A week before the elections, the political atmosphere was feverish in London. It was then that Boris Johnson appeared on the screens in an advertising message of formidable charm. Three weeks from Christmas, this parody of a fetish scene from the British film Love Actually showed an attractive woman opening the door to a Boris Johnson begging her not to tell her husband. Thinking about ” carol singers » who go door to door at this time of year, she watched skeptically as Boris Johnson paraded his signs calling for a majority for the Conservatives to end Brexit. It was enough to contemplate the choirboy airs of the Conservative leader to know that this election was in the pocket.
After three years of parliamentary paralysis, on December 12, 2019, Boris Johnson won the strongest parliamentary majority since Margaret Thatcher, even capturing the main Labor strongholds in the north of the country. Never seen !
But the Christmases follow each other and are not alike. Two years later, it was another video, showing councilors from 10 Downing Street ironically about a Christmas party held in full confinement, which announced the start of the fall. In Puritan Albion, that sort of thing is unforgiving.
At a time when Boris Johnson is about to leave Westminster, overwhelmed by repeated petty scandals, it is fashionable in the media world to welcome his departure and to be ironic about this whimsical character often qualified as ” serial liar “. The press, largely favorable to Europe, never liked it and it never hid it. Simple partisanship or class contempt? During the Brexit campaign in 2016, even the colleagues of the famous BBC did not hide their epidermal hatred of the character.
Whether we like his unpredictable style or not, we must recognize that, unlike all his predecessors since Margaret Thatcher, the name of Boris Johnson is already inscribed in the history books. Without him, it is not certain that the United Kingdom would have left the European Union as democratically desired by a majority of the British. And above all, it is not certain that the parliamentary deadlock orchestrated by Europeanists on both the right and the left would not have got the better of the referendum. It took the determination of this admirer of Churchill to break this jam which Theresa May would never have overcome. With a historic majority of 80 seats, who could still doubt the will of the British to see Brexit accomplished (“ Get Brexit done )?
We must also recognize that, thanks to him, British elected officials will not have had to suffer the shame that still haunts French parliamentarians. They who shamelessly betrayed the result of the 2005 referendum on the European constitution (rejected by 55%) by voting for its twin brother, the Lisbon Treaty. Whether we like this complex character or not, capable of the worst dirty tricks such as reciting long passages in ancient Greek from theIliadBritish democracy has grown from it.
We know that for a certain left and a certain globalist right, Brexit is neither more nor less than sacrilege. The irrefutable proof of this would be the country’s worrying economic results, not to mention the Scottish and Irish mortgages which still weigh on the United Kingdom. This is to forget that Brexit was never primarily an economic choice. But, are there others for the globalists? It was essentially a political choice evoking something that could resemble the “Masters among us” (” Take back control “) that Quebecers know well.
The British have understood this. This is why no one is thinking today of reconsidering this decision. Especially since, if the economy is not doing well, the announced marginalization of the United Kingdom in terms of foreign policy has not occurred. It will obviously take years to measure the real effect of Brexit. Note, however, that after some hesitation, Boris Johnson did better than the European Union to quickly produce a vaccine, massively vaccinate his population and assert his leadership in supporting Ukraine.
But BoJo will always be a rebel. “Much of theestablishment never really accepted Boris Johnson as a legitimate leader, and he [lui] then gave too much reason to believe that[elle] were right,” sociologist David Goodhart told the Daily Le Figaro. This commando leader who has always driven by instinct was obviously not cut out for the slow and diligent exercise of power. Once Brexit was accomplished, and his strategist Dominic Cummings left, he found himself without a compass.
Will his successor be able to continue the conversion of the Conservative Party initiated by Theresa May into a more social, Disraeli-style right, capable of convincing the populations of Midland and the North that their globalist elites have not completely abandoned them? This is the challenge of Boris Johnson’s successor. It wouldn’t be surprising if we heard about him again one day or another.