Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
And yet he was writing pro-EU articles just a couple of months before the referendum, wasn't he? Just goes to show that it's not that he has bad principles, as such, more that he has literally no principles whatsoever, other than promoting his own career - in fact I want to write "brand", because he is very much a "brand", isn't he?

Margaret Thatcher stood for lots of bad things but she at least identifiably stood for something. There was an ideology there that you could grasp and argue against (or agree with). With Johnson there's nothing. He is a perfect ideological cipher - perhaps in some way the idea 21st century politician. I don't for one second believe that he actually "believes" positively in Brexit.
 
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Leo

Well-known member
read a story (which I can't find right now) were someone witnessed Boris at a speaking engagement about five years ago. no one knew where he was as the time approached, he arrived literally at the last moment, appeared all distracted and unprepared and decided to wing it. Totally charmed the crowd with his off-the-cuff remarks and self-deprecating humor, and totally won them over.

then the person saw Boris speak last year and he did the exact same thing, even down to saying most of the same exact remarks that he did years earlier.

big fucking phony.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Liz Truss: "Boris Johnson put London on the map."

Yeah because it was an obscure provincial market town nobody had ever heard of before that, right?
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I assume you've all seen him waving a kipper around?

I think he's reached that point of inflection that Trump reached years ago where he's alienated all possible supporters among moderate conservatives and floating voters but can only increase his support among the true believers by being ever more extreme and eccentric, so there is no reason for him to dial back the outrageousness.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
If anything it's even worse in our case, because Trump had to win a general election whereas Johnson just had to appeal to Tory MPs and now Tory party members, not to the population at large.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
And yet he was writing pro-EU articles just a couple of months before the referendum, wasn't he? Just goes to show that it's not that he has bad principles, as such, more that he has literally no principles whatsoever, other than promoting his own career - in fact I want to write "brand", because he is very much a "brand", isn't he?

Margaret Thatcher stood for lots of bad things but she at least identifiably stood for something. There was an ideology there that you could grasp and argue against (or agree with). With Johnson there's nothing. He is a perfect ideological cipher - perhaps in some way the idea 21st century politician. I don't for one second believe that he actually "believes" positively in Brexit.

you're mistaken about this i feel, thatcher just had all sorts of advisors telling her what to think, same as Boris. Thatcher had a victorian sex bomb personality which enabled the middle classes to phallically perceive themselves in her. even Hitchens wanted to be spanked by her. that's the problem. otherwise the ideological ideas of ordoliberalism can trace themselves to after WW I. Thatcher in faithful adherence to the non-paternalist wings of the tory party didn't want a weaker state, she wanted a stronger one. and she got it. If you look at someone like Ted Heath today he would be far to the left of Corbyn. but yet no politico would dare defend the ideas of red toryism or old style conservatism. unthinkable.

What's different with Boris is that the middle classes only have one persistent force homogenising their economic position, that is to say capital. so the traditional cultural-political associations don't stick. yeh, you'll get bucketloads of posh tories, but you'll also get loads of posh labourites and greens as well. a lot of this has to do with the reorganising of the labour force after WW II and especially the 1960s, which we are only starting to notice now.

To put it in more concrete terms, mass migration after WW II deprived the tory party of its civic nationalism and hence its social base. and as history moves faster than politics (which is the playing field in which the abstractions of free development and enterprise play out) we are only just noticing this now. the constitutions and the pronouncements and the puppet shows always come last.
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
you look at something like ATOS and yes, it's a privatised welfare economy, but there's a huge depletion of state funds to even finance this. what this does is inflates the state bureaucracy to elephantine proportions. so even though we've got a large swathe of deindustrialisation and deskilling this doesn't equate to (don't laugh) austerity.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Three months til potential absolute meltdown. I don't believe anyone who says they have any idea what is going to happen - not sure when the last crisis on this scale was in this country.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
Three months til potential absolute meltdown. I don't believe anyone who says they have any idea what is going to happen - not sure when the last crisis on this scale was in this country.

I am clear that it will not be good.

But it is hard to quantify exactly how bad it will be and in what ways.
 

yyaldrin

in je ogen waait de wind
what's in three months then? i don't think much will happen. stakes are too high, the machinery has to roll on.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
What's fascinating is that the ruling class always used to have robust defence mechanisms in place to stop this sort of thing happening.

Every time Boris got near to being leader of the tories there would be a load of bad press and a credible alternative would appear.

Same as the Labour left - you had to admire their ability to still exist in the face of decades of being marginalised.

It just shows how messed up things are.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Like when Brown became Prime Minister? And John Major?

Oh give obtuseness a rest. The only reason this has come to pass is obviously the farcical Brexit referendum and the illegally won Leave campaigns. I am well aware the UK routinely has PMs that are not selected by a general election.
 

sufi

lala
it all feels vaguely reminiscent of the last days of the tories last time round, early 90's style
internal tory election brought us john major
politics completely separated off from real life, 0 respect for government after years of thatcherite neglect and cruelty, civil disobedience escalating
so we're due for rave and only another 7 or so years before new new labour
 
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