Boris on the brink

The enemies of British PM, Boris Johnson, smell blood in the water.  They should be careful what they wish for.

A report on partying (social not political) in No. 10 Downing St has been delayed while the police consider the case for prosecution for breach of lockdown regulations; there have been five resignations from his inner circle of staff; and he is being roundly pilloried by the great and good for his diversionary attack on the leader of the opposition Keir Starmer.

According to the bookmakers, it’s odds-on that he will be gone by year end.

In Britain, Christmas locks itself down

Experience suggests one should only call a turning point after it has actually – well – turned.

That said, it might be wise to keep an eye on developments in the UK over the Christmas and New Year period.

While Europe is fast locking down for fear of Omicron, Britain’s cabinet is the fulcrum of a political battle over whether any policy response would be meaningful.

Boris: holding out till Christmas

We said a few days ago that British PM, Boris Johnson, still looked to be the indispensable man.

It’s hard to tell if subsequent events are qualifying or confirming that.

Two examples.

First, Lord Frost, Minister of State and the government’s EU strategist resigned citing the general drift of policy, most recently towards Covid authoritarianism.

Boris: Bad reaction to Omicron

British politics is proving a fine laboratory for times of transition.

Boris Johnson’s enemies are exultant at his latest woes: a crushing by-election defeat and a parliamentary vote in which he endured the biggest Conservative party rebellion since – well since the Brexit horrors a few years ago under his predecessor Theresa May.

But oddly enough, it looks like he might keep on standing.

Climate change has Boris wilting

Winter by-elections are rarely kind to governments.  But Boris Johnson’s Conservative party held on to a south London stronghold on a low turnout with a tolerably-reduced majority.

More worrying was that 1,400 voters got out of bed (one presumes) on a bitterly cold day to vote for the relatively anonymous candidate of a rebranded populist Reform party.  That’s about as many as the Greens and Liberals could manage between them.

After two years of setting the agenda, the talk now is of Boris losing his grip. But might it be the change in his agenda?

David Seymour and Judith Collins meet Daniel Hannan

Daniel Hannan is a British politician whose joy in clear thinking probably exceeds his ambition for high office (although he played an influential and honourable hand in the Brexit ruckus).  

And his thinking on the future of Britain’s Conservative party has resonance for right-of-centre politicians around the world.

Scotland forever – but in or out of the UK?

It may rank as one of the most surprising and/or least effective public health measures adopted during the pandemic.  But Scotland’s devolved government has outlawed background music in hotels and restaurants because it might encourage people to raise their voices.

Indeed, the Scottish administration has sometimes ostentatiously gone out of its way to take a different path to that trodden by Boris Johnson’s national government. Meanwhile, opinion polling support for Scottish independence is rising.

Using the pandemic to beat the drum for Scottish independence must irritate those who prefer science-based consistency.  But they probably need to get used to it.

Refurbished TOP defies Stuff analysis and shows it was not toppled by 2017 election result

The opening sentence of a report by Stuff reporter Thomas Coughlan – consistent with modern-day notions of good news reporting – was a blatant expression of  opinion. 

Shut out of Parliament and minus it’s multi-millionaire leader, The Opportunities Party (Top) should be calling it quits right about now.

Who says it should be calling it quits?

Not the party’s leaders because Coughlan – in the next sentence – delivered the news that TOP is relaunching “with a jokey campaign as part of a wider rebrand designed to put aside the bruising memories of the 2017 election and look forward to 2020”.

And why should it be quitting about now, so many months since the 2017 election?

Then came some background:

Classical liberalism, Britain’s Conservative Party – and Brexit

Daniel Hannan is a polite, erudite and humorous author (who also writes a column for The Sun newspaper). He is a self-described Old Whig, and is one of the four surviving British Conservative party members of the European Parliament.

And he is a leading Brexiteer.  In a tolerant globalising sort of way – arguing for freer trade, more skilled migration and protecting the rights of EU citizens resident in the UK.

He provides a case study of those classical liberals in the Conservative party who have been won over to Brexit.

Boris has a strategy – no really he does

How to get this point across.  Things have changed in the UK – really, really changed – now that Boris Johnson is PM.