Johnson becomes 77th PM and forms a government of Brexiteers

Blackleaf

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Why yes, Capt'n Obvious, he is.

But he was not elected by the general public which is the entire point. He was elected by a closed group only, that closed group being those in his party.


He was NOT elected by all of Britain.

Neither was Trudeau when he became his party's leader.

I think it's only right that only members of a party choose who their leader is, nobody else. Why the bleeding hell would you allow, say, people who support the "Liberal" "Democrats" to vote for the Tory Party leader?

I can no more for the leader of the Conservatives than I can vote for the leader of the 1st Bolton Scout Group.
 

Blackleaf

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And they're off! The Lefties are taking to the streets again. They have, of course, got something else to march against...

Coffee House

The anti-Boris demo was a screech of middle-class rage

Brendan O'Neill






Brendan O'Neill
25 July 2019
The Spectator

Last night’s ‘F**k Boris’ demo in London really was an extraordinary spectacle. It felt almost historic. For what we had here was a gathering of radicals raging against a new Tory PM for threatening to upend the political status quo. Yes, these supposedly edgy, rebellious, pink- and blue-haired haters of Conservatism were essentially pleading with Boris not to be so revolutionary. It was bizarre.


There may have been music and dancing and weed — the soulless whiff of that deadening drug was everywhere — but this was fundamentally a conservative protest. Small-c, natch. It was a plea to keep Euro-technocracy intact and not to cave in to the demands of the hoodwinked masses who voted for Brexit.

The real target of the implacably middle-class marchers’ ire was No Deal, and Brexit more broadly. Some waved the EU flag. Rad, man. One placard asked if 52 per cent really represents a democratic mandate (er, yes?).

There were people with ‘Remain, Reform, Revolt’ banners, which is the maddest political slogan ever: there is nothing revolting about pleading to be members of the neoliberal, anti-democratic, anti-working-class, Greece-bashing, elitist machine that is the Brussels oligarchy.

So intense was the Brexitphobia of the assembled small-c conservatives that when a man turned up wearing a pro-Brexit placard — legend — he was rounded on viciously. A bunch of protesters surrounded him and screamed ‘Nazi’ and ‘scum’. One woman said, ‘YOU C**T’.

These people affect to loathe Boris but what they truly hate is that Boris has promised to enact Brexit. It’s Brexit they fear. It’s the throng who voted for Brexit — those 17.4m plebs, those dimwits who probably haven’t even read any Gramsci — whom these Fisher-Price radicals cannot abide and want to overthrow.

‘F**k off back to Eton, Boris!’, they chanted, but their placards and flags and general Brexitphobic agitation suggested that the people they really think should f**k off are those voters in Stoke and Wales and Essex who backed Brexit.

The protest didn’t only stink of weed — it stunk of entitlement, too. It felt like a march to defend not only the political status quo but also the privileges that it affords to certain sections of society.

The demo was painfully middle class. It was made up of predominantly white, youthful, urban professionals, the sort of people who haven’t clapped eyes on a working-class person since the time that bloke from Canvey Island came to fix the boiler in the east London flat their parents help them rent.

EU membership benefits these people. Its post-national, post-democracy institutionalisation of the globalist ideal furnishes middle-class city-dwellers with cheap labour in their local sandwich shops and opportunities to study and work abroad.

When these people say they fear what the consequences will be if we ‘crash out’ of the EU, what they mean is that they fear their comfortable, cushioned lives will be upended. And all at the behest of uneducated, xenophobic voters who don’t even live in London. So unfair!

This is why the demo was so sweary and degenerate; why it was all eff this and eff that and placard after placard about Tories ‘f**king pigs’ and how Boris Johnson is not ‘the kind of BJ I like’. (Get it? They mean fellatio, which is good, unlike Boris, who is bad.)

Because this wasn’t a serious, considered demo demanding concrete political change — rather, it was a bourgeois tantrum, a screech of middle-class rage, a cry for the preservation of privilege.

‘Sexist’, ‘Racist’, ‘Fascist’, ‘You filthy, goddamn, pock-marked fascist asshole’ — these were the slogans on the protesters’ placards.

Such juvenile, historically illiterate sloganeering tells us nothing whatsoever about Boris, who clearly is not a fascist or a racist. But it tells us a great deal about London’s modish middle classes and the blind fury they feel that their lovely lives are being rattled by Brexity oiks.

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/07/the-anti-boris-demo-was-a-screech-of-middle-class-rage/


Coffee House Steerpike

Seven of the most hysterical reactions to PM Boris Johnson

Steerpike






Steerpike
25 July 2019
The Spectator

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is already delighting his supporters, but not everyone is happy about Britain’s new leader. Boris’s first speech in Downing Street and the Cabinet bloodbath that followed has led to a fair bit of wailing and gnashing of teeth, not least on Twitter. From independent group MPs and David Lammy to the New York Times – and even a popular children’s author – PM Boris is a prospect that is filling some with horror. Here are seven of the most hysterical reactions to Boris’s big win:

Mike Gapes:


Alt-right is a ‘far-right, white supremacist, white separatist, anti-immigration and sometimes anti-Semitic movement’, according to Wikipedia. So Mr S. thinks that it’s a somewhat baffling choice of phrase for Mike Gapes to use to describe Boris’s government:



Mr S. thinks it might be worth reminding Gapes that of the four big posts in government – held by Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab, Sajid Javid and Priti Patel – three are now held children of migrants…

The New York Times:


Not one to miss out on taking a pop at ‘Brexit Britain’, the New York Times hit a somewhat over-the-top tone in its coverage of Boris’s victory. ‘Boris Johnson Is How Britain Ends’, declared the headline on a piece by journalist James Butler. Britain may be about to discover how it feels to be the punch line,’ the piece warned. Oh dear…



Tim Walker:

‘Now we know what it’s like to live in a dictatorship’, said the New European‘s Tim Walker, sharing a video from a US network explaining Boris’s leadership win. Perhaps it’s time for Walker to brush up on how a parliamentary democracy works…



Matt Haig:

Author Matt Haig has written a book called ‘Reasons to stay alive’, but he couldn’t find much to be pleased about when it came to Boris Johnson’s success. Haig said Boris fans are ‘just racist’. And his message to the new PM? ‘F*** Boris Johnson. F*** Trump. F*** Brexit. F*** Katie Hopkins’. Mr S hopes Haig’s children’s books aren’t this rude…

Will Hutton:

‘Dangerous’ was the verdict from the Observer’s Will Hutton on the appointments made by Boris. ‘This was the first stage in a right wing coup. Johnson and his charlatans now occupy government, his majority ex UKIP members signing up as Tories’:



David Lammy:

‘The whole world is laughing at us’, was David Lammy’s reaction to PM Boris. Are you sure, David?



Nish Kumar:

To the surprise of no one, BBC comedian Nish Kumar turns out not to be a fan of Boris Johnson. Here is how he took the news of Boris’s Cabinet choices:



https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/07/seven-of-the-most-hysterical-reactions-to-pm-boris-johnson/
 

Blackleaf

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Why yes, Capt'n Obvious, he is.

But he was not elected by the general public which is the entire point. He was elected by a closed group only, that closed group being those in his party.


He was NOT elected by all of Britain.

DAN HODGES: On the cusp of an Election? No way. It's ALREADY begun and... Boris Johnson is winning hands down

By Dan Hodges For The Mail On Sunday
28 July 2019

It was the moment the Blond Bumbler became the Blond Assassin.

'Penny was the first to see him,' an ally of the former Defence Secretary Penny Mordaunt explains, 'and Boris just said to her, 'I'm sorry, but there isn't room for you.' It was so brutal. It was like he was trying to make an example of her.'

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt was called in soon after and offered her role.

'Jeremy told Boris he couldn't take Penny's job when she'd just been fired from it for supporting him,' a friend reveals. So he was swiftly axed too.


It was the moment the Blond Bumbler became the Blond Assassin


Jeremy Hunt was offered ex-Defence Secretary Penny Mordaunt's role but declined because she'd just been fired from it for supporting him

'Boris thought, 'Fine, I get two of you out for the price of one,' ' says a Johnson confidant.

Among the next to go was Liam Fox. According to Johnson allies, the writing had been on the wall for the International Trade Secretary from the moment he called on Boris to clarify the details of his infamous late-night row with his partner Carrie Symonds.

'Carrie was really upset about that and Boris was furious. He told people, 'What are Hunt's team playing at? If that had happened to Jeremy, I'd have come out and supported him,' ' says one.

Many things were expected to define the first hours of the new Johnson administration. Supporters longed for a surge of dynamism and optimism. Opponents feared a descent into the disordered impulsiveness that forms such an integral part of the 'Boris Brand'.

But no one was expecting such a swift and overt display of ruthlessness. 'Everyone was calling for May to chop away the dead wood,' says one MP. 'Well, Boris has done that. And then he's gone and chopped down the entire forest.'

There was clearly an element of score-settling behind the way Britain's new Prime Minister wielded the dagger. It's impossible to find any other rationale for the defenestration of Mordaunt, a well- respected, effective Brexiteer.

But there is also cold method behind the way he has crafted his new Cabinet. And within the space of 72 hours, it has redefined the political landscape.

Over the past few days, a number of people have been speculating that we may be on the cusp of a snap Election. But they're wrong. The next Election has already been called. And Boris is winning it.

As the scale of Wednesday's cull began to become apparent, one stunned Tory MP exclaimed to a colleague: 'The Vote Leave campaign is now running the country.'

Which is exactly how Boris and his senior team want the reshuffle to be viewed by the wider world. Or more specifically, the portion that has recently abandoned the Conservative Party for the warm embrace of Nigel Farage.


Dominic Cummings – Boris's new de facto chief of staff – held his first meeting with No 10 staffers on Thursday, and had some bad news for them: summer has been postponed

As I advocated in this column two weeks ago, Boris has appointed an unashamedly, unambiguously, unimpeachably pro-Brexit Cabinet.

Membership is dependent on a single, simple criteria. Do the holders of the great offices of state unequivocally support Britain's departure from the EU no later than October 31? And do they back doing so without a deal if none can be secured?

All of the people sitting round the hastily extended Cabinet table last Thursday answered that question in the affirmative. Which means that where Theresa May created confusion and chaos, there is suddenly stark and piercing clarity.

For those who wish to exit the EU as swiftly and cleanly as possible, the Conservative Party is now their vehicle. The Brexit Party has done its job. May is gone. The Remainers are gone. The Brexiteers have taken full ownership of Brexit.

This has been graphically illustrated by the new change in tone emanating from within Downing Street with regards to the negotiation with Brussels on the Withdrawal Agreement.

Outgoing May officials were last week admitting to me they had been too passive in their strategy. 'One of the biggest mistakes we made was trying to avoid doing anything that would create a split,' says one former adviser. 'You could see that when they refused to shift on the backstop, and we just accepted it.'

Team Boris, in contrast, is planning to be significantly more robust. 'If you look at the response from the EU to Boris's speeches in Downing Street and the Commons, it was pessimistic. You could detect apprehension. And we're not that concerned about that. It's beneficial for our strategy,' says a Boris aide.


I'm told Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab's decision to appoint former Michael Gove adviser Beth Armstrong as one of his senior aides is likely to cause fireworks


Clarity has also emerged on the other side of the Brexit divide, with the election of new Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson. A 'clean-skin', not associated in voters' minds with the days of Coalition, she gives Remainers their own clear option. If you want to stay in the EU, the Lib Dems are the choice for you.

Which leaves Labour stuck in a half-in, half-out Brexit no-man's-land. And Boris knows it. In the next few days, he is planning to park a huge red Brexit bus on the quagmire that is Jeremy Corbyn's lawn.

Dominic Cummings – credited with masterminding the referendum victory – has been tasked with working up a delivery strategy not just for Brexit, but a range of policies to wrest Labour's heartland constituencies from Corbyn's faltering grasp. 'You're going to be seeing a series of announcements on crime, education and the NHS,' a No 10 adviser reveals. 'We're going to be directly targeting the areas that matter to traditional Labour voters.'

And the person leading that charge will be Boris Johnson himself. Theresa May conducted herself with dignity and humility throughout her premiership.

Mystery surrounds Boris Johnson's decision to block a return to Government for former Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell.

He was sacked amid the infamous Plebgate scandal, but was slated for rehabilitation under his old Westminster ally.

Johnson had strongly hinted at a return at a fundraiser in Mitchell's constituency a fortnight ago, and I understand civil servants at DFID had been told to prepare for his arrival.

But as a Cabinet Minister who is friends with both men confided: 'That's the problem. You never quite know where you are with Boris.'

Boris is going to hurl himself at Jeremy Corbyn with the ferocity of a newly uncaged velociraptor. Watching their first encounter across the Dispatch Box was like sitting ringside at a boxing match between a champion heavyweight and a broken flyweight. By the end, Tory MPs were roaring, and Labour MPs were desperately averting their gaze.

For the past three years, Corbyn has been able to hide behind his army of sycophants and social media thugs. But he has nowhere to hide any more.

This was not how things were supposed to be. The Johnson era was meant to begin with a flurry of good-natured bombast, well-intentioned confusion and misguided enthusiasm. Few foresaw the single-minded, focused ruthlessness of the past few days.

Our new PM's colleagues have learnt the hard way there is more to Boris than the bumbling caricature. His plan is the next person to learn that lesson will be Jeremy Corbyn.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-7293653/DAN-HODGES-cusp-Election-No-way-begun.html
 

Blackleaf

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Caller Lorraine: "Oh bravo Boris Johnson!" | Is this the 'greatest radio phone call'?

 

Blackleaf

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The Left’s Reaction to Boris becoming Prime Minister. Various left wing campaign groups, from Remainers and pro-Corbyn Socialists to climate change protesters and Scottish second referendum activists, all came out to show their reaction towards Boris Johnson winning the Conservative leadership race.

 

Blackleaf

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I sincerely doubt that the Texans want to be part of Mexico ... a free country, maybe.
They can't break away and become free and sovereign nation. That would be racist and bigoted and they wouldn't be able to survive on their own.
 

Serryah

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Neither was Trudeau when he became his party's leader.

I think it's only right that only members of a party choose who their leader is, nobody else. Why the bleeding hell would you allow, say, people who support the "Liberal" "Democrats" to vote for the Tory Party leader?

I can no more for the leader of the Conservatives than I can vote for the leader of the 1st Bolton Scout Group.


... Oh FFS!

Clean the crap out of your goddamn eyes, dipshit. I'm not SAYING that the party shouldn't choose their leadership.

What I am saying is that YOUR claim that Boris Johnson was elected to be PM is FALSE; he was chosen, by his party, to represent his party, thus becoming PM because they are currently in power. He won't be the REAL PM until there is a general election and EVERYONE in Britain has a chance to vote his party in, or not.

Do you understand it now?
 

pgs

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... Oh FFS!

Clean the crap out of your goddamn eyes, dipshit. I'm not SAYING that the party shouldn't choose their leadership.

What I am saying is that YOUR claim that Boris Johnson was elected to be PM is FALSE; he was chosen, by his party, to represent his party, thus becoming PM because they are currently in power. He won't be the REAL PM until there is a general election and EVERYONE in Britain has a chance to vote his party in, or not.

Do you understand it now?
Regardless, he is the one tasked with taking Britain out of the EU .
 

Walter

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... Oh FFS!
Clean the crap out of your goddamn eyes, dipshit. I'm not SAYING that the party shouldn't choose their leadership.
What I am saying is that YOUR claim that Boris Johnson was elected to be PM is FALSE; he was chosen, by his party, to represent his party, thus becoming PM because they are currently in power. He won't be the REAL PM until there is a general election and EVERYONE in Britain has a chance to vote his party in, or not.
Do you understand it now?
Yer understanding of the Westminster Parliamentary system is lacking.
 

Serryah

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No, it isn't. He was elected to be party leader and Prime Minister.


He was elected - BY HIS PARTY - to be the party leader and PM.


That does NOT mean he was elected PM by the general public of Britain. THAT title goes to May, who resigned.


Until BoJo decides to hold a general election, and wins it, he's only PM because a select portion of the public, voted for his party, and their party selected him. And if you think that means the public had anything to do with it you have NO understanding of politics what so ever. Once in power, the actual will of the people becomes a commodity to be forgotten when it suits the politician.
 

Walter

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He was elected - BY HIS PARTY - to be the party leader and PM.
That does NOT mean he was elected PM by the general public of Britain. THAT title goes to May, who resigned.
Until BoJo decides to hold a general election, and wins it, he's only PM because a select portion of the public, voted for his party, and their party selected him. And if you think that means the public had anything to do with it you have NO understanding of politics what so ever. Once in power, the actual will of the people becomes a commodity to be forgotten when it suits the politician.
See #123.