Johnson breaks the rules and may bring Brexit… and that’s why the elite hates him

[Blackleaf]

LISTEN hard enough and you may hear it on the breeze: The noise of low, thrashing moans, wails of “Nooo!” and the thud of skulls thumping Whitehall office walls.

That, my friends, is the sound of the elite’s neck-clutching horror that Boris Johnson looks well on his way to becoming the next Conservative leader...

QUENTIN LETTS Boris Johnson breaks the rules, bonks and may bring Brexit… and that’s why the elite hates him

Comment
Quentin Letts
21 Jun 2019
The Sun

LISTEN hard enough and you may hear it on the breeze: The noise of low, thrashing moans, wails of “Nooo!” and the thud of skulls thumping Whitehall office walls.

That, my friends, is the sound of the elite’s neck-clutching horror that Boris Johnson looks well on his way to becoming the next Conservative leader.


Opinion polls say he is the only Tory who can beat both Corbyn and Farage — yet there was an 'Anyone But Boris' campaign among Tory MPs for months

The elite are horrified that Boris Johnson looks well on his way to becoming the next Conservative leader Credit: BBC

The Establishment is appalled, astonished, aghast.

PM Boris? They would sooner contemplate boiled skunk innards for their tea.

Boris is, they scream, “a rat”, “an eel”, “adulterer”, “serial liar” and “sordid opportunist”.

They shake their heads in despair that we ill-washed voters are unable — not clever enough — to share their view. How DARE he be so popular?

What is it about Boris Johnson that ignites such ferocious loathing in our ruling class?

'SORDID OPPORTUNIST'

Envy? Disapproval of his marital record? Or terror that he might prove them wrong?

Loathe him they most certainly do. They slander him as “the British Trump”, not realising that many Brits quite admire the convention-smashing Donald Trump and the way he has rattled the powerful.

A few days ago a posh military man strode up to me and exploded about Boris.

This former Sandhurst big- shot, a friend of the Royal Family and church-going pillar of the shires, erupted with swear words no self-respecting corporal would have used.

Had he ever met Mr Johnson? Er, no.

But the sheer thought of “that little s**t” becoming premier had sent him tonto. “I’m never going to vote Conservative again!” he yelled.

There are plenty like this. Sir Max Hastings, in his time a great newspaper editor, has thundered that he will emigrate to foreign shores if Boris becomes PM.

ABSURD CLAIMS

Actually, I bet he won’t. His gun dogs would miss the English climate.

But Sir Max, who employed Boris in his reporter days, is boiling with crossness about his former protégé’s success.

The odd thing is that, Brexit aside, their moderate-Tory views are pretty similar.

The anti-Boris brigade cleave to their hatred even though he is their best bet for survival.

Opinion polls say he is the only Tory who can beat both Corbyn and Farage.

And yet there was an “Anyone But Boris” movement among Tory MPs and for months it looked as if they would succeed.

He was the one best placed to save their seats but they still wanted to snub him.

They slander him as the 'British Trump', not realising that many Brits quite admire the convention-smashing Donald Trump and the way he has rattled the powerfulCredit: AFP or licensors

The only reason Boris has now gone through to the final two in the leadership contest is that Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party has frightened the wits out of his fellow Tory MPs Credit: AFP or licensors

In the Commons on Wednesday, Ian Blackford alleged that he was a racist. Total rubbish...Credit: AFP or licensors

The only reason he has now gone through to the final two in the leadership contest is that Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party has frightened the wits out of them.

Opposition MPs can get away with absurd claims about Boris and not be challenged.

In the Commons on Wednesday, the Scots Nats’ Ian Blackford alleged that he was a racist. Total rubbish.

Boris is many things — an adulterer, a gourmand, as fly as a bluebottle — but he is no racist.

Commons Speaker John Bercow allowed this slander to stand. Why? Because Bercow hates Boris, too.

With its TV debate this week, the BBC abandoned any pretence of impartiality and tried to screw Boris by inviting contributions from people with anti-Tory agendas.

Quangocrats have been mobilising, too. The Guardian newspaper wheeled out a UN biodiversity expert to blame Boris for pollution in the world’s oceans.

ANTI-TORY AGENDAS

What, all of them?

Former chief scientist David King moaned that Boris was a one-man danger to the environment — days after Boris had gone out of his way to bang the drum for a cleaner, greener Britain.

Boris Johnson is liberal on social issues. He was one of the first top Tories to support gay rights.

That did not stop Channel 4 broadcasting false claims he was a homophobe.

Don’t let the facts get in the way of a smear, guys.

When two-term mayor of London, Boris presided benevolently over one of the most multi-racial cities in the world. He is laid back about family values — he needs to be, given his trouser-dropping — and had a good record on knife-crime when he was in charge of the capital. He may have gone to Eton but he is about as approachable as you can get.

All these things, surely, are positives.

So why do Tory centrists including Michael Heseltine and Ken Clarke — and Theresa May, for that matter — want to destroy him?

The first reason is Europe. These Remainers have still not accepted the result of the 2016 referendum.

LEAD IN HIS PENCIL

Boris could become the first properly Eurosceptic Prime Minister we have had in the modern era, and that worries them because they know the power a PM has to steer official policy.

Another reason: Envy, not just of what Boris has but also of what he has not had to do.

Yes, he earns a lot (£275,000 from his weekly newspaper column alone), he has the gift of the gab, and has hosted TV shows.

At an age when some blokes find their virility drooping, he still plainly has some lead in his pencil, with a new and much-younger girlfriend.

Older dingoes in public life see all this and they growl, wishing they were so blessed.

And Boris has done all this without surrendering to the low-ranking drudgery most politicians must accept in the early years.

Boris was never a junior minister. He was never a ministerial bag-carrier.

He has swanned through life breaking the rules, laughing and bonking. That INFURIATES them!

But the biggest reason of all for their hatred is that they, and the EU, fear he may succeed.

Imagine if he delivers Brexit and the economy prospers instead of nose-diving as they forecast. Imagine if his political optimism lifts the country’s morale.

It would then be glaringly clear that our political class, with its insistent, pro- Brussels defeatism, had been completely wrong.

National success, for these snoots, would be a terrible defeat. And so they want to kill off the one man who may save us.

Commons Speaker John Bercow allowed Ian Blackford's slander to stand. Why? Because Bercow hates Boris, too Credit: AFP or licensors

At an age when some find virility drooping, Boris still plainly has some lead in his pencil, with much-younger girlfriend Carrie Symonds Credit: Jamie Lorriman - The Sun

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9342187/boris-johnson-breaks-the-rules-elites-hate-him/

 

[Blackleaf]

Features

Are you suffering from Boris Derangement Syndrome?

Like Trump, he is driving his enemies mad

Toby Young

Toby Young
22 June 2019
The Spectator

I switched on the radio last week and caught the tail end of a discussion about the Conservative leadership election. The presenter, who seemed to be in a highly agitated state, was talking about one of the contenders: ‘A man who’s lied to both of his wives, all of his mistresses, every constituent, every employer, every party leader, every colleague, every interviewer, every journalist he’s ever encountered, he’s not just lied to them, he’s actively agitated to deceive them…’ On it went. Even by left-wing shock jock standards, it was unhinged. He could only have been talking about Boris Johnson.

In the US, Trump Derangement Syndrome, or TDS, is a well-established phenomenon. The journalist Fareed Zakaria defined it as ‘hatred of President Trump so intense that it impairs people’s judgment’ and it has led to well-respected columnists describing him as a ‘fascist’, a ‘white supremacist’ and a ‘Nazi’. ‘Just how similar is Trump to Hitler?’ asked an opinion piece in Time magazine after his election. Some people were so badly affected by Trump’s victory it made them psychologically ill. Students at Kansas University were offered ‘therapy dogs’ on election night, while at Vanderbilt they were encouraged ‘to take advantage of the outstanding mental health support the university offers’.

So far, Boris Derangement Syndrome, or BDS, hasn’t reached those heights, but we’re not far off. In a New York Times article last July entitled ‘Boris Johnson has ruined Britain’, a prominent, left-of-centre British journalist took issue with his decision to resign as foreign secretary. ‘It is a desperate move by a man who has lost almost all the credibility he had three years ago,’ she wrote. ‘As one of his allies told me last month: “He knows that the verdict of history is about to come down on him — and bury him.”’

Could the eagerness with which other journalists write Boris off, convinced he is destined to fail in politics, be prompted by a jealous contempt for anyone who ceases to be a spectator and steps into the arena?

It isn’t just leftist commentators suffering from BDS. One of the curious things about the phenomenon is that otherwise sensible pundits are also afflicted. Matthew Parris, for instance, recently described Boris as an ‘incompetent scoundrel’, a ‘rascal’ and a ‘rat’ — and that was just in one column — while a former editor of this magazine blamed him for, among other things, failing to boost spending on the NHS by £350 million a week.

Another form BDS takes is to portray Boris as a rich toff who’s out of touch. ‘Boris Johnson would not live down your street, he would not let his children go to school with yours, he does not hang out where you hang out and he would not be your friend,’ tweeted a Labour MP last week. A slightly mystifying tirade, given that, until recently, Boris lived in the same London borough as Jeremy Corbyn and Emily Thornberry and sent his children to the local primary. ‘Once you’ve been to public school, then you are from postcode POSH,’ wrote the Guardian’s Zoe Williams — an odd charge given that Zoe went to Godolphin and Latymer, a £21,000-a-year London day school.

However, the most bizarre manifestations of BDS are when Boris’s detractors accuse him of racism, misogyny and homophobia. This usually involves a Herculean amount of offence archaeology, with determined opponents sifting through every word he’s ever written to look for quotes they can take out of context and use as Exhibits A, B and C in the case for the prosecution.

A case in point is a column last year in which he used the phrases ‘letter boxes’ and ‘bank robbers’ to describe burka-wearing women. This has been widely portrayed by his enemies as an attack on Muslims and cited as ‘proof’ of his Islamophobia, overlooking the fact that he was referring specifically to the niqab and the column in question was arguing against a burka ban.

We saw another example of this misrepresentation last weekend when Channel 4 News asked the two lesbians assaulted on a London bus what they thought of him, having first explained to them that Boris was a ‘homophobe’ and a ‘misogynist’. Not surprisingly, they concluded he was unfit to lead anything, let alone Britain.

Sometimes, the damning quotes are taken from articles that appeared in The Spectator when he was editor but weren’t by him — such as a poem by James Michie describing the Scots as ‘verminous’. But, as his colleagues could attest, Boris’s only shortcoming as editor was not reading all the copy before it appeared in print.

This grotesque portrait of Boris is typical of the way in which some sections of the chattering classes have persuaded themselves we’re in the middle of a culture war in which they’ve cast him as a right-wing populist in the same mould as Viktor Orban. But if you contrast Boris’s politically incorrect language with his record in office, that caricature doesn’t survive. On the contrary, when it comes to the big culture war issues — gay rights, abortion, migration — he is on the same side as the metropolitan elite.

Ultimately, this unwillingness to make any effort to understand Boris or his election-winning appeal may be his greatest asset. Again and again, his political enemies have sought to portray him as a far-right rabble-rouser but haven’t been able to make it stick.

He simply doesn’t look like a demagogue from central casting — less Benito Mussolini than Bertie Wooster. Boris may seem befuddled, but his greatest skill as a politician has been to befuddle his opponents, transforming them into furious scolds and leaving them at a loss as to how to defeat him. Long may it continue.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/06/are-you-suffering-from-boris-derangement-syndrome/

 

[Tecumsehsbones]

BoreJo is the perfect PM for the times.

Churchill was a serious, dedicated bulldog of a man who would never surrender, when Brits were a serious, dedicated people who would never surrender.

Thatcher was a disciplined, no-nonsense, practical woman when Brits were a disciplined, no-nonsense people who needed to root out entrenched structures that no longer served their purpose.

BoreJo is a loudmouthed, vain, self-centered, amoral man who thinks whatever pops into his head is the wisdom of the ages when the Brits are. . .

 

[Blackleaf]

BoreJo is a loudmouthed, vain, self-centered, amoral man

Like most MPs, then.

 

[Tecumsehsbones]

Like most MPs, then.

That's what I like about democracy. You get what you choose.

 

[Blackleaf]

That's what I like about democracy. You get what you choose.

Well as the Brexit Party's Anne Widdecombe pointed out, this leadership contest should be more democratic. Instead of MPs taking part in a series of votes to whittle down the contenders to two, and then the Tory members, up to 160,000 of them, choose which one of the two they like, it should be the other way round.

 

[Tecumsehsbones]

Well as the Brexit Party's Anne Widdecombe pointed out, this leadership contest should be more democratic. Instead of MPs taking part in a series of votes to whittle down the contenders to two, and then the Tory members, up to 160,000 of them, choose which one of the two they like, it should be the other way round.

I'll tell you the same thing I tell Americans pissing and moaning about this or that aspect of our electoral system. Don't like it? Change it.

Or just whimper about how hard-done-by you are. That seems to be your specialty.

 

[Blackleaf]

I'll tell you the same thing I tell Americans pissing and moaning about this or that aspect of our electoral system. Don't like it? Change it.
Or just whimper about how hard-done-by you are. That seems to be your specialty.

Well it seems to me you can whimper about how hard done by you are if you're a woman or a queer or a blackie or one of those mental cases who think they're a different gender but if you're a straight, white, heterosexual male you merely get told: "Stop whimpering and do something about it."

I think it's rather rude, to be honest.

 

[justlooking]

Apparently the police got called out to Bojo's flat last night.. dust up with his new old lady.


Looks like he has all the morality of ...................... Trump....... or Maggie Trudeau.:lol::lol:

 

[Tecumsehsbones]

Well it seems to me you can whimper about how hard done by you are if you're a woman or a queer or a blackie or one of those mental cases who think they're a different gender but if you're a straight, white, heterosexual male you merely get told: "Stop whimpering and do something about it."
I think it's rather rude, to be honest.

Yes, but you're none of those things, and you never shut up about what a poor, poor li'l victim you are.

The funniest part of white-guy whimpering is that their notion of oppression is losing the built-in advantage they've had for centuries and having to compete on a level playing field.

 

[Blackleaf]

Yes, but you're none of those things, and you never shut up about what a poor, poor li'l victim you are.

So what? Neither do you.

 

[Blackleaf]

I didn't realise that you had to be a certain colour, gender and sexuality to complain about how you are treated. I naively thought everyone had the right to complain about such things regardless of who they are.

The fact you tell me that as a white heterosexual male I can't complain about how the Tory leadership race can be made more democratic betrays an astonishing level of arrogance, sexism and racism on your part.

And you're bringing race, gender and sexuality into a topic that has nothing whatsoever to do with these things.

 

[Blackleaf]

The hacking of Boris Johnson’s home

The Guardian’s invasion of Boris’s privacy is a new low for broadsheet journalism.

BRENDAN O'NEILL
EDITOR
Spiked
22nd June 2019

Is it right to record a couple’s private conversations, through the walls of their home, and then publish their words verbatim in a national newspaper? Most people would say no. Most people would consider that a grotesque invasion of privacy. Most people would think it profoundly morally wrong to spy on a couple’s most intimate moments and then salaciously expose those moments to readers hungry for scandal.

The Guardian clearly thinks differently. Its publication of the literal words spoken by Boris Johnson and his girlfriend Carrie Symonds in a late-night row in their own home, which it got from a recording made by a neighbour, suggests it cares little for privacy. It suggests that this paper is so keen to dent Johnson’s reputation and standing ahead of the Tory leadership contest that it will happily ditch its own alleged commitment to ethical journalism and go so far as to report verbatim an entirely private conversation. This could be a new low for the Guardian.

What’s extraordinary is that the Guardian once almost brought down the entire institution of press freedom as part of its campaign against tabloid newspapers that were listening to people’s private voicemail messages. The Guardian led the moral crusade against tabloid phone-hacking and helped to give rise to the elitist enterprise that was the Leveson Inquiry, which proposed virtually to reverse the freedom from state intervention that the British press has enjoyed for 350 years. Yet now the Guardian has gone much further than any of the hacking tabloids ever did by publishing the actual words spoken by a public figure in a private conversation that was surreptitiously recorded.

The recording was made by one of Johnson’s neighbours. These people heard Johnson and Symonds having a row and they also heard some loud slamming noises. The police were called. The police say they spoke to ‘all occupants of the address’ who were all ‘safe and well’: ‘There was no cause for police action.’ That should have been the end of it. It was not a criminal matter, just a private row. And yet to the Guardian, it wasn’t the end of the matter; it was just the beginning. It transcribed the surreptitious recording and splashed its contents on its front page. It made private words into frontpage news.

This is a far greater invasion of privacy than those carried out by phone-hacking journalists at tabloid newspapers. It was unquestionably wrong of those journalists to hack into people’s private voicemails (though many of us consider the Leveson inquiry to have been a complete overreaction). Yet those tabloid journalists never published the contents of what they heard; they just used what they heard to weave or uncover larger stories. The Guardian has published the actual content of a hacked private conversation.

And the chattering classes are lapping it up. These are the kind of people who look down their noses at tabloid-reading plebs who like to hear about the private lives of celebs. Yet now they priggishly pore over the hacked conversation of a politician and his girlfriend and hold it up as proof of what foul or tragic people they are. The worst aspect is the naked sexism they’re displaying towards Ms Symonds. They decree, in their infinite wisdom, that she is a victim and should get the hell out. All on the basis of one surreptitiously recorded conversation. Apparently they know better than Ms Symonds herself what she should do with her life – what paternalistic, neo-Victorian judgementalism of a woman and her choices!

Should the Guardian be reprimanded for what it did? Absolutely not. Do we need an inquiry into a broadsheet newspaper sourcing and publishing a secretly made recording of a private conversation in a private home? Don’t even think about it. Some of us believe in press freedom so much that we think even in these circumstances the newspaper should publish and be damned. Let the public decide if what the Guardian did was morally acceptable. I hope they will agree that if the liberal broadsheets develop a habit of listening through the walls of private citizens’ homes, then both the right to a private life and the standards of journalism in this country will suffer badly.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/06/22/the-hacking-of-boris-johnsons-home/

 

[Blackleaf]

Odious rich Remainers trying to scupper the democratic process again:

Revealed: The Cambridge-educated millionaire's Buddhist daughter whose anti-Brexit play was funded by the EU and her close-up magician partner who both tried to sink Boris

Ms Leigh's now deleted Twitter account (pictured her profile image) described Mrs May's policies as 'insanely cruel' and added that 'all Tories suck'

Eve Leigh, 34, whose husband Tom Penn reported Boris Johnson to the police and recorded his row with girlfriend Carrie Symonds, wrote an anti-Brexit play partly funded by the EU. Earlier this year, one of her plays appeared in the Brexit Stage Left festival in London, a celebration of European theatre sponsored by a network of dramatists that is part-funded by the European Union. The American of Ukrainian descent who moved to the UK aged 18, can be seen during a discussion about the project with academics and critics describing how being an 'outsider' helped her work more 'productive'. Ms Leigh previously claimed Theresa May had brought in 'insanely cruel policies', that Brexit was 'racist' and the Home Office was 'lower than vermin'. Her anti-Tory tweets on her account, which had been active for seven years, dated back to the Occupy London protests in 2012 when Mr Johnson was the capital's mayor. Ms Leigh is an 'experimental playwright', a former palm reader and her partner is also performs close-up magic.

Eve Leigh and Tom Penn got married in March (pictured). Mr Penn recorded Mr Johnson's row with Ms Symonds - who lives below their £720,000 flat

 

[Danbones]

Boris Johnson's Girlfriend Furious Over Left Wing Remainers Eve Leigh & The Guardian Smearing Boris​

​

Gee them russians looking to mess with your elections again


Betcha we have the same problem too some day.

 

[Blackleaf]

Boris Johnson's Girlfriend Furious Over Left Wing Remainers Eve Leigh & The Guardian Smearing Boris​

​

Gee them russians looking to mess with your elections again

Betcha we have the same problem too some day.

It's another example of blatant Left-wing hypocrisy: The Graun, which called for the Leveson Inquiry into the phone-hacking scandal of some newspapers, publishing the private domestic conversation of a politician and his girlfriend.

 

[Blackleaf]

Some of the comments for that video:

Ride Around
Most lefties are ugly and bitter . Just saying lol

4 hours ago
171



Wandering Star
Neighbour after fat pay cheque from diminishing biased media.

4 hours ago
123



scott turner
They will attack him like they do Trump if he pushes a no deal exit.. DIRTY SMEAR MERCHANTS

4 hours ago
128



Tripp Hammer
Anyone with an i.q higher than that of a Turkey knew this was a political hitjob.

4 hours ago
96


bmwnasher
If a Brexiteer walks down the road there will be a smear campaign, this is laughable.

4 hours ago
49



Anthony Emrick
If they Really cared so much, why would they Call the Guardian?

4 hours ago
44


nosmo king
The Guardian could have instigated the whole thing. The Guardian is excellent toilet paper.

3 hours ago
64


A A
He was so concerned for the welfare of her neighbours he recorded it and sent t to the Guardian newspaper. What a b!tch.

3 hours ago (edited)
46



Richard Terry
....honestly, I was so frightened and concerned that my first response was that I must send a recording to the Guardian. Mwahahahaha!

4 hours ago
55



Dyer Nabot
Thank you for 'common sense' reporting - the MSM are living on a 'different planet' to the rest of us. You are a 'voice' for those of us who can't speak.

4 hours ago
52



Mr Kipling
Lol, particularly bitter this morning sir???!!! Lets hope the public see this for what it is - a smear job and it strengthens his cause. I'm no real Boris fan but out of all of them he is our best chance of leaving.

4 hours ago
26

 

[Blackleaf]

Boris’ two great tasks are to get us out of the EU and cheer us all up

ROBIN HARRIS
23 JUNE 2019
The Telegraph

'He is the atmospheric opposite of Mrs May – he is never boring'

"Things can only get better” – Labour used the lyrics in their triumphant 1997 general election campaign, and relief remains a powerful sentiment in politics. The prospect of seeing the back of Theresa May now, even more than of seeing the back of John Major then, is enough to lighten one’s step.

So is the advent of Boris Johnson. He is the atmospheric opposite of Mrs May – never boring, always hovering on the edge of truths that should not be spoken or deeds that may be regretted. Even when, it seems, he has a flaming row with his girlfriend for getting wine on the sofa, it is a good story. More seriously, if he finally succeeds in securing Brexit and saving the Conservative Party, he will surely be judged one of Britain’s great Prime Ministers.

The Tory leadership campaign, though, will not have helped reverse the Party’s misfortunes. The television debates were as bad as anyone envisaged, and in the case of the BBC substantially worse. For their part, the leadership candidates bickered, sniped, preened, and bitched. Perhaps the saddest moment of all was when Sajid Javid bounced the other candidates into supporting an inquiry into Islamophobia in the Conservative Party. One result of such nonsense is to relativise antisemitism in the Labour Party, where it is systemic and allegedly goes right to the top. If televised exposure was meant to display the elite of the Conservative Party, perhaps it did, and it was not a pretty sight.

Nor can Conservative MPs escape the blame. They, after all, propelled the zany, self-obsessed Rory Stewart into the third ballot. Rory was a media creation, his flimsy persona engineered to harm the Conservative cause. Yet he received the backing of the Justice Secretary, the Deputy Prime Minister and – if accounts are correct – of the Prime Minister, herself. The aim was to damage her successor, a strategy which she has been actively pursuing in her last days, incurring billions of pounds of public spending and pledging industrially crushing environmental policies.

Equally important, a large minority of Conservative MPs have shown by their votes for Remain candidates that they do not back taking Britain out of the European Union on 31 October, with or without a deal. They just do not understand, and probably will never understand, the terminal crisis facing the Conservative Party if it fails to fulfil the referendum decision for Brexit.

This is all deeply unpropitious for Boris. It suggests that he will face sabotage from senior figures, and covert opposition from many others, in attempts to renegotiate the Agreement, and that he will then lack a majority in the House of Commons for a no deal departure.

What must be said to appease fickle Tory MPs, and what has to be done in practice, are two quite different things. Boris, though he said little, has said rather too much. He should not be defensive about his article on burkas, which suggests weakness. He should not talk of that old cliché “One Nation Conservatism”. It suggests social guilt and higher public spending, neither of which wins votes for Tories. Theresa May made “One Nation” the theme of her premiership. That says quite enough.

The time for appeasing the Parliamentary Party has, anyway, ended. Speaking to Party members on the hustings, Boris can be unapologetically Boris. He can remind the public how Brexit squares with a future of free markets, lower taxes, more incentives, faster growth and higher incomes. Boris, like Mrs Thatcher, understands that the British people want, above all, to be wealthier. He should be vulgar enough to promise it.

The path of EU negotiations is, thankfully, short. The EU must be given, for appearance sake, another chance to offer better terms. They will either offer none, or prevaricate, or offer very little, or else send a dismissive note – doubtless in French.

Without waiting for that, planning to minimise disruption on 31 October must be exponentially accelerated. A supremo – not necessarily a politician – should be given this Beaverbrook-style role, making daily reports to the Prime Minister. Outside advice must be sought because, clearly, the tainted civil servants who devised the Withdrawal Agreement cannot be involved.

Boris Johnson has to create a Cabinet for Brexit. The temptation to let unreliable figures into government must be resisted. A litmus test might be whether Jacob Rees-Mogg is in, and whether Amber Rudd is out. That would suggest seriousness.

The talk about unifying the Party, encouraged by late-comers to the Johnson camp in search of jobs, has also got to stop. Unity comes only from a common purpose. Those who do not share it, and will not sign up to it, have no place. If Boris makes weak decisions regarding personnel, he will not survive.

Boris' parallel is with Ronald Reagan. Reagan, like Boris, was whimsical, too fond of jokes, and not always focused; but he was clear about big issues, a good picker, could set a direction, always exuded bonhomie, and eventually achieved what others thought beyond not just his but anyone else’s capacity

His Government may not long survive, anyway, because of the Parliamentary arithmetic. If a no deal departure prompted a no-confidence motion, which the Government lost, who knows what temporary combination of misfits might, with a little help from the Speaker’s chair, emerge. But an election would follow soon enough. One fought by the Tories on the basis of honouring the Brexit pledge, for which Boris’s Government had just fallen, would surely prompt a mass return of Tory support. Each constituency must by then, of course, have in place a candidate pledged to support the policy – the task for a powerful new Party chairman.

Comparisons in British Conservative politics often, understandably, come back to Margaret Thatcher. But in Boris’s case, the better parallel is with Ronald Reagan. Reagan, like Boris, was whimsical, too fond of jokes, and not always focused; but he was clear about big issues, a good picker, could set a direction, always exuded bonhomie, and eventually achieved what others thought beyond not just his but anyone else’s capacity.

Mrs Thatcher said in her eulogy of him, quoting Arnold Bennett, that Ronald Reagan embodied “the great cause of cheering us all up”. So today does Boris. He can cheer us up – and get us out.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2019/06/23/boris-two-great-tasks-get-us-eu-cheer-us/

 

[Tecumsehsbones]

I take it "us all" is white male Protestant right-wingers?

 

[Blackleaf]

I take it "us all" is white male Protestant right-wingers?

The hardest-working people in modern Britain.