comfortably with an empire or even a monarchy, but until recently it has managed to maintain a certain stability. �մǻ岹��’s crisis in the UK, which illustrates the general problem, boils down to two contrasting interpretations of the workings of democracy: in the , commenting on today’s crisis, the conflict lies “between a parliamentary democracy and direct democracy.”

The parliamentary model has failed to produce any solution. The 2016 Brexit referendum — an example of direct democracy — reached a simple decision without defining the terms of the choice given to the people. Whereas the meaning of “remain” didn’t require a great deal of thought, no one had any clear or even unclear idea of the meaning of “leave.” What the British population has now discovered is that no authority exists who can provide that meaning. This means that, without a second Brexit referendum, in which the meaning will be seriously debated and presumably understood by the voting population, chaos is likely to ensue for a long time to come. Even if there is a second referendum, nothing ensures that chaos will not ensue anyway.

Lewis Carroll’s Insight into Brexit and the UK General Election

The suspense of the last four years has for many people become addictive. Britain has assumed a new identity of being permanently on the brink. On the brink of what? Brexit? A newly-motivated Europe that will welcome back its straying member? Being gobbled up by the US? Forging a new empire to take over from a declining Pax Americana?

Perhaps Lewis Carroll, whose poem cited above, the “Walrus and the Carpenter,” from his book, “Alice in Wonderland,” can offer some insight. Carroll’s poem offers an oblique critique of the methods of empire in the second half of 19th-century Britain. Although commentators on the poem often insist that it’s just nonsensical entertainment for children, Carroll offers hints right from the start that he is thinking all along about the British geopolitical system and has identified features that are present even today, more than 150 years after its publication.

The poem begins with an implicit reference to a cliché that had been circulating for decades before Carroll wrote his poem, “The sun never sets on the British �𳾱辱����”:

“The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright –
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.”

The first line reminds us that Britain “rules the waves,” but the comic idea of daring to shine in the middle of the night points directly to the cliché about the sun never setting on the empire, something the moon justifiably objects to in the following stanza (the sun “had got no business to be there after the day was done”).

The story of the poem concerns a pair of Englishmen who stroll on the beach and then befriend a bed of oysters. They incite the mollusks to exert themselves in a walk upon the beach before mobilizing their superior knowledge of “ships and sails and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings” to lull their victims into a state in which they have no choice but to become the two Englishmen’s lunch.

The Walrus appears as the overfed, self-satisfied pontificating and profiteering Englishman wandering upon foreign shores who believes his command of culture gives him the power to manage the world, physically, economically and socially. Even before discovering the oysters on the beach, the two Englishmen speculate on the methods that would allow them to engage in the meritorious exercise of clearing the beach of its sand, presumably to make the environment resemble his idea of an organized, civilized world: “‘If this were only cleared away,’ They said, ‘it would be grand!’”

The carpenter plays the role of the engineer or colonial administrator who will put the Walrus’ plans into action. He has no personality, only technical savvy and theoretical knowledge of what’s possible and not possible. He is a realist who employs materialistic logic to solve problems. To the Walrus’ wish for a solution to clear the beach involving maids with mops, he replies, “I doubt it,” showing he recognizes the gap between the conquering Englishman’s ambition to reorganize the world and the more resistant physical reality of that world. The fact that the Carpenter sheds a bitter tear tells us two things: that, despite his realism, he identifies with the Walrus’ imperial logic and he regrets his powerlessness to change some features of the environment according to their desire.

The story of the oysters, which begins immediately after the failed plan to clear the beach, provides a perfect example of the psychological methods employed by the roving agents of the British Empire. They first establish contact with the rulers of the societies they wish to reorganize and exploit for their own purposes. In this case, the eldest, wisest oyster suspects a foul motive and declines the offer of a “pleasant walk, a pleasant talk” on the beach. Four unwary younger oysters, ambitious to profit from the solicitations of the visitors turn out to be all “eager for the treat.” These are the unsuspecting locals the British can appeal to for their profit, which in this case takes the form of eating them for their lunch after a leisurely chat.

Naturally, leaders of traditional societies tend to resist the blandishments of the European masters who came to enlighten them by sharing with them their advanced wisdom. The Englishmen state that they can only accompany four at a time. But when the eldest oyster resists, they extend their offer to the masses, seeking to identify those who are “eager” to take advantage of what appears to be the generous offer of the rich invader. It’s the world of Gunga Din, where the natives can hope to be gainfully employed by the tenors of an advanced civilization.

When he sees the potential for profit, the Walrus has no objection to breaking his own rule of “only four” and accepting the hordes of oysters who will follow the two men to their feasting place, a rock that’s “conveniently low.”

The rest of the story demonstrates another Victorian idea, a colonial variation on Charles Darwin’s scientific notion of “survival of the fittest.” The Walrus and the Carpenter must eat to survive. The “convenience” of stuffing themselves on the oysters who had trotted after them was too great to forgo.

In short, the poem offers a comically absurd view of British colonialism. It reflects on the discourse and strategies of seduction that include pseudo-scientific expertise that convey the aura of superiority of the British over the natives. From the practical work of clearing beaches to speculating on the attributes of pigs, the British represent the finesse of evolved civilization.

The final outcome — devouring the oysters — reflects the fundamental racism that accompanies the British imperial project. The two interlopers initially treat the oysters as if they were equals, proposing to cooperate, share and collaborate. The Walrus and Carpenter control the conversation and propose the topics. They include production and management of resources (cabbages), government (kings), industrial production (shoes, ships, sealing wax) and intellectual matters in the form of abstract scientific research and logical thinking (“why the sea is boiling hot … whether pigs have wings”). The Walrus and Carpenter set the agenda and never consider listening to the oysters.

The oysters are literally exploited to the death, in this case by being eaten. The British had no qualms about devouring the lives of the populations they conquered, not by eating them but by manipulating them in all sorts of “scientific” ways as they demonstrated their skills at social engineering. The final irony concerns the emotional hypocrisy with which imperial conquest was carried out. Just before eating them, the Walrus takes the opportunity to reaffirm his public commitment to the human values of civilization. He regrets his act at the very moment of completing it: “‘It seems a shame,’ the Walrus said, ‘To play them such a trick.’” He adds, “I weep for you… I deeply sympathize” and immediately stuffs himself on the delicious oysters.

After the recital of the poem, the discussion of its impact and meaning between Alice and the Tweedle twins brings us forward to the world of today’s politics:

“‘I like the Walrus best,’ said Alice: ‘because you see he was a little sorry for the poor oysters.’ He ate more than the Carpenter, though,’ said Tweedledee. ‘You see he held his handkerchief in front, so that the Carpenter couldn’t count how many he took: contrariwise.’ 

‘That was mean!’ Alice said indignantly. ‘Then I like the Carpenter best — if he didn’t eat so many as the Walrus.’ ‘But he ate as many as he could get,’ said Tweedledum.
This was a puzzler. After a pause, Alice began, ‘Well! They were both very unpleasant characters.’”

Alice reacts in the way the British population would have been expected to at the time. She tries to decide whom she likes best between the Walrus and the Carpenter. A choice similar to “leave” or “remain” or between Johnson and Corbyn.

Applying Carroll’s Wisdom to �մǻ岹��’s Election

The moral problem (Carroll calls it the “puzzler”) is reduced to a personality contest, meaning that any reflection on how and why the observed injustice occurred — its systemic causes — is banished. Carroll presents his implicit criticism of a political system that offers no other choices than between two “unpleasant characters.” This observation is ironically underlined by the fact that this dialogue is led by none other than the utterly interchangeable Tweedle twins.

Which brings us back to today’s politics leading up to the UK general election. Just like Alice, British voters must make what is essentially a new binary choice between the portly Walrus (Johnson?), who tells lies and takes as much as possible for himself, and the lithe Carpenter (Corbyn?), who refuses to comment on the crucial issue the Walrus mentions — the shame of playing “them such a trick” expresses: “The Carpenter said nothing but ‘The butter’s spread too thick!’”

To some extent, the parties today reflect the situation Lewis Carroll described a century and a half ago. Inspired by the lessons from the poem, Labour would be wise to raise the moral question Alice struggled with. They might suggest voters ask themselves: Which of the two characters do they think would be more inclined to lie about his intentions and eat as many oysters as possible? Contrariwise (as Carroll would say), the question Tories may hope the voters will seek an answer to would be this: Which of the two characters has the greater ability to successfully plan and execute the “trick” that will reduce the population of unwanted oysters on the beach?

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Johnson’s time in 10 Downing Street has been tumultuous. The House of Commons defied him a staggering 12 times, the Supreme Court voted unanimously against his decision to suspend Parliament and his own brother resigned from the cabinet. Johnson kicked out 21 rebel MPs from his own party. They included big beast Ken Clarke, rising star Rory Stewart and Winston Churchill’s grandson, Sir Nicholas Soames. Despite the odds, Johnson has still managed to get a new Brexit deal with the EU. It is this deal that he wants voters to back.

There is method in Johnson’s madness. Both Tory insiders and journalists speak of a Svengali who has cast a spell on the prime minister and masterminded his strategy. Johnson plays the good cop, turning on his legendary charisma, charm, wit, banter and humor. Svengali Dominic Cummings, the founder of “leave” campaign, plays bad cop, marking out victims, putting the knife in and then twisting it. Despised by former Prime Minister , Cummings has been called a Tory Bolshevik. While Johnson with his oratory and energy plays Vladimir Lenin, Cummings with his plotting and cunning plays Joseph Stalin.

The Civil War Is Back

As Stewart has observed in a candid , Cummings is a Machiavellian operator with a gift for communication in the modern age. “Take back control,” a slogan Cummings created, became a mantra that resonated deeply in an island with a sacrosanct tradition of parliamentary sovereignty and memory of global empire. The calling to spend the £350 million ($461 million) per week the UK sends to the EU on the National Health Service (NHS) instead was political theater of the very highest order.

Johnson and Cummings have been itching for an election from the very day they entered 10 Downing Street. They have pitched themselves as the keepers of the democratic flame who regard the result of the 2016 Brexit referendum as inviolable. They see the “remain” camp as hopelessly fragmented. Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour and Jo Swinson’s Liberal Democrats cannot work together. They will inevitably split the vote, giving the Conservatives a clear path to power.

In this worldview, the Liberal Democrats are now a single-issue pressure group. They are obsessed only with Europe. Led by a “shouty hockey mom,” they lack intellectual ballast of yore when Paddy Ashdown led them with splendid gravitas if not spectacular electoral success. More importantly, the Lib Dems are now an anti-democratic party because they have rejected the result of the Brexit referendum to leave the European Union.

In this worldview, Corbyn’s Labour Party is unelectable. The threatening New Labour project of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown is dead. A Marxist anti-Semite with dodgy friends from Palestine and Northern Ireland is now in charge. Labour has returned to the days of Michael Foot under whom it lurched to the left, allowing Margaret Thatcher to ride her victory chariot to Number 10.

Johnson and Cummings have bet that the Brexit faithful will deliver a Tory majority in the House of Commons on December 12. Therefore, the party had to be purged of “namby-pambies and fuddy-duddies” to win a majority. Learning from Theresa May’s lackluster performance in the 2017 election, Johnson and Cummings are going to the public with a new deal and asking for a majority to “get Brexit done.”

This strategy to swing right to win the election and then move back to the center sounds eminently sensible. However, there is a fly in the ointment. The country is deeply divided. The Conservative Party has morphed into a party of Brexit. It is not quite the broad church it was until recently. A victory on December 12 might well be Pyrrhic because a potential Tory cabinet will inevitably lack some of the party’s best minds.

In fact, the UK has never been so divided since the English Civil War of 1642-51. Labour has emulated the Tories in purging the party of its own heretics. The Corbynistas now control the commanding heights of the party and dream of doing the same with the economy. They want Scandinavian-style socialism and have no time for New Labour apostates. Like the Conservative Party, Labour is now thin on talent and of dissent.

Along with the two main parties, the rest of the country is divided too. The (SNP) led by Nicola Sturgeon is campaigning on a simple question: “[W]ho will decide Scotland’s future — Westminster leaders like Boris Johnson or the people who live here?” After a similar vote in 2014, the SNP wants another referendum on the question of Scottish independence because the UK will no longer be in the EU and most Scots voted for “remain.” Johnson, Corbyn and Swinson have all rejected the call for a second Scottish referendum, but this seismic fault line could end the much-vaunted unity of the United Kingdom.

Even as dour Presbyterian Scots may bring future peril, Northern Ireland is already simmering. May’s Brexit deal collapsed in part because of the . This was a special provision of the EU withdrawal agreement that prevented a hard border on the island of Ireland. That question has not gone away. Johnson’s deal is not making the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the strident Protestant party of Northern Ireland, terribly happy. Since 2017, the Tories have been in power thanks to DUP support, and a hung parliament might make matters for Johnson’s Brexit deal tricky.

In any case, the peace in Northern Ireland is far more fragile than it seems. The DUP and Sinn Féin, the Catholic party that wants reunification with Ireland, have fallen out. The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 brought peace to this troubled land and envisaged a power-sharing agreement. After the Brexit referendum, the DUP and Sinn Féin have bickered bitterly. Since early 2017, Northern Ireland has had no government because the two parties have been unable to share power. Consequently, major decisions involving millions of pounds and affecting the lives of the people are simply not being made. Nurses are striking, people are restive and the return of violence is a distinct possibility.

The Cavalier Leads the Roundhead

On July 24, this author observed that the history of the UK has long been “a ding-dong battle between cavaliers and roundheads.” Old Etonian Cameron is clearly a cavalier while the vicar’s daughter May is a roundhead. This divide exists even within the Labour Party. Blair was a cavalier while Brown a roundhead. Today, the contrast could not be sharper.

Johnson, the 20th-Old Etonian prime minister, a scholar of classics at Balliol College, Oxford and a columnist for The Daily Telegraph, is the classic cavalier. Corbyn, a self-proclaimed democratic , a student who left school with the lowest-possible passing grades and a supporter of underdogs from Latin America to Africa, is a redoubtable roundhead.

Like Thatcher, another roundhead, Corbyn is a conviction politician. The Labour leader opposed selective education and, therefore, did not want his son to attend a grammar school. A frugal vegetarian, an avid gardener and a supporter of unilateral disarmament, Corbyn is a cardholding member of the old guard of the Labour Party. Corbyn’s unlikely rise to power stems from public resentment against George Osborne’s austerity measures that inflicted pain and hardship on the most vulnerable sections of society. In 2017, he did unexpectedly well against May. Now, Corbyn is against a completely different political animal and evidence suggests that he is struggling.

Corbyn’s Achilles’ heel is his lack of clarity on Brexit. There is reason to suspect that Corbyn is a closet Brexiteer. His claim to be “” on Brexit might be forced because his party members lie largely in the “remain” camp. Corbyn is promising to negotiate a third Brexit deal with the EU if he enters Number 10 that will protect trade, jobs and the peace process in Northern Ireland. The trouble for Corbyn is that the country is suffering from Brexit fatigue and wants the protracted political soap opera to end. On Brexit, the issue voters care most about according to opinion polls, the Labour leader has not been able to put daylight between Johnson and himself.

As pointed out earlier, Johnson could not be more different to Corbyn. His own sister him as “charming, ruthless, single-minded, determined” and disciplined. Conrad Black, who hired him as editor of The Spectator, has called him “a scoundrel” who is “very clever and very likable” but is really “a sly fox disguised as a teddy bear.” Ian Hislop, the editor of Private Eye, has the philandering Johnson “our [Silvio] Berlusconi but somehow it’s funnier.”

Like Berlusconi, Johnson is a populist Pied Piper. Like the , he is also “a politician with no convictions.” Clarke, Soames and others who know him well have come to a similar conclusion. Johnson does have preternatural confidence and extraordinary swagger that comes from a deep belief that he was born to rule. Johnson’s sister remarks that the Tory leader knows that “life is a competition and he always wants to be top.” At university, Johnson became president of the prestigious Oxford Union after losing out the first time around. At Eton, he competed so ferociously that he broke his nose four times on the rugby pitch. Even as a young boy, Johnson wanted to be world king. He may be short of conviction but certainly not of ambition.

As Labour’s Ken Livingstone observed after losing to Johnson twice in the London mayoral race, the Old Etonian knows how to make people feel good about themselves. In this election, Johnson’s high energy, cheery, witty style of campaigning seems to be working even with some minorities. With his , the prime minister has cannily wooed British Indians. To be fair, most British Indians swapped sympathies from Labour to the Conservatives in 2015 after Cameron’s with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. By showing up in a  with his partner clad in a sari, Johnson has British Indians singing Bollywood-style  in Hindi.

Apart the “Boris effect,” Tories have a structural advantage that Cummings understands only too well. They have more money than other parties. They are the natural party of power in a class-divided society where people may resent but ultimately defer to their social superiors. Besides, the “leave” camp is less fragmented than the “remain.” Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party not contesting the 317 seats won by the Conservative Party in the 2017 election, and many members of Farage’s party are gravitating toward the Tories. This gives Johnson’s party a huge advantage in the UK’s first-past-the-post system.

In this electoral system, if there are five candidates who win 36%, 30%, 18%, 10% and 6% of the vote in any constituency, the one who wins the most votes — i.e., 36% in this example — becomes MP. Unlike proportional representation, the seats in Parliament are not divided among different parties in accordance with the national percentage of the votes they receive. The party that wins the most seats governs and the Tories are in poll position. The wily cavalier fox seems set to beat the naive roundhead hedgehog, “get Brexit done” and inaugurate a new era in British politics.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Britain May Back Boris to Get Brexit Done appeared first on 51�Թ�.

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British democracy has been dysfunctional since the 2016 Brexit referendum to leave the European Union. This is the second early election in three years. This is precisely what British MPs sought to avoid through the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act 2011. That legislation set a five-year period between general elections. Prior to 2011, a sitting prime minister could call an election at any point during his or her premiership. Now, that power lies with the House of Commons, and it has voted for an early election after much drama over the last two years.

The Story of the 2019 Election

In 2017, Parliament voted for an early election. Theresa May, the then-prime minister, wanted to secure a clear majority in Parliament for Brexit negotiations with the EU. May’s Conservative Party won 42.4% of the vote, its highest share since 1983. Yet it was not just Tories that got a high percentage of the vote. The Labour Party won 40%, its largest share since 2001. Labour might not have returned to power but, led by Jeremy Corbyn, it surprised and analysts, gaining 30 seats.

With a hung Parliament and no clear majority for either party, May was forced to seek the support of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), founded by the late Protestant preacher Ian Paisley in Northern Ireland, to continue as prime minister. In late 2018, a weakened May agreed a Brexit withdrawal agreement with the EU, but the House of Commons rejected her deal thrice. Consequently, in May 2019, she announced that she was stepping down as prime minister.

May’s resignation set off a leadership election in the Conservative Party. Its 160,000 members voted for Boris Johnson, the former mayor of London and the leader of the “leave” campaign during the Brexit referendum. Taking over as prime minister on July 24, Johnson promised to “deliver Brexit, unite the country and defeat Jeremy Corbyn.”

Johnson’s brief premiership has been eventful. He that he would “rather be dead in a ditch” than stay on in the EU after October 31, the deadline to depart from the union. Even his younger brother resigned from the cabinet. The prime minister repeatedly promised to take the UK out of the EU “deal or no deal,” but the House of Commons foiled his plans by prohibiting a no-deal Brexit. This was thanks to the rebellion of 21 Tory MPs who voted against the government, the first of Johnson’s .

In September, Johnson suspended Parliament. However, the unanimously ruled against his decision. In an 11-0 verdict, the justices held that the prime minister had “acted unlawfully in shutting down the sovereign body” in the British Constitution.

Despite numerous setbacks at home, Johnson agreed a new Brexit deal with the EU on October 17. A majority of British MPs backed this withdrawal agreement but rejected Johnson’s plan to get it through Parliament in three days, leaving it “.” The prime minister sought a way out of this impasse by forcing an early election on , the first UK general election in this month since 1923.

Why Does the UK Election Matter?

The election is historic because different parties are offering radically different visions for the UK’s future. This does not happen each time the country goes to the polls. In the 1950s, the Labour and Conservative parties moved to a broad consensus on economic policy. In fact, The Economist coined the term “” because Conservative Rab Butler and Labour Hugh Gaitskell were indistinguishable in policy terms when they were chancellor of the Exchequer.

In 1997, Tony Blair’s New Labour wrested power from John Major’s Conservatives. However, there was not much daylight between the policies of the two parties. Similarly, there was little to separate David Cameron’s victorious Tories from the vanquished New Labour in 2010. Britain’s adversarial politics and tradition of feisty debate often magnifies policy differences but hides the common ground and shared beliefs on which its parliamentary politics generally operates.

Yet there are elections when seismic shifts occur. In 1945, led the Labour Party to a historic victory. His government created the modern British welfare state with its fabled National Health Service (NHS). Attlee also presided over the decolonization of much of the British Empire.

In 1979, Margaret Thatcher’s election brought Butskellism to an end. Inspired by Austrian economist , the “Iron Lady” championed free markets and rolled back the role of the state. Thatcher privatized most nationalized industries, lowered taxes and encouraged homeownership. Her “” reforms deregulated financial markets and made the City of London a rival to Wall Street.

The election on December 12 is similar to the elections of 1945 and 1979. This was clearly in evidence on December 6 when Johnson and Corbyn squared off in a televised . They jousted over the future of the NHS, the UK-US relationship and, of course, Britain’s ties with the EU. Corbyn promised democratic, Scandinavian-style socialism and Johnson promised “one-nation conservatism” in which “a dynamic market economy” would “pay for fantastic public services.”

Unlike 1945 and 1979, though, the December 12 election might not just be a two-horse race. Smaller parties may punch above their weight. The Liberal Democrats were in a coalition government with the Conservatives from 2010 to 2015. Now, they are attracting attention again because they have vowed to the Brexit referendum and remain in the EU. The party plans to replace rates for small businesses with a new land-value tax on landlords. It aims to boost entrepreneurship as well and redevelop town centers and high streets. This might be music to the ears of some voters.

In 2019, regional parties are more important than ever with the Scottish National Party (SNP) to be on the ascendant. In 2016, Scotland voted against Brexit. In 2014, the Scots voted to stay in the UK but, at that time, the UK was a part of the EU. It is possible that an SNP victory might put Scottish independence back on the agenda and give the party a say in the formation of the future government in Westminster.

The DUP, which has supported the Conservative government since 2017, hopes to have “” after the election. It supports Brexit but opposes Johnson’s withdrawal deal. Its Catholic rival, Sinn Féin, bitterly opposes Brexit. In 2017, the Northern Ireland Executive collapsed because of differences between Sinn Féin and the DUP. Since then, the situation has and the Royal College of Nursing has plans to start for the first time in its 103-year existence. Both parties of Northern Ireland are important in this election.

Finally, Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party cannot be underestimated. In November, Farage decided not to contest the the Conservatives won in 2017. Over the years, he has been the single biggest proponent of Brexit. Like the DUP, Farage’s party opposes Johnson’s Brexit deal. Some of his party members disagree. These Brexiteers are supporting the Conservatives instead because they are unwilling to risk Brexit. Furthermore, Farage’s party has appeal among the working class and could potentially take away votes from Labour, queering the pitch for the Conservatives.

Rarely have so many variables been at play when the British have queued up to cast their votes. This election will define an era.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Britain Faces a Historic Election appeared first on 51�Թ�.

If, as expected, the House votes to impeach Trump, the Senate will become the jury of his impeachment trial. In a with a link to the Politico article, the former head of the US Office of Government Ethics, Walter Shaub, said: “The accused is helping jurors raise money. Does it get any more preposterous than that?”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Preposterous:

In the realm of the now-dominant political system of plutocratic hyperreality, a synonym for normal and worthy of admiration

Contextual Note

The Online Etymology Dictionary provides the following of the meaning of the word: “1540s, from Latin praeposterus ‘absurd, contrary to nature, inverted, perverted, in reverse order,’ literally ‘before-behind’ (compare topsy-turvy, cart before the horse), from prae ‘before’ + posterus ‘subsequent.’”

When a system demonstrates consistent principles of behavior, a disciplined observer will assume there is a behavioral rule, or scientific law, at work. The strong correlation between money acquired or spent and what is applauded as merited success in the current culture of the US and most of the Western world points toward a new behavioral norm that has turned older ethical instincts on their head. The value of any item, deliberate act or even personal reputation has become synonymous with the monetary price one places on it.

When on “The Daily Show” this past week host Trevor Noah, former Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer, announced Balmer’s net worth of $51.7 billion, the presumably leftist, anti-plutocratic, Democratic audience erupted into spontaneous, admiring applause even before Noah could finish his sentence. Balmer invented nothing and became rich partly by chance, through his association with Bill Gates, and partly through his preposterous, over-the-top focused on money and success.

As an attorney specializing in government ethics who served under three presidents — George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump —Schaub may represent one of the last of a dwindling minority in the public sector who accept that there are laws governing behavior in society that supersede the force of cash. On the strength of his belief in the existence of something called ethics, he judges Trump’s attempt to provide funding for his future jurors perverse, contrary to ordinary values, the opposite of normal and quite literally preposterous.

And yet the rest of the nation, including its media, appears to excuse Trump’s actions as simply self-interested and, therefore, normal. For most Americans relishing the fact that they live in a free country, because Trump has the ability to mobilize wealth — his own or the wealth of others — he should not only be allowed but even expected to do so.

This doesn’t mean that the notion of ethics no longer exists. Many people will see Trump’s gambit as unfair. But such behavior no longer seems “preposterous” to anyone whose profession doesn’t involve theorizing formal ethics. Instead, certain forms of preposterous behavior have become an implicit model commanding admiration. The easiest and surest way of achieving success is to break the ethical and moral rules, defy the conventions and, as quickly as possible, display one’s achievement measured by the money or power acquired. Trump’s election in 2016, weeks after the release of the “Access Hollywood” , validated that thesis.

Brazen lying, provocative actions, antisocial behavior in the form of sheer egoism, selfishness and narcissism, and successful bullying are acts the public now sees as either acceptable or inevitable attributes of those who succeed through their assertiveness. If coupled with monetary success, these traits are elevated to the status of a behavioral model. Rick Perry, the former governor of Texas and energy secretary, has just why he thinks Trump is the “chosen one,” comparing him to the Old Testament kings David, Solomon and Saul. It is part of “God’s plan for the people who rule and judge over us on this planet in our government.” 

Trump is not alone. There is no end of telling examples among those who “rule and judge” in today’s political, industrial and media culture: Kanye West, Elon Musk, Boris Johnson, Rodrigo Duterte, Jair Bolsonaro, Narendra Modi, the late Jeffrey Epstein, Dick Cheney, Bernie Madoff, Harvey Weinstein, Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, Mark Zuckerberg, O.J. Simpson, practically any televangelist… and the list goes on.

Some of them bully; some of them steal; several of them murder and rape; “move fast and break things.” Most have learned or invented special ways of conning large numbers of people. All of them not only brazenly lie but insist on the veracity of their lies. Some of them, subsequent to their success and celebrity, have been caught in a legal trap simply because, besides ensuring their own fame, they tend to make enemies, often among those as brazen as they are.

In other words, “preposterous” no longer simply means “in radical violation of the norm.” Preposterousness has become a new norm, though reserved for the talented, wealthy few. It isn’t without risk. But it tends to be one of the quickest paths to success and wealth in a world in which wealth itself has become the strongest insurance against the legal, ethical and political challenges that society may still put forward to thwart preposterous behavior.

Historical Note

Because being successful with preposterous behavior requires a special talent, history has consistently produced a number of exceptionally talented individuals with the means of achieving fame, though not always fortune, through their preposterous acts. Unsuccessful and unconvincing preposterous behavior has usually tended to be classified as antisocial if not criminal.

Among the ancients, the Greek general Alcibiades, the cynic Diogenes, Nero and Caligula cultivated different styles of preposterousness that made them famous and, in some cases, dangerous. From Genghis Khan, Napoleon and on to Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, conquerors and would-be conquerors — while concentrating on the material aspects of conquest — have at least played at being preposterous in the name of acquiring and consolidating power. So while it is not a new phenomenon, until recently preposterous behavior focused not on financial success or prowess, but exclusively on the power of the preposterous personality.

All that has changed in contemporary culture, thanks to an evolution in ethical norms due to the recently established role of monetary value as the supreme measure of worth. Wealth and the inexorable influence of money have taken a central place in our culture, complementing and, to some degree, even displacing personality and talent. Personalities such as Trump, Epstein and Madoff wouldn’t have had so much influence over so many people without the attraction of wealth. Those who have acquired wealth, often more by chance than talent, find that they now have a license to develop, display and even promote their preposterousness because of that wealth. Elon Musk and Kanye West illustrate that trend.

This past week, Musk offered an unintended of the power of preposterousness when he organized the unveiling of his Tesla electric pickup truck and watched as his proud claim of shatterproof windows was literally shattered in front of a live audience. In the aftermath of what for non-preposterous people would be a shameful and costly humiliation, Musk announced that he had received 187,000 orders for the truck. He left the fatal impression that he either lied about or — worse — misunderstood the technical characteristics of the technology he is admired for producing.

The fact that this failure in no way either dampened the public’s enthusiasm for his products nor stained his personal reputation proves that preposterousness associated with financial success works. He did, however (provisionally), $770 million of his net worth as Tesla’s shares took a dive.

In presenting the Conservative Party election manifesto this past weekend, three weeks before December’s general election, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised investment in infrastructure, health care and other services, accompanied by no increase in taxes. More generally, he painted a picture of five years of British utopia, all of that thanks to his proclaimed ability and determination to push through Brexit.

Voters have good reason to doubt nearly all of Johnson’s promises and every reason to believe that this isn’t the first time he has lied to the nation. And yet he is projected to achieve a commanding majority in Parliament. In contrast, the very sincere Theresa May lost her majority in Parliament in 2017 and, while battling for two and a half years to fulfill what she believed to be her mission, could accomplish nothing. Preposterousness definitely pays.

Some may see as a degradation of democracy the fact that bombastic liars and corrupt manipulators are applauded and rewarded for their transparently disingenuous or utterly mistaken maneuvers simply because they dared to do it. Both Johnson and Musk — to say nothing of Trump — have created an image of a personality that dares to say or do preposterous things and, when they fail, to earn immediate forgiveness for their errors.

This has become a sign of leadership in a civilization governed by the values of celebrity culture. Those rare voices who invoke the notion of ethics and call such actions preposterous will not only never be publicly cheered, but their critique of preposterousness will at best be acknowledged as a quaint relic of a no longer relevant past in which people cared about integrity and moral values.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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That narrative might be changing. It began on September 17 when Israel went to polls and ended on September 24 when, in the UK, the Supreme Court declared the proroguing of Parliament to be illegal and, in the US, the Democrats launched an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. The developments in Israel, Britain and the US hold important lessons for India.

Israel Shows Netanyahu the Door

Modern republics are a delicate dance among the three branches of government — legislative, executive and judicial — and the fourth estate of the media. In the case of Israel, although it defines itself as a “Jewish and democratic state” and the “nation-state of Jewish people,” the constitution does not discriminate among its citizens based on religion. However, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has exploited ethnoreligious fault lines among Jews and Arabs for more than a decade. His fear-mongering and race-baiting have been so successful that he has managed to ride out a wave of credible while in office.

When the Israeli law enforcement agencies and Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit refused to toe Netanyahu’s line, his supporters introduced a bill in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, to grant the prime minister immunity against prosecution. After the elections in April delivered a split verdict, preventing Netanyahu from garnering a majority in the Knesset, he refused to give opposing parties a chance to form a government and brazenly called for another election instead. In the run-up to the second election in September, he openly the idea of annexing Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which the Palestinians see as part of a future state.

The second-place finish of Netanyahu’s Likud party in the unprecedented second election in a year demonstrates the resilience of Israeli democracy. While Netanyahu wanted an outright majority and another term to protect himself from indictment, voters ushered him to the door. On November 21, he was on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust.

Since 2009, Netanyahu has carefully manipulated the media, controlled public opinion with incendiary rhetoric and ruled the executive branch with a tight fist. But fearless law enforcement agencies, an attorney general with a sense of duty and an independent judiciary eventually caught up with him. Even President Trump, who has been one of Netanyahu’s staunchest allies, has belatedly distanced himself from Netanyahu by announcing that the US relationship is with Israel and not with its prime minister.

Boris Is Forced to Hit the Brakes

Less than a week after the Israeli elections, the verdict by the UK Supreme Court calling British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s decision to prorogue Parliament illegal was a pleasant surprise.

Ever since the ill-fated 2016 Brexit referendum held by then-Prime Minister David Cameron, British politics has resembled a circus. The birthplace of the Westminster system of government, widely adopted around the world, has been lurching from one quandary to another for the past three years. While the government of Theresa May repeatedly failed to pass a Brexit deal to allow the UK to leave the European Union, none of her decisions resembled a constitutional crisis like the one Johnson precipitated when, on August 28, he recommended a five-week suspension of Parliament to the queen.

The attempted power-grab by Johnson, a populist prime minister, was unprecedented and intended to prevent Parliament from deliberating over various Brexit options before the October 31 deadline. As the ceremonial head of state, the queen had to remain above the fray. Legal analysts had predicted that the judicial branch might not be able to reverse Johnson’s recommendation. Bitter divisions among rival political parties, which were on display during then-Prime Minister May’s attempts to pass her EU withdrawal deal through Parliament, inspired little hope that the legislative branch would push back against Johnson.

In a remarkable display of individual and institutional fortitude, both the legislative and judicial branches rose to the occasion. Before Parliament was suspended, 21 of Johnson’s own Conservative Party members sided with the united opposition to force him to request an extension to the Brexit deadline and prevent the UK from crashing out of the EU, which is commonly referred to as a no-deal Brexit.

By the time Parliament was suspended on September 10, the populist executive’s hands were effectively tied when MPs voted against Johnson’s proposal to call an early general election, which would have still allowed him to execute a no-deal Brexit on October 31. Despite the nature of the executive branch as subordinate to the legislative branch, Johnson tried bypassing it. When Parliament reasserted its supremacy, he tried to play the martyr card. After another month of wrangling, a slim majority of Parliament seemed to have agreed on a potential withdrawal deal, but Johnson was forced to ask the EU to extend the Brexit deadline, which is now set to January 31, 2020.

The Supreme Court verdict on September 24 went a step further. In a ruling seeped in symbolism, the first female chief justice of the UK declared Johnson’s recommendation to prorogue Parliament to be illegal.

The Westminster system was born in the UK, but it lacks a codified constitution in its home. A judicially conservative Supreme Court could have easily stayed neutral without attracting public wrath, but the flipside of an uncodified constitution is the power it gives to the judiciary to set legal precedents. It is a double-edged sword that can give activist judges the power to bring the entire system down.

Yet in this case, the unanimous verdict created an important legal precedent. The fact that the British system has survived since its inception through Magna Carta of 1215, and that 11 Supreme Court judges unanimously ruled against Johnson in one of its gravest constitutional crises, reaffirmed the faith of the global liberal community in self-government.

Trump Faces Impeachment

On the same day as the UK Supreme Court’s ruling, US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi launched a formal impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump. The move could potentially end the disdain the president has displayed for constitutional norms in running the American executive branch.

Unlike Israel and Britain, the American system prides itself on the well-designed checks and balances among the three co-equal branches of government. Over the past few decades, the executive branch has arguably become more equal than the others. Yet no American leader has ever shattered presidential norms as ruthlessly as Trump has since his inauguration in January 2017.

So far, the judicial branch has held its own in its battles against the Trump administration regarding the Muslim travel ban, funding for a border wall, immigration policies, the Mueller investigations and more. While the administration managed to overcome judicial scrutiny with the Muslim ban by repeatedly tweaking executive orders, Trump has been effective in using the inherent sluggishness of the judiciary to his advantage by delaying all legitimate oversight and investigative powers of the legislative branch in other cases.

Trump’s media machine has flooded airwaves with so many lies that voters are bitterly divided on the issue of whether the president’s behavior is normal, let alone impeachable. After the Democratic Party took control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm elections, it found it difficult to sway public opinion in favor of impeachment in spite of launching multiple investigations and gathering credible evidence of obstruction of justice.

It was freedom of the press that came to the legislative branch’s rescue. While the House had been doggedly pursuing the withholding of military aid to Ukraine since July — albeit behind closed doors — two explosive reports, first in and then in , forced Speaker Pelosi’s hand in ordering an impeachment inquiry.

It is difficult to predict whether the Republican-controlled Senate will vote to remove Trump from office, but based on all the evidence that has already come out, it is likely that the House will impeach Trump. The delicate dance among the various branches of the US system of government has, at least temporarily, strengthened the legislative branch’s hand. Unless Trump resigns, he may go down as only the third US president to be impeached by the House regardless of whether he is removed from office by the Senate.

And in India…

The contrast with the situation in India couldn’t be more jarring. Ever since the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party’s election win in 2014 with a majority in the Lok Sabha — the lower house of Parliament — Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has systematically whatever little freedom Indian media enjoyed. It has meticulously the process of political fundraising to practically hold the entire democratic system hostage. In its lust for power, the government has brushed aside warnings that the new electoral bond scheme of political funding is susceptible to direct foreign influence and counterfeiting by enemy countries. The scheme was rushed through Parliament without much scrutiny, despite the objections of the Reserve Bank of India that it undercuts its authority as the sole issuer of currency — a fundamental change in the country’s monetary policy with potentially far-reaching consequences.

After its resounding reelection in May 2019 with a stronger majority, the executive branch has practically made the Lok Sabha a rubber stamp for its right-wing social agenda. Seemingly unconstitutional bills like the abrogation of Article 370 of the constitution in relation to the special status of Kashmir, selectively criminalizing the use of triple talaq (instant divorce) among Indian Muslims, and amending the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) have received Parliament’s approval with little legislative scrutiny.

While several legal challenges are listed for hearing in the Indian Supreme Court over the coming weeks, the court has mostly been a bystander until now. It has deferred to the executive branch even in cases related to habeas corpus and denial of fundamental rights to Jammu and Kashmir residents since the abrogation of Article 370, bolstering that the government is eroding the independence of the judiciary.

The Indian economy is currently in shambles with the highest rate in almost five decades and manufacturing plants are announcing staff layoffs and halting of production every month. Despite this, 50,000 adoring Indian and Indian-American fans of the populist prime minister — enjoying the freedom of expression and individual liberty guaranteed in the US — filled a football stadium in Houston, Texas, to hail the dismantling of democratic institutions in India.

The delicate dance of democracy in Israel, Britain and the US may be forcing a day of reckoning on their democratically-elected populist leaders, but the majority of Indians at home and overseas are still cheerleading as the government erodes the separation of powers.

*[Updated: November 25, 2019]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Delicate Dance of Democracy appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The Guardian, a left-leaning newspaper that has never felt comfortable with Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, has taken the initiative of drawing its readers’ to the desperate plight and exacerbated anguish of the financial elite. They uniformly fear the possible election of a Corbyn government and are prudently preparing for the worst. For the super-rich, preparing means one of two things: leaving the country or transferring their wealth elsewhere.

Rupert Neate, The Guardian’s wealth correspondent, reveals that tax lawyers and financial advisers have suddenly become very busy responding to the desperation of the wealthy: “The advisers said a Corbyn-led government was viewed as a far greater threat to the wealth and quality of life of the richest 1% than a hard Brexit.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Quality of life:

An undefinable notion, with no discernible relationship to either quality or life, as it is measured on a sliding scale according to the amount of disposable income a person has or counts on having now or in the future

Contextual Note

The degree of solidarity of the very wealthy with their nation and its people has rarely been underestimated. It has always been close to zero. The super-rich expect the rest of the nation to feel solidarity with them rather than the other way around. And if the populace and its institutions fail at their duty of fealty to the rich, the affluent obviously have the means to take their wealth elsewhere. It has taken Britain more than three years to leave the European Union, but the wealthy will be out within a few days, if not a few hours. “Movements of capital to new owners and different locations are already prepared, and they are just awaiting final approval,” said Geoffrey Todd, a partner of the law firm Boodle Hatfield.

The super-rich are simply applying the logic of a system that depends on a few people controlling vast amounts of money. After all, if you’re rich, you must be smart. And if you’re smart, you must have a strong sense of logic. 

Let’s examine the logic of their statements.  The Guardian cites Peter Hargreaves, the founder of the stockbroker Hargreaves Lansdown, whose fortune is estimated at £3 billion ($3.87 billion). Hargreaves outlines a simple case of cause and effect: “But certainly the very, very wealthy people will consider leaving if you make it intolerable.” He doesn’t need to define what he means by “intolerable,” but he gives the distinct impression that the rich, who unlike the rest of humanity never face questions of survival, have a very low threshold of tolerance.

Hargreaves deepens his logic with this reflection: “If you create a tax regime that is not going to welcome and support people like me who create wealth then you are going to rapidly reduce the health of your economy.”

We may legitimately wonder what he means by “welcome and support.” Does he seriously think he will no longer be welcome in the increasingly disunited kingdom if Corbyn becomes prime minister? The expression “no longer welcome” means invited to leave. But the government won’t invite the rich to leave. As Hargreaves indicates, that is their choice, not the government’s. The stockbroker unhesitatingly blames the nation itself for the unfortunate consequences of the elite’s deliberate self-interested choices. Money clearly has more rights than people in a democracy.

But Hargreaves expects more than a welcome. He wants “support.” Who could question the idea that people worth £3 billion desperately need the kind of support people living at the threshold of poverty rarely receive? Hargreaves appeals to the well-worn logic of people — like stockbrokers —- “who create wealth.” The priority of the nation should always be to reassure the wealthy that they will have more wealth in the future. 

This logic might be more convincing if, like ordinary people, the wealthy were exposed to the very real risk of not having enough wealth to survive and maintain a reasonably comfortable lifestyle. But when you have assets of £3 billion to play around with, even if your future income is heavily taxed, you are literally guaranteed of enjoying a more than comfortable lifestyle for thousands of years to come. 

What Hargreaves is really claiming is that people like himself, who by hook or by crook have become billionaires, should be recognized as the lifeblood of the nation because of their unique capacity to create wealth, a capacity not shared by the rest of the population. They should be rewarded by the collectivity with new privileges (i.e., avoiding taxation) for their unique talent of accumulating and managing money and their generosity in hiring poor people to augment and defend their wealth. But even when taxed beyond their threshold of tolerance, they remain members of the privileged class. Do they really need more support and more privilege?

The Guardian article concludes with this reflection: “Hargreaves said he paid about £40m ($51.6 million) in tax last year, and ‘if 50 of us [the biggest taxpayers] got on a plane and left, that would put a big hole in the chancellor’s budget.” Some might suggest this resembles a threat of blackmail. But the billionaire’s reasoning is simple and sums up his sense of solidarity: “They need us more than we need them.”

Historical Note

According to the article, Corbyn’s affluent critics complain of the “threat to [their] wealth and quality of life.” This statement contains three terms whose meaning has changed over time: “threat,” “wealth” and “quality of life.” The last two, in particular, have evolved in ways that reveal some of the significant issues related to the growing inequality of the post-industrial world.

Even an idea as seemingly simple as “threat” has undergone historical evolution. Traditionally it referred to an assault perceived as endangering the existence or integrity of a person or property. But in today’s use of the term, any random challenge or calling into question of the status quo can be deemed a threat. 

Is taxation really a threat to wealth? Except in decidedly extreme cases, it may be a threat to the expectation of ever-increasing future wealth, but not to existing wealth. Can any of the tax plans evoked either by Corbyn in the UK or the progressive Democrats in the US — such as Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren — be deemed a threat to existing wealth? Put more bluntly, is there a danger that any wealthy person will no longer be wealthy if obliged to pay higher taxes? A rich person whose wealth increases more slowly than in the past will still be wealthy and privileged.

As for the idea expressed by “quality of life,” it began its modern career at some point around the middle of the 20th century as an equivalent of the notion of “well-being.” But well-being implied a basic equilibrium that would ensure both survival and contentment, largely through a successful integration into the social environment. The growing the “quality of life” has led to the idea that different people or classes of people may have different qualities of life, or expectations about their merited quality of life. It has thus become a quasi-synonym of “lifestyle.” The idea expressed in the phrase “threat to the wealth and quality of life of the richest” conveys a belief that the quality of life for the wealthy may be different than that of less affluent people. 

Over recent decades post-industrial, managerial civilization has followed a trend of confusing quality with quantity. This stems from the widely accepted idea that to have meaning, every state of being must be measurable. The notion of “life” itself has imperceptibly changed from its former association with the totality of organic nature to a meaning that focuses narrowly on the longevity of an individual. The process had already begun by the 18th century. summed up individual rights in society in terms of “life, liberty and property.” Life itself began to be seen as a possession, as becomes clear in the , “Get a life!” 

The shift from a complex worldview that saw connections between all living things to one focused on the needs and the rights of individuals, independently from their social relations, highlights the change in the meaning attached to the notion of life. The process is complete when each individual possesses a unique set of criteria for their “quality of life,” based on their level of wealth.

Under a Corbyn government in the UK or a Sanders or Warren government in the US — if that were ever to happen and if they were allowed to apply their policies — the fortunes of the super-wealthy would inevitably increase less rapidly than in the past. But complaining that their “quality of life” is under threat is not just hypocritical. It is morally insulting to the people who, in a democracy, theoretically have the power to elect their government.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Fearing a Labour Victory, Britain’s 1% Threaten to Go on Strike appeared first on 51�Թ�.

When the ever-earnest Theresa May was leading the troupe (but never the troops), she sought to share the stage with other actors, united in their respect of what they believed to be the text of the play. The fact that there were two rather contradictory texts made for some confusion but didn’t faze the actors.

Under Prime Minister Johnson, the play has become a comic monologue accompanied by a song and dance routine whose text could have been written by , except that the music and the rhymes are simply not up to their standard. Neither tragedy nor comedy but rather a pitiful melodrama not quite as engaging in its substance as an afternoon TV soap opera and not as entertaining as pantomime itself, Johnson’s Brexit does have the capacity to provide some hilarious moments, mainly ones that were not scripted by the author.

The latest accident occurred in Luxembourg, where, scheduled to debate with Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Xavier Bettel with the intention of clarifying the issues, Johnson bowed out at the last minute, allowing Bettel to put on a show of debating — in Clint Eastwood — with an empty chair or podium. Business Insider explained that “Johnson later told the BBC that he pulled out because ‘there was clearly going to be a lot of noise, and I think our points might have been drowned out.’”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Drowned out:

Prevented from dominating the conversation by voices that have been systematically excluded from expressing themselves on public platforms

Contextual Note

Johnson has repeatedly made it clear that his political thinking is influenced more by popular fiction and entertainment than by any form of deep political reasoning. Following his victory in July’s restricted Conservative Party leadership election that elevated him to the position of prime minister, to express his vision of the significance of Brexit, Johnson evoked Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver stranded on the beach of Lilliput, held down by the tiny Lilliputians’ guy ropes, which for Gulliver were no more constraining than simple threads. Johnson has now replaced that far too literary allusion with a similar metaphor easier for his younger public to understand: Marvel comics and movie superhero the , breaking out of the “manacles” that constrain him.

To explain the success of what otherwise appeared to be a humiliating visit to Luxembourg, Johnson claimed that everything was progressing smoothly toward the fatal October 31 day of reckoning. CNN reports: “Johnson admitted Brexit negotiations would have to be accelerated, and that the EU must make ‘movement’ over the Irish backstop but added that there was ‘just the right amount of time’ to do a deal.”

After Jonathan Swift (adult reading) to Marvel comics (teenage entertainment), Johnson reassures his nation with an implicit reference to the children’s fairy tale, “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” “Just the right amount of time” is the Goldilocks solution to everything. Now we simply have to wait for the happy end. Some, of course, may be skeptical that there will be one. Despite Johnson’s sunny optimism, “the British proposals remain unclear and [European Commission President Jean-Claude] Juncker said the EU was still waiting to hear of a workable alternative to the backstop.”

To borrow another allusion from European mythology and fiction, will Johnson show the strength of Alexander the Great that permitted him not to undo the Gordian knot, which no one was capable of doing, but by slicing through it with his sword. Does Johnson even have a sword?

The incident illustrates one of the rarely mentioned features of the current Brexit trauma. CNN points out that many in the audience whose decibel level of shouting discouraged Johnson from speaking in public “were British nationals living in Luxembourg.” The disenfranchisement of Britons living abroad (for 15 years or more) meant that the citizens who best understood the nature of the relationship of the nation with the continent and the rest of the world were excluded from the vote. Whether allowing them to vote would have given “remain” a victory in the 2016 Brexit referendum remains unknown, but the frustration of those citizens who have built a cultural and economic bridge with the rest of humanity is obviously real.

Multiple features of the Brexit referendum, including how the “leave” campaign was funded and how the campaign propaganda was designed, to say nothing of the Cambridge Analytica-style manipulations, have created doubt about the democratic legitimacy of the whole process. The entire experience raises a further question: How does democracy work in nations where the concentration of economic and technological power has reached an inhuman scale? When a controversial, arrogant and visibly unstable prime minister is raised to the highest office in a nation that didn’t even have the opportunity to vote for him, can we reasonably talk about the workings of democracy?

Historical Note

Even more than US President Donald Trump, Johnson represents the fulfillment — in a form of parody — of a what has become in the past two decades a political trend: the aggravation of non-democratic leadership. The trend has been developing discreetly in the background for the past six or seven decades as a largely invisible, oligarchic elite across the globe has effectively maneuvered to control the reins of the economy and the power structures of governments in nations that claim to be democracies. The publicity-shy elite has succeeded in its campaign to define the narrow framework for elected leaders — from all “legitimate” parties — to elaborate their policies and make decisions, all the while claiming to represent the interests of the public who elected them.

The first bold hint that representative democracy might be a mere façade came in the year 2000, with the non-election (i.e., the designation by the Republican majority of the US Supreme Court) of George W. Bush as president of the US. The Democratic candidate who won the popular vote, Albert Gore, would have been perfectly acceptable to the governing elite, but the political preferences of the justices gave the prize to Bush.

President Bush immediately promised to stimulate an otherwise healthy economy by offering tax breaks to the rich. Polls at the time showed that a clear majority of Americans preferred allocating the existing surpluses to the needs of repairing and improving public infrastructure, even to the point of accepting to pay higher taxes. As , a “poll conducted before the Tax Policy went into effect, in 2001, revealed that 67 percent of Americans favored domestic spending over tax cuts.” In other words, Bush, elected by a minority of the popular vote, imposed a fiscal policy in direct opposition to the will of the majority. 

That appeared to be the best illustration one could imagine of the undermining of representative democracy. The best, that is, until Bush launched his wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. They were highly unpopular with a large percentage of the population, conducted under false pretenses, and predictably (for those who understood) would produce the opposite of their intended goal: i.e., making the world even more dangerous for Americans, while at the same time helping to undermine the economy, a fact that became real in the financial crisis of 2007-08.

Bush, Trump and Johnson stand out as the kinds of leaders (unlike Barack Obama) who seek to demonstrate — thanks to their embrace of ignorance or their outrageously narcissistic personalities — what was otherwise meant to be invisible: the flagrant abuse of democratic institutions with a sense of royal impunity. Their acts and discourse — from the “axis of evil” to the Hulk — reduce democratic processes to a parody, a simulation of popular entertainment, a game of unthinking slogans, platitudes and tendentiously crafted opinions. 

Their effort has been relentless, literally “drowning out” any kind of intelligible political discourse.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Gulliver Survived a Shipwreck, But Boris Fears Drowning appeared first on 51�Թ�.

It is a sad reflection of the state of British democracy — one so fundamentally misaligned with the expectations of so many who have looked at the mother of Parliaments as a beacon for others to emulate. But that vision descended into anarchy and chaos in the early hours of September 10 as walked into the Commons issuing the instructions for prorogation and thereby ending all hope of any further meaningful engagement on the Brexit question.

Britain will now be in the hands of a minority elite who will present the Brexit deal as a people versus Parliament dichotomy, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Co. will use this opportunity to drive home a deal of some sort — however lopsided, distorted or disingenuous it might well be in the long run.

The Not-So United Kingdom

So much time and energy, words on paper, discussions in the lecture halls, panel debates, fire and fury online, and conversations between people on the streets expended in relation to Brexit will have been for nothing. Brexit has divided the United Kingdom for over three years, in what began as an attempt to quell party political factionalism among the Tories — one that could not be contained any further by then-Prime Minister David Cameron, who was desperately worried about the rise of UK Independence Party.

Not expecting to lose the 2016 referendum, although making little by way of effective plans to do so, the people voted to leave the EU despite dubious means instrumentalized to pick out wayward voters and bombard them with loaded political sentiment in order to alter their behavior. The fact that the Electoral Commission has twice found that the “leave” campaign exceeded funding limits seems to have been forgotten in this desire to move forward, do or die, or by any means necessary.

The factionalism and inward-looking politicization of this issue have grave consequences for what has been hijacked by a very right-wing Conservative administration whose disregard of the truth creates new political lows in relation to probity, accountability and common decency. The world watches the machinations of the British Parliament and is aghast at what is happening to a country that was once considered so highly among Europeans and elsewhere.

Democracy has been shattered in the name of executing the will of the people that was the referendum result, but so many have changed their minds now that they know what they did not know at the time of the vote. So many in business, academia, civil society, criminal justice and security would wish for Brexit to disappear altogether. Yet the current government has no other option but to deliver it to the fullest and in spite of all the costs that it will invariably create.

Article 50

Although there is still time for Parliament to sit before the October 31 cut-off date, when it may well become clear that no options are workable and the only real solution is to revoke Article 50 altogether and remain in the EU. The Liberal Democrats are about to go this policy for the expected general election. It is not only in the realm of the imagination that Prime Minister Johnson and the Conservative government might just use this idea to argue that it is better than a no-deal Brexit or any kind of deal, and put it to the people, ensuring that the Tories remain in power.

The net result is quite likely to be a combination of matters that very much remain the same with respect to the politicians in charge and the policies they wish to implement. However, Brexit would potentially be firmly off the table, possibly forever. In this process, the Labour Party is likely to be encouraged to shift centrally as there are concerns around its current image, especially its leadership, with much of it determined by a hostile media campaign to discredit Jeremy Corbyn and his ilk.

*[This article was cross-posted on the author’s .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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This rift in Labour may have induced Johnson to highlight his excellent relations with Benjamin Netanyahu, the current prime minister of Israel (at least until September 17th when new elections will take place). Johnson is hoping that the Jewish constituency of Labour and the Blairites will seize the opportunity to abandon their contested leader, paving the way to a Tory victory. What better way to do that than to display the solidarity between two extreme nationalists who also share a taste for Islamophobia?

Netanyahu has an even stronger motivation than Johnson’s. He is eager to enlist the anti-European British prime minister’s support for opposing the French initiative that would allow Europe to purchase Iranian oil, providing a way around US President Donald Trump’s secondary sanctions applied in his economic war against Iran. French President Emmanuel Macron has taken this bold initiative in the name of Europe’s ongoing commitment to respecting the Iran nuclear deal that was thrown into chaos in 2018 by Trump’s unilateral action carried out in the name of undoing his predecessor’s policies.

The Guardian offers: “That Johnson has cleared his diary in the middle of domestic political chaos is a tribute to Netanyahu’s influence in Downing Street.”

In a change of context while remaining on the subject of “influence,” this news from the past century caught our attention. In 1946, Albert Einstein offered some insight into the philosophical origins of his theory of relativity. He attributed an influence to two thinkers: the 19th-century physicist Ernst Mach, whom Einstein credited with what he called the “” that he included in his formulation of relativity, and going further back to David Hume, the 18th-century English philosopher.

In the: “How far [Mach’s writings] influenced my own work is, to be honest, not clear to me. In so far as I can be aware, the immediate influence of D. Hume on me was greater. I read him with Konrad Habicht and Solovine in Bern. However, as I said, I am not in a position to analyze what is anchored in unconscious thought.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Influence:

1. A source of inspired thought or effective style

2. Illegitimate pressure applied by occult and often aggressive actions

Contextual Note

Some words of the language lend themselves to definitions that may seem totally opposed. The verb “sanction” is one, since it can mean to “approve and protect by giving permission” or “act forcefully in disapproval and penalize.” Influence in all cases describes an effect that results in a “flow” in one direction (fluere in Latin means “to flow;” influere, “to flow in”).

When we learn that the philosopher Hume influenced Einstein, it was Einstein who initiated the movement as a positive demand for inspiration. Hume applied no force on Einstein’s mind other than the persuasiveness of his ideas and their relevance for his own research. Netanyahu’s influence on Johnson operates as a kind of assertive power and a desire for control initiated by Netanyahu.

In science and the arts, influence represents a natural cultural force that inspires. In politics, influence translates as an unnatural play of interest in a complex game of power.

Einstein was not a philosopher nor, despite the importance of his theories and their impact on an entire civilization’s view of the world and the universe, did he ever aspire to play the role of philosopher. At the level of pure thought, the example of the other influence cited, that of Ernst Mach, is revealing: “Mach was also known to argue that the only way to explain the phenomenon of inertia was to assume that all of the masses in the universe were somehow connected.”

This philosophical notion of interconnectedness not only helped Einstein to elaborate his surprising theory of relativity that contradicted traditional beliefs about the universe, including some of the principles of Newton’s laws. It also helps the rest of us non-scientists to understand some of the aspects of why relativity is a valid theory of the universe. At a purely cultural level, it links at least metaphorically with our understanding of ecosystems,

Historical Note

History and culture evolve through the effects of influence. This takes place through communities of thinkers, artists and scientists who share their insights, experiment approaches and styles, absorb and, more often than not, publicly acknowledge the influences that led them to their achievements. Throughout history, influence — the kind that Einstein acknowledged — has played a major role in broadening and deepening all forms of culture and science.

Our postmodern age has seen a strange shift in this state of affairs due to the enshrining of property as the ultimate and increasingly unique reality governing human relations. In an by the French magazine, L’Obs, Thomas Piketty, commenting on his latest , insists on our need to effectuate a major cultural shift. He tells us “private property must stop being sacralized.” In his book he explains how private property has evolved into an absolute concept, defeating the pillars of any vibrant social culture.

In most intellectual domains, influence of the positive, Einsteinian variety still exists, but thinkers and artists now have to be careful. Some forms of influence may turn out to be costly when an army of lawyers claims that the creator has stolen someone else’s intellectual property, wittingly or unwittingly. On the other hand, politics and economics have come to be dominated by the kind of influence alluded to in the case of Johnson and Netanyahu: the influence of power, money and the unavowed exchange of favors.

Public policy is guided by the influence of lobbyists and campaign contributors. Military alliances are defined through subtle forms of influence and sometimes tacit agreements. Business increasingly relies on networks of influence. And, of course, the rise to cultural dominance of social media has given birth to a generation of “influencers,” who are not creative people who inspire others but instead assertive people who find any serious or trivial means of establishing their notoriety and getting followers or hits. And, to return to Piketty’s point, the followers and hits become the “property” of the influencer, the asset through which they can not only monetize their supposed talent, but also have an impact on areas where they have no talent.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The Power of Influence in Postmodern Culture and Politics appeared first on 51�Թ�.

In all three cases, these leaders escalated their nationally destructive policies this summer in ways that have alienated even their erstwhile supporters. Once again, they have demonstrated that they have no interest in making America, Britain or Brazil great again. They are only interested in doing as much damage as they can before they are ultimately dragged out of office.  

Johnson Tries a Coup

Boris Johnson is a bumbling blowhard with but one current obsession: Brexit. He has promised to sever the UK’s relationship with the European Union by October 31 even if it means doing so without a deal that would mitigate the pain of separation. 

The Halloween deadline is grimly appropriate. A no-deal Brexit would make for a blood-curdling horror film. Just slap a Ghostface mask on the British prime minister, give him a knife to cut the umbilicus with Europe and voila: Scream 5.

Johnson’s latest tactic to get what he wants is to suspend Parliament for five weeks this fall to limit debate on alternatives to his doomsday option. He hopes to make it impossible for parliament to pass even emergency legislation banning a no-deal Brexit. Believe it or not, the British system allows for such maneuvers — so Queen Elizabeth had to give her blessing to the suspension. 

When Trump engages in anti-democratic activities, the Republican Party, by and large, indulges him. Not so in the UK, where even Conservatives are up in arms over Johnson’s silent coup. After the prime minister’s announcement of the suspension, the government’s whip in the House of Lords resigned, as did the head of the Scottish Conservative Party. Former Conservative Prime Minister John Major, meanwhile, has pilloried Johnson and  a legal challenge to the suspension.

This week, Johnson lost his one-vote majority in Parliament when Conservative member Philip Lee  to the Liberal Democrats even as the prime minister was addressing the chamber. 

Most parliamentary members, including quite a few Conservatives, oppose a no-deal exit. No matter: Johnson is following Trump’s script by remaking the Conservative Party in his own image,  anyone who doesn’t follow his hard line. After losing a vote that will allow Parliament to introduce legislation to delay Brexit, Johnson  21 dissidents, including a number of former ministers and one grandson of Winston Churchill. 

Now Johnson is talking about holding a snap election in mid-October. The Conservatives are comfortably outpolling Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens. However, if all the remain — those who want the UK to stay in the EU — forces , they could eke out a victory. But Johnson could also promise an election for October 14 and then, surprise,  until after Halloween, making Brexit a fait accompli. 

Johnson , “Brexit means Brexit and we are going to make a titanic success of it.” Determined to do the wrong thing even though he knows it’s wrong, Johnson is steering the United Kingdom straight into an iceberg. Nigel Farage is his chief navigator, and the rest of the country is clustered on the bow, bracing for impact. 

With a second referendum, wiser heads could wrest control of the helm and prevent disaster, but Johnson is doing everything he can to fast-track Brexit on the principle that it doesn’t matter where you’re going as long as you get there fast. 

Bolsonaro Fans the Flames

Idiocy loves company. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro styles himself as the Trump of the tropics. The comparison is apt. Some future poet, in describing the inferno of the present, will stuff Trump, Bolsonaro and Johnson feet first into the mouth of Satan in the ninth circle. Having stoked the fires of climate change, Bolsonaro will richly deserve such an afterlife.

As  points out, Bolsonaro as a candidate “promised to end fines for violations of environmental law, shrink the protected areas that account for half of the Brazilian Amazon and fight NGOs, for which he has a visceral hatred. In office, his government has gutted the environment ministry and Ibama, the quasi-autonomous environmental agency. Six of the ten senior posts in the ministry’s department of forests and sustainable development are vacant, according to its website. The government talks of “monetizing” the Amazon but sabotaged a $1.3bn European fund that aims to give value to the standing forest.”

As a result of Bolsonaro’s hands-off policy, deforestation in the Amazon has been out of control this year. Emboldened by their president’s actions, Brazilian farmers organized a “fire day” to clear land for planting. “We need to show the president that we want to work and the only way is to knock (the forest) down. And to form and clean our pastures, it is with fire,”  one of the organizers of the fire day. The number of fires in the Amazon nearly  over the same period last year. 

It’s not as if the world wasn’t warned. Time magazine put the burning Amazon on its cover exactly 30 . The  this time around is straight-forward. The Amazon is a huge carbon sink. Burn it up and global warming will accelerate. There will also be irreversible loss of biodiversity. And the upside? More soybeans, which Brazil can sell to China because the latter is no longer buying the harvests of US farmers. 

Oh, and more profits into the pockets of Bolsonaro’s friends in the industries that are paving the paradise of the Amazon and putting up a parking lot.

Trump Trashes the Planet

Donald Trump is a moth that can’t stop itself from flying directly at the flame of fame (or, more accurately, the inferno of infamy). He could stay off Twitter, but instead his tweets piss off one group of voters after another. He could stay away from the press, but his lies, gaffes and personal attacks are amplified throughout the media universe. Arguably, this is a strategy to solidify the base and reinforce Trump’s reputation as an anti-establishment gadfly.

But there’s no political strategy behind his trade war with China and his impulsive threats last month to  on Chinese goods. The sectoral damage to his base worries his political advisers: say goodbye to the farm vote, a good chunk of blue-collar voters thrown out of work, and a bunch of average consumers angry at shelling out more money for their holiday gifts. 

Worse would be a more general economic recession brought on by this needless trade war, which would doom the president’s reelection chances. Yes,  for a “correction,” particularly because of Trump’s tax cuts and over-the-top spending. But if Trump played it safe, he could have probably postponed the recession until after the 2020 election. Instead, he’s doing everything he can to ensure that it makes landfall smack dab during the presidential race.

Trump isn’t just self-destructive. He continued over the last couple weeks to destroy US alliances, most recently by expressing interest in buying Greenland from Denmark. The land wasn’t on the market, as the Danish government reminded the president, which prompted Trump to cancel his trip to the country. 

Greenland? Really?! Perhaps Trump was making an indirect acknowledgment of the effects of climate change, attempting a land grab up north to secure a spot for Ivanka and Jared’s summer palace.

Meanwhile, Trump is powering full speed ahead toward climate apocalypse. The administration’s latest move is to remove restrictions on methane emissions, a more potent contributor to global warming than carbon dioxide. The effort is designed to reduce costs for oil and gas companies. But guess what? Even some of the top energy companies are opposed to Trump’s move.

“Last year we announced our support for the direct regulation of methane emissions for new and existing oil and gas facilities,” Exxon Mobil spokesperson Scott Silvestri . “That hasn’t changed. We will continue to urge the EPA to retain the main features of the existing methane rule.” After all, Exxon, BP and others are trying to position natural gas as part of the solution to climate change, and the Trump administration is busy undermining this argument.

The methane restrictions that Trump is trying to unravel date back to the Obama administration. But the current administration wants to tear up much older agreements as well. The Clinton administration protected Alaska’s Tongass National Forest from logging and mining. But Trump wants to open up this 16.7 million-acre sanctuary to the usual suspects in the extractive industries. This is no small land parcel. It  half the world’s temperate rainforest.  

Bolsonaro, at least, is only interested in trashing a rainforest (albeit a large one). Johnson is content to trash a country (albeit a rich one). Trump, with that ego of his, aspires to trash an entire planet. Yes, all three will eventually flame out. But not before they’ve scorched the earth clean.

An environmentalist told journalist Alan Weisman before the 2016 elections that she was considering voting for Trump. “The way I see it,” she , “it’s either four more years on life support with Hillary, or letting this maniac tear the house down. Maybe then we can pick up the pieces and finally start rebuilding.”

The philosophy of “things have to get worse before they get better” has sometimes worked out in the past. But that’s the past. 

Unless we stop him, we’ll be rooting around in the post-Trump ashes in vain for the pieces. The house will be gone. And there will be nothing we can salvage to rebuild it.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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Reacting to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s ploy to prorogue UK Parliament until mid-October — a clever strategy that allows him the time to play the wolf to the political class’s Red Riding Hood and sneak into her grandmother’s bed before the lass arrives with her goodies — The Interpreter did a bit of research and found the best way to describe Johnson’s game: “There’s a phrase for that, and it’s essential for understanding this week’s Brexit drama and what it means for British democracy: constitutional hardball.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Hardball:

The real game, the professional version, the only one that counts or is worth paying attention to, as opposed to softball, a friendly sport that requires no essential skills

Contextual Note

The idea of playing hardball, to most Americans, means not just playing to win, but applies to people with the talent, skills and assertiveness that allows them to put on a professional performance. It inspires both fear and admiration. For that very reason, it has a positive connotation since anyone who learns to be assertive will be both feared and admired.

The Interpreter suggests that in the realm of democratic politics, the term should have a negative connotation. On the origin of the phrase “constitutional hardball,” we learn: “Coined in 2014 by Mark Tushnet, a Harvard University scholar of constitutional law, the phrase refers to the exploitation of rules and procedures for political gain and at the expense of unwritten democratic norms.”

The fact that playing hardball may be admirable in one context and reprehensible in another invites a bit of cultural exploration and analysis. As it’s employed outside of politics, the idea of hardball applies to situations where talent, well-honed skills and clever strategic maneuvering are required to give a player or a negotiator an advantage. Some might call it the basic approach to the “art of the deal.” For the player or negotiator, hardball translates directly into dollars and cents, into a W or an L (win or loss). This is vitally important in a culture in which too many L’s on one’s historic record brands a person or a team as a “loser.”

Softball, on the other hand, like touch football (no tackling allowed), while evoking fun and friendly leisure activities on a balmy summer day, designates a lack of that essential American virtue, assertiveness. Softball is the game of wimps, in which nobody gets hurt and no reputations are ever damaged. Even if a softball strikes a player in the head, it won’t do any damage, whereas a hardball can potentially kill. You pitch a softball underhanded, which means the ball will arrive in a slow arc rather than a blinding, highly assertive straight line served by a powerful overhand thrust intended to confuse and destabilize the batter. Softball always gives the batter a chance to hit and doesn’t require a protective helmet. More importantly, nobody records and reports the score of a softball game.

In the world of political journalism, asking a question that fails to challenge the interviewee’s controversial positions or opinions is called throwing a softball. A good journalist should always throw hardball questions and even hold a politician’s. What could possibly be more assertive than that?

This linguistic and cultural aside should serve to demonstrate the deeper meaning concerning civic values that lies behind The Interpreter’s message. Americans generally approve of the idea of playing hardball, of competing, of being assertive. The New York Times shares the same value system as the rest of the nation. And of course, baseball, played with a hardball, has always been called the national sport. The Times consistently reports the results of Major League Baseball (hardball) and never reports the result of softball games. In the realm of journalism, as a “liberal” newspaper, The Times officially approves of the notion of speaking truth to power, despite a of echoing the lies put forth by power (Washington) and only belatedly exposing the truth.

One MSNBC journalist, Chris Matthews, calls his TV news program, “Hardball,” based on his claim to be a hard-hitting, percussive interviewer because of his ability to raise his voice and make his political interviewees uncomfortable. But he does so very selectively based on his own positions.

Following one of the recent presidential debates, Matthews with presidential primaries candidate Tulsi Gabbard, who has otherwise been. That’s because Matthews claims to be anti-war, like Gabbard. With Elizabeth Warren, after tossing a few underhanded softballs, he played, which consisted of refusing to listen to and take on board what she said. That’s because he’s a fiscal conservative who is against taxes.

The long ago summed up the spectacle Matthews offered viewers in these words: “This isn’t an argument; it’s contradiction,” which in the Python sketch was followed by a long series of one character saying, “No, it isn’t’” and the other countering, “Yes, it is.” Matthews may be playing hardball, but it clearly isn’t journalism.

Hardball is thus a manly, assertive thing to do, which Americans tend to admire. But, for liberals, not necessarily in all situations. Playing hardball with democracy, where the whole point is to maintain a level playing field to make sure that all competitors will be treated fairly, undermines American democratic ideals, calling into question the identity of the nation itself.

Historical Note

The NYT used the pretext of calling the sport Boris Johnson is engaged in “constitutional hardball” to highlight a historical parallel between the British prime minister’s version of democratically subversive hardball and Mitch McConnell’s back in 2016 when he successfully blocked the confirmation of Barack Obama’s candidate to replace the late Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court.

More significantly, the article concludes that the examples of both the US and Britain may indicate a global trend threatening the idea of democracy itself and undermining the culture of democracy that has been a feature of the modern world. In that culture, people have assumed and have been taught to assume that the combination of elections and a system of checks and balances guarantees that governments will be representing the interests of the electorate. When the power players systematically transform the notion of a democratic consensus — perceived as a shared cultural value — into a brutal and self-interested power play and no longer have qualms about displaying their game to the public, democracy as a concept is weakened and governance risks becoming chaotic.

Since 2016 — the year that saw McConnell’s constitutional foul play that turned Obama’s home run into a foul ball, followed by the vote on Brexit and capped by Donald Trump’s election — the US and Britain have seen their political systems and economies, often considered models of stability, transformed into a chaotic mess in which any even vague sense of collective mission or vision has definitively disappeared. Though that sense of mission or vision of a nation-state always contains something illusory, some convenient fiction that reassures and comforts people who think of themselves as citizens, when it is transformed by egoism and narcissism and exposed as a total sham, the work of a snake-oil salesman, the idea democracy itself is threatened.

It’s hard for democracies to adapt to the rules of hardball, and particularly hard on the citizens.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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Bannon has made headlines in recent months doing mildly important things on the European side of the Atlantic, such as (who denies any relationship with Bannon just as firmly as Donald Trump, Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton have denied their documented relationships with Jeffrey Epstein). 

Less anecdotally, Bannon has committed himself to a project that he deems monumentally important: converting the “Judeo-Christian” world of his imagination (basically, white civilization) to the global cause of anti-Islamic populism as the anointed defender of the interests of ordinary, working-class people against a predatory elite. His plan began with the rental of an abandoned monastery in Trisulti, Italy where he intends to build an academy with the power to change the course of history. After all, Plato and Aristotle did it; why shouldn’t Steve Bannon?

The Dignitatis Humanae Institute (of human dignity) “budding young politicians to become staunch Catholics and right-wing populists” and to become — in the words of the institute’s fanatical director, Benjamin Harnwell — the “global headquarters of the fight to defend the Judeo-Christian basis of Western civilization.” Harnwell his master: “Steve’s expression is that this is a gladiator school for culture warriors.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Gladiator:

A slave who has no choice but to execute dangerous acts to please elite masters and avid crowds delighting in violent combat

Contextual Note

Bannon for Donald Trump’s victory in 2016, which he interprets as a triumph of the average, working-class American over an international despotic elite. Who, after all, could possibly doubt the simple truth that a billionaire real estate hustler sums up the essence of the US working class? It’s true that Trump doesn’t live like the average Joe. He has a lot more money and wallows in ostentatious luxury. He has spent most of his life exercising the kind of manipulative power that wealth grants to those who know how to use it, which is rarely the case for an out-of-work welder or even one who still has a job.

For Bannon, though Trump may have a different style, The Donald shares the industrial working-class’s aspirations and approach to life. Go after what you want — whether it’s a tower in Las Vegas, the US presidency or Greenland — and affirm your will without ever apologizing. 

In Bannon’s vision of history, Trump as president has effectively liberated the US working class from the clutches of a faceless financial and corporate elite who play with interest rates, send jobs abroad and frequent Davos in January. Trump is nothing less than a crusader in the name of working-class values. If he gave tax breaks to the rich, it was to help the working class. Trump’s base would never make the absurd mistake of confusing the rich (Trump’s friends) with the global elite (Trump’s and Bannon’s enemies). They couldn’t possibly be the same people. Isn’t that obvious?

After engineering the 2016 victory of a president who keeps America first by proudly and blithely adding to the already hyper-massive (and) US military budget, Bannon has set out to conquer Europe. Having already trained one now successful gladiator in the UK (Boris Johnson), his monastery is preparing to train hundreds of others, all of whom will undoubtedly accept to sacrifice themselves in the arena of populist politics for the prosperity and enjoyment of the people… and certainly not the elite.

Unfortunately, things have recently taken a negative turn for Bannon, though it’s too soon to count him out. His attempt to mobilize a series of right-wing populists for the European elections in May achieved nowhere near its projected success. And now his champion gladiator in Italy, Matteo Salvini, has been successfully sidelined from his manipulative quest for supreme power thanks to an between the nebulous Five Star Movement and the center-left Democratic Party. At the same time, the revolt has been brewing locally in Trisulti against Bannon’s invasive school for modern fascists.

One of the ironies of Bannon’s attempt to revive and redefine the monastic vocation as gladiatorial studies in the name of “Judeo-Christian values” is his campaign to. Francis appears to have taken too seriously one Judeo-Christian’s non-gladiatorial leader’s advice to “turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:39) as well as his over-tolerant position on immigration: “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” (Matthew 19:14)

As one US said: “Steve Bannon apparently doesn’t choose small targets and now he wants to undermine the leadership for Pope Francis.”

Historical Note

Bannon’s metaphor of training gladiators reveals his Hollywood-influenced misunderstanding of European history and global politics. Gladiators were not trained to conquer. They were entertainers, but first of all slaves. A Roman gladiator might conquer, not other people or armies, but — with a combination of skill and luck — his personal liberty as a reward for his exceptionally entertaining performance in the arena. The less exceptional gladiators had no such joy following a poor performance. As for the relationship with the, historians understand that “gladiatorial spectacle was staged by the wealthy as a means of displaying their power and influence within the local community.”

The real background issue, however, is the term Judeo-Christian itself. Historian Mark Silk, in a published by the National Catholic Reporter, provided a potted history of the evolution in meaning of the term Judeo-Christian from the 19th to the 21st century. He identified Bannonism as the latest example of a term that has changed in meaning over time: “[T]his vision consists of economic nationalism joined to a simplified version of [Samuel] Huntington’s conception of the ‘clash of civilizations.’”

If Huntington was simplistically xenophobic, Bannon has upped the ante in what Silk calls “the underpinnings of populist economic nationalism — of neo-fascism in our time.” Bannon clearly indicates his drift toward (a historical heresy) when he affirms his goal: “I want the world to look back in 100 years and say, their mercantilist, Confucian system lost. The Judeo-Christian liberal West won.”

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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Donald Trump and Boris Johnson are two of the most powerful political leaders on the planet, but they are also two people who could not be more alike, sharing not just personality profiles but also how they are so apart from the needs and wants from the rest of the societies they seek to represent. Both are mendacious, hypocritical and have a terrible record in delivering any meaningful results.

Johnson vs Trump

Let us start with the physical and psychological. Both are fake blonds, have an inflated ego and sense of ability that is rarely if ever proven. Their prolific womanizing suggests a sense of prowess from which they draw their appeal among fellow members of the alpha male species who regard such behavior as perfectly normal. Such men occupy a narrow band of organizations and institutions, but they do so expectantly and in anticipation of “some richly-deserved prize” for their “natural abilities.” They regard such activities as “sport.” It suggests a degree of empty-headedness served by narcissism.

This perspective on exclusivism of a particular kind elides directly into racism, with comments from Johnson referring to “watermelon smiles on piccaninnies” to Trump’s glowing to the chants of “send her back.” Both men have a history of erecting huge architectural edifices, signaling their greatness in failed experiments that only leave the smell of over-ambition in the air, with the public footing the bill in the case of Johnson as mayor of London.

Concerning the economy, there are other parallels to draw upon. Both are protectionist, isolationist and inward-looking in relation to trade��and��investment. This line of thinking is meant to appease a voting base that has increasingly been disenfranchised by the political and economic realities of the last few decades. Chiefly since the further advance of neoliberal globalization, which accelerated after the end of the Cold War but precipitated the emergence of polarized economies and societies.

Populism acts to misdirect the fury of the populous away from the failures of centrally-determined policy and toward “the other” at home and abroad. In both settings, there is no sense of history — or rather deeply selective readings of history. It is the complete antithesis of what the world needs.

Leadership within two of the most influential countries in the world just went rogue. In Johnson and Trump, the world sees two peas from the same pod — populist, replete with bluster, narcissism and nepotism, and while vain they are vacuous too. Neither inspires any degree of confidence, only despair and dissent. They are both the symptoms of course as they reflect all that is wrong with the two-party system. They mirror the influence of media and corporate powers dictating politics and policy. They reveal the lack of imagination for what comes after late capitalism.

Words uttered and intentions presented suggest that this populist authoritarianism is post-truth and post-normal. It is also beyond reproach — forget fake news, this is fake power in the interests of the people for it is the projection of power for the sake of power alone. It is the allusion of politics within a system broken from within.

Britain Under Boris

On July 24, Boris was finally ordained as prime minister.  So, what does this mean for Britain? First, it is likely to be a short stint at the top. He has put together a Tory cabinet that is the most right-wing since the early 1980s.

Second, the Liberal Democrats have witnessed a tremendous surge based on their no-Brexit position, one that that is clear and determined — whereas the Labour Party’s inability to take a firm stance on Brexit — largely because of the diverse positions of its constituents up and down the country — is costing the party severely.

Third, with the European Union firm in its resolve, and with no time for another withdrawal deal before the October 31 deadline, it is either no deal or no Brexit. If asked, most British people would probably prefer the latter over the former, but the Johnson cabinet is replete with ideologically-blinded demagogues hell-bent on serving the inward-looking interests of the very few. While keen to play tough so as to extract a stronger Brexit deal, it is pure folly.

The prospect of Jeremy Corbyn vs Boris Johnson at prime minister’s questions in Parliament could be political theater at its most intriguing — a Punch and Judy show with the fate of the union at stake but with no clear mandate for either party, both of which are arguably far more divided within than without. However, too many on the liberal-left satisfy themselves with the view that things cannot get any worse,  but more often than not they do.

General Election

My own feeling is that a general election is on the way,  and it is make or further break for the United Kingdom. The consequence of even more fissure in politics and society is a prospect too unbearable to fathom. A massive correction must follow, including the possibility of the Liberal Democrats and Labour forming a meaningful coalition — one that should have happened in 2010 — ultimately saving the day and the country after burying Brexit and all those who stand for it for good.

Nevertheless, this will not happen without a willingness to accept that we have reached a tipping point — and this where openings are already emerging beyond the present rose-tinted intellects of certain media and political pundits.

As the old adage goes,  it is people who make history, not politicians. In the end, on both sides of the Atlantic, the people are speaking loudly and they will be heard.

*[An earlier version of this article was cross-posted on the author’s .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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In any case, the media have nearly unanimously agreed to attach that descriptor to Johnson, if only to explain the astonishing fact that, against all odds (and despite his endless oddities), he has managed to attain his lifelong ambition by becoming the latest tenant of 10 Downing Street and, in his mind, landlord of the nation’s politics.

To better understand how democracy has evolved in recent years, it may be time to ask ourselves — nearly a century after Max Weber launched the concept of political charisma — what we mean when using the word “charisma.” Boris Johnson provides an excellent case study to work from.

Here is today’s 3D definition:��

Charisma:

A quality of personality that, in the past, identified a public figure as a leader, but in the age of television and social media identifies public figures as entertainers so obsessed with fame, power and money that a significant proportion of the public believe they are somehow admirable

Contextual Note

Atul Singh — the founder, CEO and editor-in-chief of 51�Թ� — clarifies his characterization of Johnson’s charisma when he recounts that: “To those who support him, Johnson is witty, funny, charming, clever, insouciant, energetic and eloquent.” In other words, charisma, as it is perceived today, need not have universal appeal. Johnson’s charisma simply requires a group of people “who support him.”

The unique measure of charisma now appears to be the ability to force one’s way into the news cycle, either through a well-orchestrated media strategy, some spectacular (or unusual) public feats of prowess or, in most cases, a combination of both. To be deemed charismatic, a politician no longer needs to have qualities evident to everyone, even to those who oppose the politician’s platform, ideology or style. Today, those who are seduced by an individual’s charisma typically suspend their critical faculties. They isolate what they see as virtues and deliberately ignore or consciously repress what others may see as vices. Those who are not seduced tend to see such politicians as charlatans. In neither case do they adhere to the putative leader’s vision.

It’s easy to confuse charisma with charm. As in The Guardian: “Charm is politics’ deadliest weapon. It is not charisma, the authority to lead through an electrifying presence.” Jenkins has read Weber, who a century ago invented the concept of charismatic leadership which can be “found in a leader with extraordinary characteristics of individual, whose mission and vision inspire others.”

In Weberian terms, a charismatic leader is seen as the head of any social or political movement, sometimes gifted with divine powers such as religious prophets and Gurus. Mahatma Gandhi was charismatic, as was Martin Luther King Jr. In politics, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy, Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez qualify as charismatic. So do Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler because they represented a vision, however perverse, to which people massively adhered.

For all their talent at seduction, neither Donald Trump nor Boris Johnson rise to the level of charisma as defined by Weber. As sums it up:�� the charismatic leader “is not only capable of but actually possesses the superior power of charisma to rally diverse and conflict-prone people behind him. His power comes from the massive trust and almost unbreakable faith people put in him.” the charismatic leader as regarded by his followers as “of divine origin or as exemplary.” Few in Britain today, even among his fans, would agree that this is an appropriate description of Boris Johnson.

Historical Note

Jenkins makes an important point about Johnson: “He mesmerises punch-drunk Tories and disillusioned Labour voters alike. He emerges from his biographical record as incompetent, lazy, dissolute and a liar, yet the public’s response is that he is ‘our kind of liar’.” Many Americans feel the same way about Trump. But this is not leadership; it’s a special class of opportunism linked with a talent for personal marketing.

Tony Blair and Bill Clinton demonstrated a different kind of what we might call “near charisma.” They both articulated — however poorly and, for most people, unconvincingly — what some perceived as a goal for the nation or for all of humanity: the “.” Both were defined by their personal ambition more than by a shared vision of the future, and neither managed to construct a vision of the future that could stir the emotions of a majority of citizens and make them feel they were participating in history.

Johnson became prime minister through a vote that involved barely a tiny fraction (92,000) of the British population, not even 0.02% of those who are eligible to vote in an election (approximately 48 million). The nation thus witnessed the elevation of a new leader with a personal plan that was never seriously debated and is still not clear, even apparently to Boris himself, who prefers to talk divisively about his “DUDE” strategy (deliver, unify, defeat, energize) of delivering Brexit (feared by half of the nation) and defeating the Labour Party’s Jeremy Corbyn, while at the same time believe he can “energize” the nation to unify it. Not many Brits identify with the American concept of “dude.” Johnson does.

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The prime minister of the still somewhat “united” kingdom seems ready to unite England but leave Scotland, Northern Ireland and perhaps Wales to go their ways, a future that many observers see as possible under Johnson’s “leadership.” Apart from forcing through Brexit “do or die,” “come what may” and “may the devil take the hindmost,” Boris has articulated no vision of the future other than his intent to fulfill the nihilistic promise of Brexit.

A truly charismatic leader would have orchestrated his or her rise to power by defining the vision of what Britain could become and what it should become thanks to a concerted effort of the nation. Instead, Johnson has focused only on the negative pronouncement expressed by roughly one-half of those who voted in a shambolic referendum three years ago. This would be the first time a great historical vision could be reduced to a single word: “No!”

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]��

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Why Boris Johnson Isn’t “Charismatic” appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Boris reminds us, for example, that he has read the classics of English literature when he deploys a metaphor borrowed from Jonathan Swift as he that “we are once again going to believe in ourselves and what we can do and like some slumbering giant we are going to rise and ping off the guy ropes of self-doubt and negativity.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:��

Slumbering:

Sleeping and, therefore, unaware of what is going on in the world, but totally focused on one’s dreams that distort reality

Contextual Note

Johnson compares Britain and implicitly himself to Gulliver in the land of the Lilliputians. The comparison is apt in ways that Johnson didn’t intend. Swift paints Gulliver as a comic character, drifting through worlds that he cannot understand and, in the end, influenced to the point of a mad obsession by what he believes to be the master race: the Houyhnhnms, who have the morphology of horses but the language and thought processes of humans. These hyper-rational horses, who are incapable of telling a lie, also understand that Gulliver is nothing more than a clothed Yahoo, the other race on the island, who are brutish, aggressive, unthinking and unclothed animals with human morphology.

Johnson is known for identifying with the nation’s elite, even if he doesn’t specifically follow Gulliver in identifying with the master race of rational, articulate horses. It’s possible Johnson may not have read past the first of the four books of “Gulliver’s Travels,” since the story of the Yahoos and Houyhnhnms appears only in the final book. It is followed by Gulliver’s definitive lapse into paranoia, the sad, even despairing end of the comic tale. Something similar may await Johnson after his stay — however long or short — at 10 Downing Street.

In the first book, the shipwrecked Gulliver finds himself sleeping on a beach in the land of the Lilliputians, a tiny race of people who profit from the exhausted sailor’s slumber to tie him down with guy ropes. Gulliver has no trouble breaking free and becomes the powerful leader of the Lilliputians, who bow to his superior size and strength.

Though his conscious metaphorical intention may have been to see the slumbering giant as Britain as needing to wake up from a bad shipwreck of a dream to display its dominating force to the tiny, powerless Europeans, the real significance of the metaphor may be what it reveals about how Johnson thinks of himself and his role in society. He is the giant capable of putting out a catastrophic fire in Lilliput by simply peeing on the flames between now and October 31.

For Jonathan Swift, Gulliver — whose name evokes the adjective “gullible” — is a clownish avatar of British culture. His surreal interactions with a series of strange worlds allow Swift to explore the multiple follies and meaningless trends of both English society in the early 18th century, from heartless colonialism to abstruse scientific speculation and trivial theological debates. That Johnson portrays both Britain and his own person as a powerful giant who landed on an uncharted island and proves capable of restoring order to a society of little people tells a tale concerning his own psyche that would undoubtedly amuse Gulliver’s author to the point of hilarity.

In real life, Johnson sometimes does have the physical demeanor of a horse. He wears his hair like an ungroomed mane, and though preferring the two wheels of a bicycle to the four hoofs he could never manage to grow at the extremity of his limbs, Boris may believe himself to be not just a giant awaking on the beach to find himself strapped down by Lilliputian guy ropes, but also a Houyhnhnm, the master race whose members have no word for “lying.” Like Johnson, their discourse consists only of facts.

Historical Note

Noticing that Johnson’s “slumbering giant” was an allusion to “Gulliver’s Travels,” The Independent highlights a: “The truth is the Gordian knot in which the UK finds itself entangled was of its own making.” Instead of an alien diminutive race, the frightened Lilliputians that have subdued the giant are none other than the British politicians and voters who, first, allowed the 2016 Brexit referendum to happen, then voted in favor of leaving the European Union and finally fell into endless Lilliputian-style bickering and warring. In the case of the Lilliputians, it was the “Little-Endians” versus the “Big-Endians,” as they disputed the primordial question of which end of the boiled egg one should break to eat its contents.

Johnson is of course a Big-Endian, meaning that he favors a big, clean break of the shell that held the UK inside Europe. Boris himself, always seeking a pun, might say that he objects to the yolk being held in a yoke. He promises to do what Theresa May failed to do: “deliver Brexit, unite the country and defeat (opposition Labour leader) Jeremy Corbyn.” With her mere Lilliputian strength, May failed to break free of the “guy ropes of self-doubt,” an affliction that Johnson has never been in danger of succumbing to.

Boris sees himself not only as a giant amongst dwarves but also — thanks possibly to a cinematic allusion — as the Big Lebowski, the Coen brothers’ iconic character, “the Dude.” Johnson delights his partisan audience when he tells them to add an “e” for “energize” to complete “deliver, unite, defeat” (DUD), producing the American word “dude.” (Could this be an appeal to President Donald Trump, who recognizes Johnson as a soul brother, “the UK version of himself”?)

Analyzing the problem of politicians in a democracy where self-promotion is required for electoral success, the spoke of the case where the “striving for power ceases to be objective and becomes purely personal self-intoxication, instead of exclusively entering the service of ‘the cause.’” He added, “The mere ‘power politician’ may get strong effects, but actually his work leads nowhere and is senseless.” Was Weber anticipating Trump, Johnson or both?

What would the 18th-century wit, Jonathan Swift, have thought of Johnson’s��contrived attempt at a joke that literally comes across like a dud? According to Guy Faulconbridge and Elizabeth Piper, Johnson’s “embrace of a court jester role has won over many Britons,” but Johnson would do better to study his Monty Python or, better still, seek to hire one of its surviving members to write his jokes.

That might be difficult, though, since John Cleese, who spoke out in , recently complained that he is so disgusted by the entire Brexit debate — specifically citing Johnson’s promise of diverting the money for Europe to the National Health Service — that he will. Another Python, Michael Palin, didn’t support Brexit, precisely because it . “[T]here’s not a single joke in Brexit,” he complained. He is unlikely to have been convinced by Johnson’s dude joke. As for Eric Idle, he: “Brexit.�� Having shot ourselves in the foot we now go on to aim at our ankles…..I hope our knees surrender.”

Palin is right. Brexit appears not just to be humorless, but may have killed the possibility of British humor ever again emerging. It would be the death of a rich tradition that includes Chaucer, Shakespeare, Swift, Laurence Sterne, Lewis Carroll, Oscar Wilde, Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers, the Beatles, the Monty Python and many, many more, in all the arts.

No one knows how long the Brexit drama will last, despite Boris Johnson’s promise to produce its glorious outcome on October 31. And no one can predict how long the current slumber of British wit and humour (sic) will last.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, , in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]��

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Will Boris Johnson Break Free of the Lilliputians? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The Favorable View

To those who support him, Johnson is witty, funny, charming, clever, insouciant, energetic and eloquent. At worst, they find this Old Etonian is a lovable Falstaffian rogue. Like , Johnson takes risks, flies high and admirably secures a decent of “notches on [his] phallocratic phallus.” Some love-crazed supporters even find him reminiscent of Henry VIII. Like the portly 16th-century king, he will lead the blessed green isle of England to freedom from Brussels, the Rome of our times.

It is indubitably true that Johnson is one of the most charismatic politicians worldwide. He brings extraordinary energy to the table, connects exquisitely with people and carries himself with the confidence of the “” that he once wanted to be. Many Tories tell this author that Johnson could be a better bet than micromanager May because he can delegate. The say nimble-footed Johnson was a terrific mayor of London, ran the 2012 Olympics splendidly well and will do a smashing job as prime minister.

Johnson thinks so too. He compares himself to Winston Churchill. In fact, he has written a biography of the great man — another journalist-turned-politician who came to power during dark times. called Johnson’s biography of Churchill “self-serving but spirited.” Even though Kampfner opposes Brexit and writes for The Guardian, he could not help but be seduced by Johnson’s writing. This raises the question: Why?

Perhaps Johnson appeals to something subliminal in the British psyche. The new Tory leader’s braggadocio is redolent of an era when Britannia did rule the waves, when a mere 6,000 British colonizers lorded it over 200 million Indians and when the pound was the undisputed currency of the world. If only the British could recover some of their mojo à la Johnson, then they would yet again saunter to the broad, sunlit uplands of their past.

The Not-So-Favorable View

To those who are appalled by him, Johnson has never had a fling, leave aside a relationship with the truth. He has repeatedly to his bosses, colleagues and the public. His housemaster that Johnson “honestly believes it is churlish of us not to regard him as an exception – one who should be free of the network of obligations which binds everyone else. Boris is pretty impressive when success can be achieved by pure intelligence, unaccompanied by hard work.” It is therefore no surprise that many regard Johnson as an insufferable toff with a sense of entitlement that he was born to rule.

Tory grandees such as John Major, Michael Heseltine and Kenneth Clarke find Johnson a touch . Former colleagues such as Sir Alan Duncan, Philip Hammond, Anne Milton, David Gauke and Rory Stewart have refused to serve under the new Conservative Party leader. They will be hitting the backbenches in Parliament. Historian Lord Hennessy is anxious about Johnson because he seems to be a politician “who’s inhaled his own legend before he’s created it.” The noted historian worries about Johnson’s “personal and political narcissism.” , another Old Etonian, a friend of Johnson’s and Churchill’s grandson, fears the new prime minister “could bugger it up.”

Soames is right to fear Johnson’s premiership. This scholar boy from Eton and Balliol first made a name for himself as a prurient purveyor of salacious headlines from Brussels. Apparently, the bloody Europeans had nothing to do but interfere with British sausages, manure and even condoms. Needless to say, some of Johnson’s fellow journalists found him to be “fundamentally intellectually dishonest.”

Furthermore, Johnson’s affairs, offensive remarks and erratic behavior have earned him a reputation of a bumbling buffoon who skates through life by only doing the bare minimum. It is for this reason that Michael Howard packed him off to Liverpool to offer a groveling apology and sacked him for lying about an affair.

Not Really a Brexiteer

The biggest cloud that hangs over Boris Johnson is the fact that he is not really a Brexiteer. Before the 2016 referendum on the UK’s membership to the European Union, Johnson told Soames that he was not an outer. Therefore, people rightly suspect him of leading the “leave” campaign out of shameless opportunism. Johnson calculated that he would lead a robust campaign, lose gallantly, win the support of Tory euroskeptics and emerge as Prime Minister David Cameron’s successor. When the British unexpectedly voted for Brexit, Johnson’s plan backfired. He suffered a meltdown and failed to seize the reins of power.

Now, three years later, a reenergized Johnson promises to deliver Brexit, unite the country and defeat the Labour Party’s Jeremy Corbyn. This Pied Piper of London has thundered, “Dude, we are going to get Brexit done on October 31.” No one yet quite knows how.

Like his hero, Winston Churchill, Johnson is taking charge at a perilous time. Yet there is one striking difference. A former military man, Churchill was a conviction politician who had railed against appeasement during his long, dark years in the wilderness. So far, Johnson has been a politician with no convictions except the unshakable belief that he was born for Number 10.��With the Pied Piper of Brexit in charge, Great Britain may not be as great as before.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The Johnson family has never been averse to publicity. To clarify their status for Americans, the journalist places them in the “large, amorphous space between the Kennedys and the Kardashians.”

Lyall documents the unexpected but suddenly unconditional loyalty to Boris of his family members, who had in the past radically differed with him on political issues. “Whether because of sibling loyalty, or because they have been warned to behave, or because they just want to burnish their personal brands in preparation for Boris’s ascent, the Johnsons appear to be taking the approach that blood is thicker than political conviction,” she writes.

Here is today’s 3D definition:��

Conviction:

For politicians, at the beginning or middle of their career, a belief about the world and moral bearings that they must learn not to allow to influence their decision-making. For some politicians, marking the end of their career, the verdict of a court that takes into account the effects of their decision-making.��

Contextual Note��

The article highlights a recent Boris Johnson quote designed to reinforce his appeal as a populist leader. He has proposed a policy of restricting immigration by requiring that candidates for immigration learn English. He gave as a justification that “there are too many parts of the country where it is not the first language.” This enabled him to hint at something like a theme dear to Fox News: that there are no-go zones in some British cities where only Asian languages are spoken and Islam is the only religion practiced.

What he failed to realize — Boris is known to be occasionally forgetful — is that the United Kingdom whose monarch is in England claims to have united three other countries (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), the first two of which are proud of having their own language, which isn’t English. Some might even include Yorkshire in the list.

Boris has already claimed that his election is all about giving him the means of “achieving what I want to achieve.” It’s all about what Boris wants, even if he insists that it’s about what the people want. And thus Boris informs the public, “I want everybody who comes here and makes their lives here to be and to feel British.” Borrowing a page from Donald Trump, Johnson once accused Barack Obama of feeling — anti-British and not enough pure American (Boris was born in New York)��— to appreciate the “leave” option for Brexit. Taken literally, it amounted to an admission that the colonized had good reason to despise the arrogance of their British masters. But arrogance is, of course, a major component of the Johnson brand.

Historical Note

The New York Times article focuses on the Johnson family. Lyall expresses her astonishment that an entire family — formerly committed to defending in public its carefully elaborated pro-European political convictions that happened to be at odds with those suddenly endorsed by Boris —�� should close ranks behind him once he was about to take over the reins of power.

Lyall only briefly mentions another glaring contradiction: the fact that career politicians with no family ties to Johnson, impressed by his successful self-marketing, are equally capable of betraying their convictions and turning on a dime (or a six-pence… though this probably wouldn’t have been the case for Conservative politicians in the days when six-pence coins still existed, before branding had taken over politics). Lyall mentions the “many Conservative politicians who were once in the Never-Boris camp but who in recent weeks have come around to something like an ‘Only Boris’ philosophy.”

The entire Boris Johnson saga is a study in historical trends. Boris himself was a “remainer” — those who wanted the UK to stay in the European Union — until he saw the advantage, in terms of his political career, of profiting from then-Prime Minister David Cameron’s risky gamble with the 2016 Brexit referendum. Johnson understood that politics is the only sport in which the goal you score against your own team may count in your favor.

Donald ��Trump did it in the US when we waged war against the respectable Republicans (Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio). Emmanuel Macron followed suit in France, having been ushered into politics by a Socialist president whose party he succeeded in humiliating and practically annihilating in the 2017 election.

Trump and Macron were alike in never having been elected to any political office before becoming president. In contrast, Johnson — a career hack journalist and publicity-seeker with Oxford credentials — had been elected to Parliament before being winning the race in 2008 for mayor of London. He later served as Prime Minister Theresa May’s foreign secretary. All those accomplishments were attributable less to his competence in politics (most still deem it a history of incompetence) than to his genius for Kardashian-style branding.

Johnson had no scruples about not only betraying his family’s values, all of whom were committed “remainers,” but also undermined Cameron’s middle-of-the-road, play it safe strategy for the Conservative Party that depended on the support of the unambiguously pro-European Liberal Democrats, with whom Cameron was forced to form a in 2010.

At the time, all “sensible” Conservatives were reasonably happy with Britain’s role in Europe. Only those who sensed that the undercurrent of visceral and ancestral hatred of all outsiders — including dark-skinned Commonwealth invaders and even pale Polish workers — might be an effective electoral strategy dared to use that potential for personal electoral purposes. Most Conservatives aligned with the attitude of the City bankers and traders they tended to be friendly with, who delighted in London’s privileged position at the heart of the European economy.

The Boris Johnson story tells us that populism has nothing to do either with the reading and interpretation of history or the logic of institutions, and even less to do with rational political convictions. Populism is about the power of clans and the clans in power. Why else would the Johnson tribe rally not just behind their illustrious, opportunistic family member, but also behind his “ideas” and policies, which some of his closest collaborators from the past have deemed irresponsible and mad? Why else would so many members of his party who opposed him on principle suddenly join his ranks?

Americans have been asking themselves similar questions: Why did so many anti-Trump Republicans end up supporting a politician who turned out to be more extreme than they initially feared and now embrace or defend every one of Donald’s follies, however racist they may be or however contradictory with their cherished constitutional principles?

The simple answer is this: Most politicians, anywhere in the world, are addicted to the idea of electoral success and, facing the temptation of having their own seat in the halls of power, will turn as many coats as they are permitted to put on their backs throughout their political careers. Convictions can be bought and sold just like any other merchandise in today’s consumer society.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, , in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Like a 14th-century monk troubled by the arrival of the plague that had suddenly thrown Europe into a panic, the former journalist and current politician, preacher and occasional snake-oil salesman offered us the macabre , not just on Britain’s fate, but also on the cruel inevitability of death that looms over politicians who sin against the logic of history — a logic that he, the seer and visionary, alone understands.

A growing faction of Tory remainers — those who voted to stay inside the European Union in the 2016 Brexit referendum — appears to be plotting to thwart Johnson’s grand plan. This consists of emulating the current US president by fomenting chaos and exploiting it as his trump card (pun intended). This should serve to neutralize all other outcomes and secure the power that Johnson needs to be free to act in the only way he knows how: with no sense of accountability.

Referring to the impending initiative of the Tory dissidents who seek to mobilize Parliament to ban a no-deal Brexit — in which the UK would crash out of the EU — the prophet Boris on a Biblical metaphor to illustrate his personal reading of one of the great principles of democracy: “I think if we now block it as parliamentarians we will reap the whirlwind and face mortal retribution from the electorate.”��

Boris Johnson’s Political Theology

Despite his nod to the Bible (), Johnson defines himself as a secular democrat ever attentive to vox populi (the voice of the people). The whirlwind of mortality he mentions is simply a future election, not an act of God. This contrasts refreshingly with the theocratic George W. Bush, the former US president, who claimed to follow vox dei (the voice of God) in his acts of retribution against real and imaginary evildoers. It also contrasts with Bush’s ever accommodating and perennially moralizing sidekick, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who, guided by his , never believed in the outdated nonsense of turning the other cheek (). Johnson steers clear of explicit theology, preferring to let the (whirl)wind of popular opinion guide his political thinking.

As a populist (i.e., narcissistic) leader, Johnson has committed himself to a unique cause: using his declared service to his voters to serve himself. This means his whole philosophy is founded on what is increasingly emerging as the central principle for modern Western democracies, the key to getting elected and holding onto power: understanding and exploiting the undifferentiated mob’s spiteful thirst for vengeance and retribution, even when there is nothing in particular to avenge. Vengeance, after all, is the kind of emotion that motivates people to come out and vote without being troubled by nuance.

Like Donald Trump, Rodrigo Duterte, Jair Bolsonaro, Victor Orban and Matteo Salvini, Johnson sees the anger of the people (ira populi or democratic retribution) as the safer and reassuringly secular equivalent of divine justice. It conveniently removes direct responsibility from the politicians who know how to respect (and then hide behind) the clamor of the mob. Instead of judging them for the destruction they inevitably perpetrate, the god of history can put the blame on the people whose sovereign will they have democratically agreed to serve.

When challenged on his abusive, racist-tinged, culturally patronizing language, such as his remark that Muslim women wearing burkas “look like letterboxes,” Johnson summoned the deepest resources of his natural humility to : “I’m sorry for the offence I’ve caused but I will continue to speak as directly as I can because that’s what I think the British public want.” That was days before that his remarks consisted of “a strong liberal defense of women’s right to wear the burka,” while affirming it’s all about the fact that “we love each other in a Christian spirit … or a non-Christian spirit … whatever.”

This last remark, despite — or rather thanks to — his deliberately confused and confusing hesitations, drew peals of what some might interpret as cynical and complicit laughter from his partisan audience. Only Boris could affirm in public that an obvious racist insult was an act of cross-cultural love. (US President Donald Trump might be tempted to try the same thing, but he hasn’t learned the art of getting people to laugh in complicity, only to cheer at his impudence).

Boris the penitent will not change his ways. He responds to a higher calling, the voice of the people, the ultimate arbiter of morality, as he in return provides the people — Christians and non-Christians alike — with the message they so desperately want to hear. Although he may never have visited the state of Alabama, he has clearly integrated into his moral code and mindset the motto of that American state’s Army National Guard: populi voluntati subsumus (“to the will of the people we subordinate ourselves”). Like the good soldiers of the American South, Boris Johnson is all about obedience and personal sacrifice.

Johnson cites another reason for us to believe that, despite his reluctance and sincere sorrow for offending people (especially those less likely to vote), he must not forsake his sacred responsibilities. He has been called upon to fulfill his democratic duty and never fail to produce the kind of provocative, injurious language that he believes “the British public want.” To refuse would be to betray his democratic vocation. As he , people are unhappy with politicians because “we are muffling and veiling our language.” Boris prefers to muffle and veil his ideas.

Paradoxically — and this is something Friar Boris might want to meditate on — show that “just 14% of the public believe he is honest and has a ‘good moral character.’” For someone who believes in vox populi, this could be a problem. Even if elected by his Conservative Party and confirmed by Parliament (which itself is ), he will take office as the least trusted and most unpopular British prime minister ever. If you thought Brexit was a picture of chaos, wait till you see Boris at 10 Downing Street.

Following in Julius Caesar’s Footsteps

Boris Johnson has a sense of his historical mission. Interviewed on talkRadio, Johnson confirmed his preoccupations with mortality as he cited the of the latest of a series of ever prolonged Brexit deadlines, this one scheduled appropriately for the night of Halloween: “We are getting ready to come out on 31 October.” Asked to confirm this, he added: “Do or die. Come what may.”

Could the author of “” be thinking or even dreaming about Julius Caesar in 49 BC? Didn’t Caesar say something along the lines of��“the do or die is cast” (, to be literal, since we’re in the mood for quoting in Latin)? Caesar’s defiant, come-what-may act in 49 BC launched a civil war, which could become the case for Britain if a no-deal Brexit under Johnson’s watch takes place. The Rubicon might then be the Northern Irish border (or even the ).

“Do or die” — an expression originally penned by in his ode to Scottish hero Robert Bruce, battling the English — expresses an attitude of political and military defiance. It also conveys a belief in fatality. Boris may even be anticipating his own Ides of March. In one of his radio interviews, Johnson of the injustice he is subjected to: “People are trying to stop me achieving what I want to achieve.” He also insisted: “The longer we spend on things extraneous to what I want to do, the bigger the waste of time.” He hasn’t quite attained Caesar’s level of hubris, who famously defied the dire warnings of the soothsayers, though that could change once he has reached his goal. He does make it clear that it’s all about “what I want to do” and anything else can only be a distraction.

The media unanimously expect Johnson to emerge victorious on July 23 as his lead over his opponent, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, among the Tory electorate is unlikely to fade. A former boss of Johnson’s, when he was still a journalist, that his election to lead the Conservative Party “will signal Britain’s abandonment of any claim to be a serious country.”

Despite a high level of dissatisfaction, if not dread, across the political spectrum at the prospect of seeing Johnson in Downing Street, Hunt, who could have profited from the various controversies and scandals around Johnson’s behavior, has led an inept campaign in his futile attempt to discredit the Boris brand. Instead of opposing his rival’s controversial policies designed to seduce Tory voters while running the risk of upsetting the rest of Britain, Hunt has followed the strategy of affirming that if it works for Boris, it will work for Jeremy.

Hunt has promised to do exactly the same thing as Johnson, but more seriously. He failed to realize that simply affirming that he, Jeremy Hunt, isn’t a public clown whereas Johnson obviously will convince no one. Imitating a clown but not knowing how to draw laughs makes one not just a clown, but an unfunny one. The one thing that works for Johnson is the fact that, being such an oafish comedian, people (erroneously) attribute to him the innocence of a clown. That alone explains why he refuses to comb his ragged blond mop.

After Jeremy Hunt publicly announced his intention to follow Boris Johnson’s lead and accept a no-deal Brexit at the next deadline on October 31 if no new EU withdrawal treaty could be negotiated, his asked him “if he would be willing to look the owners of family businesses in the eye and say they should be prepared to see their companies go bust.” Hunt replied: “I would do so but I’d do it with a heavy heart precisely because of the risks.” When the journalist asked him to explain his reasoning concerning the risks, Hunt explained “that a no-deal Brexit was necessary to maintain the UK’s image abroad as ‘a country where politicians do what the people tell them to do.’”

Like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, it’s difficult to know from reading it on the page which one is speaking, especially since, on their own admission, they have no thoughts of their own but only know how to apply what the people have told them to do. The two Tory candidates to succeed Prime Minister May see themselves — as May herself insisted she also did — as slaves of the people, robots programmed to apply a decision the people made in June of 2016.

Following Johnson’s expected election, one major question will remain (since remaining in the EU is no longer an option). What mortal retribution is awaiting not just the Conservative Party but also the nation that, a little over three years ago, bought into Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage’s comedy act built on what they later admitted were lies? As Jeremy Hunt has rather realistically pointed out, that retribution will most likely come not from a democratic whirlwind, but from the economy itself as businesses falter, Scotland revolts, chaos reigns on the Northern Irish border and the vaunted trade deals fail to materialize. What message will the people then have for their new leader, if any? And will it be in a language they can understand? (Presumably they only understand binary choices: yes or no, leave or remain).

Of course, in the great British political tradition, Parliament itself has been the institution called upon to play the role of not just expressing, but especially of interpreting the will of the people. The first battle Boris Johnson will face will be with Parliament itself. And the real suspense for the nation and the outside world will be about seeing and feeling the shift of forces that will inevitably take place, leaving everyone guessing about where it may lead.

Three years of guessing obviously wasn’t enough.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Even those who don’t follow the intricacies of post-Brexit British politics know the name and possibly the image of Boris Johnson. Like Donald Trump, the former mayor of London, ex-foreign secretary, one-time journalist and author of popular history lives under a consciously cultivated, highly symbolic mass (or, in his case, mess) of blond hair. Also like Trump, Johnson allows himself to appear as a public clown, but with serious (if not sometimes sinister) intentions. Both men “to boldly go where no [political] man has gone before.”

It has now been revealed — for those who have persisted in believing that Johnson is, like the rest of us, a living and breathing, mortal human being — that one of his political colleagues, “a senior Tory,” has set the : “Boris is a brand. He defies all logic. He can do things that other politicians can’t.”

The physical human being, Boris Johnson may one day die, but as he has achieved the status of brand, he may prove immortal, just like Coca-Cola (thanks to its carefully protected and ) and Winnie the Pooh (thanks to and aggressive merchandising).

Here is today’s 3D definition:��

Brand:

An attribute of manufactured products (including public figures and, more recently, politicians) vying to become leaders in their marketplace with a status that puts them on a mythical plane in comparison to their competitors

Contextual note

There aren’t many politicians who succeed in casting off their humanity to become features of hyperreality. Trump has proved himself the leader and implicit model, but his secret formula was to achieve hyperreality long before taking a crack at politics. In doing so, he confirmed what Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980 presaged: that hyperreality could one day become the norm in politics. One of the difficulties before the age of Trump and Johnson was the implicit expectation of the public that their political leaders, even when meticulously programmed by their parties or donors, would appear to be normally functioning human beings. As an actor, Reagan consummately played that role, following the political script.

Being a brand puts Johnson beyond scandal or the effects of his own glaring mistakes. Over the past weekend, he received what an American baseball batter would call two quick strikes, knowing that one more and he heads for the dugout. Johnson appears unfazed by the breaking news of his divorce at a particularly delicate moment in the Brexit maneuverings, followed by the scandal of his provocative ��comparing the tactics of Prime Minster Theresa May’s Brexit to a suicide vest whose detonator has been placed in the hands of Europe’s Michel Barnier.

Historical note

In his most recent book, historian : “Branding often involves retelling the same fictional story again and again, until people become convinced it is the truth.” The pioneers of political branding were the totalitarian leaders of the 20th century: Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Benito Mussolini. Harari quotes Mein Kampf: “The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly — it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.” He also cites Joseph Goebbels: “A lie told once remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth.”

Johnson’s “fictional story” told “again and again” is none other than Johnson himself, the man who sought to become a brand, or rather the product who became confused with his own packaging. He’s the ultimate Brexiteer, far more compelling than Nigel Farage, perceived as the bloke most xenophobic Brits and even some non-xenophobes would love to share a pint with at the local. No one would want to spend time at the pub with Boris. You don’t hang out with a brand.

Brands increasingly dominate elections. A lot of Brexiteers will automatically vote for the name Boris Johnson if it appears on a ballot, because they recognize the brand. Many might hesitate to even consider voting for Farage if they thought he could become prime minister.

Politics itself has become hyperreal ever since “scientific” political marketing became the driver, defining the targeting and content of campaigns. Parties were the brand until “discontent” became the norm in our democracies. Johnson is not only a name in the Conservative Party, meaning voters believe he can be trusted to make “responsible decisions.” He is also the only politician in Britain who realizes the force of hyperreality and is intent on exploiting its dynamics of discontent.

One of his Conservative critics, Dominic Grieve, while demolishing the political and economic pseudo-logic of Johnson’s political position, described the article containing Boris’ provocative metaphor of the suicide vest as “entirely in character: crude but, for some, entertaining populist polemic.”

In our increasingly hyperreal world, entertainment trumps everything else, leaving the very idea of truth and reality in a ditch along the side of the road. Crude is entertaining. Lucid observers have that the vaunted news of our “free press” has evolved into pure entertainment. It simply uses the subject matter of current events (including entertainment) to seduce an audience that has voluntarily put to sleep its critical faculties.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Toby Young didn’t last long as Britain’s director of the Office for Students. Unable to defend his outrageous positions in the past on sensitive issues, including his condescending opinion of both students and teachers, he resigned while offering given by those whose less than glorious past is revealed to the public: “My appointment has become a distraction from its vital work of broadening access to higher education and defending academic freedom.”

Citing the “distraction” of his appointment provided Young with an elegant way of distracting attention from his own failings as well as the irresponsible decision-making of those in government who offered him the position.

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Distraction:

The commotion caused by the moral indignation that inevitably follows unanticipated revelations of embarrassing truths about public figures

True to the style of such confessions, Young claimed that it was his appointment rather than his own words and acts that had become a distraction, carefully diverting the blame toward those who contested his qualifications rather than confronting the issues for which he was being shamed.

Contextual note

In the wake of the #MeToo campaign that has recently dominated the news, the media had a field day exposing Young’s patently sexist remarks in the past. He has even been associated with “progressive eugenics” and white supremacy. But the National Education Union, while objecting to his repeated remarks about women’s breasts, more appropriately pointed to . “As you will know from the media uproar about this appointment, Toby Young has also made unacceptable comments on disability, students from state schools getting into Oxbridge and children with special educational needs.”

Historical note

British Prime Minister Theresa May appointed Young, apparently on the understanding that he would “not repeat the offensive tweets and articles” from his journalistic past. In his resignation letter, for “standing by me” and “drawing a distinction between my earlier life and my subsequent record in education.” Young was sorely in need of “distinction.”

As , “Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, and Environment Secretary Michael Gove were among other ministers who praised Mr Young, and argued he was ideal for the role.”

With a total lack of irony, Universities Minister Jo Johnson, who refused to call the appointment into question, told MPs prior to Young’s resignation, “We want to encourage Mr Young to develop the best sides of his personality.” This is the language educators usually employ condescendingly when speaking of students who have been found promising but undisciplined.

In the previous edition of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary, we highlighted David Davis’ inability to master the art of irony. Lack of irony seemed to be a permanent feature of this government of the land that over past centuries gave us Chaucer, Jonathan Swift, Spike Milligan and the Monty Python.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Rivalries that begin at Eton tend to last a lifetime. This is certainly true in the case of David Cameron and Boris Johnson.

The two Brits first crossed paths at Eton where Johnson was the school star who played sport with great gusto, wore fancy waistcoats and became captain of the school. At the University of Oxford, Johnson continued his meteoric rise. He became the president of the Oxford Union but failed to get a first class degree. Irritatingly, Cameron did.

The two men then became members of Parliament and were fast rising up the greasy pole, but Johnson’s infamous infidelity gave Cameron the chance to throw him under a London double-decker bus.

Starting at around 4 minutes and 10 seconds into this BBC Newsnight report, a younger Cameron slyly smirks about Johnson’s fall from grace after his amour impropre.

In the video, the Beeb is prescient when it comments: “The in-out referendum campaign is a no holds barred battle, which could see the prime minister losing his crown jewels to his populist challenger.”

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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blues have now set in as the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom’s Remain campaign reflect on what caused it to lose the referendum. The campaigns on both the Leave and Remain sides of the argument were not conducted by explaining the issues in a calm and considered manner, but were dominated by what has become known as “.”

The behavior of two Etonians was totally unacceptable, with outrageous statements such as former Prime Minister David Cameron—leading the Remain campaign—suggesting that the out again in Europe, and the now-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson—leading the Leave campaign—suggesting that the EU project was a repeat of to dominate the remainder of Europe.

On the other hand, there were a number of very experienced men whose voices were not heard, perhaps because they did not sell newspapers or improve TV ratings. Among the quieter voices whose opinions had a considerable influence on this author were Lord David Owen, former foreign secretary; Lords Nigel Lawson and Norman Lamont, both former finance ministers; Lord Mervyn King who was governor of the Bank of England for 10 years until 2013; Lord Digby Jones who was director general of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) for six years; and Michael Geoghegan, a former group CEO of HSBC Bank. It was the opinion of all these experienced men that Britain would be better outside the EU that caused this author to decide to vote leave after being undecided at the outset.

Reluctant Brexiteers

Interestingly, Lord Jones recently described himself on a TV program as a “reluctant Brexiteer.” The main reason he gave for finally concluding that the UK must leave the EU was��the fact that he believed the EU is incapable of reforming itself, which is the complete opposite of what Cameron was saying when he argued that the best option was to remain in a reformed EU. His views were based on negotiations with the EU prior to the referendum of June 23 and which this author showed to be . There is no doubt that the Remain campaign concentrated too much on the economic risks of leaving the EU without balancing its arguments and��explaining the political risks and opportunities of remaining.

There was also a great disadvantage in the Remain camp being led by the prime minister as that gave the impression of the campaign being solely run by the Conservative Party, which does not have support in the Labour Party heartlands of the UK. Also, the lack of a strong independent leader of the Remain campaign and lukewarm support from the Labour Party also contributed to the failure of the Remain campaign to make the arguments in a clear and effective manner.

While former Marks & Spencer Executive Chairman Lord Stuart Rose was in principle the leader of the Remain campaign, his voice was not heard and his only memorable comment was to say that wages would go up if the UK left the EU which was, of course, a great encouragement to the population in the Labour Party heartlands to vote leave. It is these failures that have contributed to the feeling on the Remain side of the argument that the result of the referendum did not reflect the true feelings of the population as a whole and has contributed to the ill feeling among those who voted to remain.

In view of this, it was with some relief to this author that the Conservative Party chose as its new leader former Home Secretary Theresa May, who is state-educated and had been on the Remain side, but is now making it clear that “.” Prime Minister May��will work with the to ensure that the hopes and aspirations of the country as a whole will be met during the negotiations with the EU and, more importantly, by accelerating the negotiation of trade agreements with the rest of the world.

While it may take time to negotiate trade agreements with the United States, China, Japan, India, Canada, Australia and South Korea, it should be much easier for the UK to do so than for the EU, which has to take account of the views of 27 countries in its negotiations. As a result, the EU does not have free trade agreements with any of these countries except for South Korea. While much is made of the problems for the UK reaching an agreement with the EU on the terms of its exit, it is noteworthy that the EU economy is already under stress and it needs the UK as much as the UK needs the EU.

Where Do We Go From Here?

As indicated above, May has made it clear that the UK will leave the EU and that there will be . While attempts will be made to try to overturn the result of the referendum by claiming that the prime minister does not have the power or mandate to use her powers to invoke Article 50 of the EU treaty—which is required to trigger the process of leaving the EU—she will resist that.

If challenged she could, if necessary, call another general election which she would be most likely to win given the present disarray in the ranks of the Labour Party and the fact that many Labour voters chose��to leave the EU. They would not support any member of the Labour Party advocating anything else and would then vote for the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). That would strengthen May’s position as prime minister and remove all doubt as to her power to invoke Article 50.

It may well be that there will be demands for referendums from many more countries than the UK. Those demands are already being made, particularly in France, and that may lead to further reform of the EU.

As for the EU, the departure of the UK will be a great shock as Britain is the fifth largest economy in the world and has the fifth largest military. Britain is also a member of the G7 and G20 and has a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. The EU will be severely diminished without the UK, and its best interests will be served by negotiating a new relationship with Britain, which would not be the so-called but a new relationship that recognizes the importance of the UK to Europe.

It is unfortunate that many of EU leaders and the European Commission seem to think that the UK should be the supplicant in any negotiations, but they will find the tables turned once trade agreements are negotiated with other countries beyond Europe and once they realize that European banks and governments need the City of London to finance their debt requirements. London is the in the world, with Frankfurt and Paris as minnows by comparison that do not even appear in the top 10.

While French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault has made some disparaging remarks about the appointment of Boris Johnson as UK foreign secretary and has even , he will soon find that he needs to tone down the rhetoric. In any case the present government of France is likely to be ousted next year and so his opinions will not matter.

Sadly, Ayrault’s undiplomatic behavior reflects France’s long-standing jealousy of the UK as explained in an excellent book by academics Robert Tombs (British) and Isabelle Tombs (French) in their book published in the UK under the title and published in France under the title of . The authors explain that the cultural differences and animosity between Britain and France have existed for centuries.

In 1967, French President Charles de Gaulle was to have said that the “present Common Market is incompatible with the economy, as it now stands, of Britain.” He went on to list a number of aspects of Britain’s economy, from working practices to agriculture that he said made the UK��incompatible with Europe.

It is no good trying to conceal the cultural differences that��will always be there and, with the EU bureaucracy dominated from the beginning by the French, it will always be hard to see how Britain would have been able to operate within the EU as it moves toward an , which is the main objective of the majority of its members and which is always thought to be the answer to every problem the EU encounters. The problem for the UK, had it voted to stay in the EU, would have been that it would have eventually become isolated in any case, were the objective of an ever-closer union to be achieved.

While the issue of , many other EU member states (including France) have the same concerns about protecting their sovereignty, and that may well lead to a breakup of the union in the future. Until that happens, it is likely that the European Union will muddle along with problems ranging from immigration and terrorism to the financial problems of Greece and many other countries in the eurozone such as Italy, where problems are only just beginning to be noticed.

Britain is not the only country to have a large number of . It may well be that there will be demands for referendums from many more countries than the UK. Those demands are already being made, particularly in France, and that may lead to further reform of the EU. This could mean a development of a central core of countries moving toward an ever-closer union, and other countries remaining outside the core assuming a new form of associate status. This may well have suited the UK and may yet be negotiated as part of the Brexit terms. If not, it is likely that Brexit blues will be around for a long time to come. Only time will show.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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