With the exit of May and the entrance of Johnson, aka Boris, comes the continuation of the evolution of arguably our best and closest ally in Europe, and so where they go is of importance all out of scale with their size. There have been concerns about Johnson’s intellect, temperament, and inclinations, but, at least to the last, this is Andrew Sullivan’s observations in the third part of his weekly tripartite entry on New York Mag:
He has backed this up with a new Cabinet whose members unanimously support a no-deal Brexit if that’s what it takes. But he has also signaled some liberal Toryism by assembling the most ethnically diverse cabinet in British history. Boris’s No. 2 is Sajid Javid, from a Muslim family; Priti Patel, from an Indian immigrant family, is home secretary, another one of the big four posts; Munira Mirza, from a Pakistani family, will head the policy unit at No. 10; Indian-born Alok Sharma will be in charge of international development; the Sierra Leonean–British James Cleverly is a minister without portfolio. All of these members of ethnic minorities say their first inspiration in politics was Margaret Thatcher. Johnson also announced that he would guarantee all 3.2 million E.U. citizens working in the U.K. an unqualified right to stay indefinitely, grant amnesty to 50,000 more undocumented migrants, and rule out bringing immigration down to below 100,000 a year. This mix of “one nation” Toryism and hard-line Euro-skepticism has temporarily outfooted his enemies.
Whether or not you like Johnson, you have to hope he can pull something off, as a collapse of the Brits would make the American job much harder – and endanger the future of democracy, while strengthening the hand of the authoritarians.
Good luck to BJ. I wonder how he’d react to being called Beedge?
