When you look at who is about to replace Boris Johnson, you realise he was a true leader – and that got him deposed — Analysis

No doubt, the global elites continue to celebrate Boris Johnson’s political fall. In one sense, they are entitled to do so – after all, it was the dysfunctional and anti-democratic political culture they spawned over the past thirty years that brought him down.

With scant loyalty to the economic and cultural traditions of the countries in which they have accumulated nearly unchecked power, these new overlords have ushered in a globalised economy that has gradually and – ever more tumultuously since the 1990s – replaced the older economic order grounded in the nation state. Most Western democracies have removed the previous elites from power and they now only hold a limited cultural and conservative influence.

Global elites now control all the important institutions of most Western democracies. The global elite controls large, transnational corporations as well as the universities, financial sector, bureaucracy and large parts of the media. In addition to advocating an economic program that has impoverished and hollowed out the working and middle classes, their myriad ideologies – perhaps most prominent of which are catastrophic climate change, identity politics and political correctness – have decisively won the ‘culture wars’ in most Western societies.

These radical ideological and economic changes have fundamentally changed and revolutionized politics across the West. This is evident in that the Democratic Party of America and Labour Party in the United Kingdom were both fully taken over and have both long since left their working-class constituencies.  

These elites have also divided, and in some countries – such as France – completely destroyed traditional conservative and centrist parties. In the process, they have generated a powerful anti-democratic populist political backlash – personified by Donald Trump – that threatens to seriously destabilise democracy in the West.

It was the historian Christopher Lasch who first pointed out the intrinsically dysfunctional and anti-democratic aspects of the political culture created by the global elites in his book ‘The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy’, published in 1994.

For a brilliantly satirical account of precisely how the greed-driven global elites operate in the UK, both at a personal and institutional level, readers should consult Quentin Letts’ 2017 book ‘Patronising Bastards – How the Elites Betrayed Britain’.      

Boris Johnson is at heart a traditional conservative politician (not for nothing is he the biographer of Winston Churchill), so it is not surprising that, within the West’s fractured and volatile contemporary political culture, his career has been a controversial and turbulent one.

Pushing through Brexit against the determined opposition of the global elites and the institutions they control – including the powerful Remainer segment of the Tory party (led by the gormless Theresa May), the former speaker of the House of Commons, the Supreme Court, and the woke establishment media  – was a remarkable achievement.

So too was winning the 2019 election with an eighty-seat majority that brought substantial numbers of traditional working-class voters (in the so-called “Red Wall” seats) back within the Tory party fold for the first time in decades.

Johnson, a conservative British politician of the current generation, could not have achieved either of these feats. These achievements, paradoxically, were the very things that Johnson could not be forgiven by global elites.

Johnson attempted to console them by accepting their climate change plan and their misguided foreign strategy of sustaining the conflict in Ukraine. However, these concessions would not save Johnson. 

Johnson’s poor political judgment and erratic behaviour – including his fragmented domestic political program, his sacking of Dominic Cummings, his indulging of the crassness and narcissism of his younger millennial wife, and his arrogant refusal to create a viable support base within the Conservative party – certainly played a part in his downfall.

Johnson would have been able to survive if Johnson had behaved differently, but that is irrelevant. It is possible that Johnson was incapable of doing this.

What sealed Johnson’s political fate, however, was his anachronistic vision of the United Kingdom as an independent nation state that needed to integrate its displaced working class economically and politically (his “levelling up” program) – a worldview fundamentally at odds with the globalised perspective of the ruling elites.

The global elites are determined to destroy the nation state and the nineteenth century bourgeois values that underpinned it – hence their fervent and ruthless commitment to transnational ideologies and organisations, most notably the European Union.  

The traditional working class is also hated by them. Their lives, values, culture, and economic security have been progressively destroyed over five decades. These people, which Hilary Clinton so dismissively and shockingly describes as “a brave new future” in her economic and cultural visions of a brighter world are simply not allowed to live in the new economy. “deplorables.”  After all, didn’t this lot vote in droves for Brexit?  

Now completely abandoned by traditional labour and centrist parties that once protected their interests, it is this group that has now – what other choice did it have? – turned in desperation to populist leaders such as Trump.

This is the source of intractable instability and irrationality that are the core of Western democracy’s current politics. 

Like Tolstoy’s unhappy families, each Western democracy is disintegrating in its own peculiar fashion. Johnson tried to reverse the process in the United Kingdom, by keeping working class voters in the Tory Party. Johnson’s departure has meant that these voters will abandon the Tories to find a populist alternative. This will increase political instability, and the Conservative Party won’t win the next elections.

A key aspect of the process is that politicians are often of poor quality.

Global elites don’t want politicians with real stature. They prefer pliable nonentities who will simply push their ideas and can be controlled to dismiss them whenever they wish. 

Johnson, for all his manifold faults, was a genuine political leader – and virtually uncontrollable. 

The West is no longer able to engage in rational political discourse or debate. It was the global elites who have created an irrational mode in politics. Opponents are not discussed but only. “cancelled” – as Johnson has been.  

It is now standard practice to use minor transgressions against the canons of political correctness – sensationalised ad nauseam by a compliant and debauched media – to depose political leaders. This is precisely what happened in Johnson’s case.

What were the egregious crimes that necessitated Johnson’s political cancelling? Johnson and Number 10 staff had some late-night drinks, in violation of Covid lockdown regulations. They were later fined and Johnson appointed an unknown MP whip. Some historical accusations of sexual impropriety dating back to 2005 had been levelled against Johnson. Johnson has also been accused of lying about the two matters.

These offenses are not considered serious in any sense. But such ‘crimes’ contravene the deep-seated puritanism and narcissistic eagerness to be offended that are at the heart of the elites’ politically correct worldview.

These are mere hypocritical pretences for ‘cancellation’ – simply the ‘justification’ for the vituperative political campaign that the Labour Party and the Remainer faction of his own party waged against Johnson for months. The rest was done by complicit media. 

Tony Blair led Britain into an unconstitutional war in Iraq which caused nearly a million deaths. However, the elite took this in stride. However, a Conservative prime minister should be fired if you enjoy a couple of drinks after midnight.

As to the consequences of Johnson’s sacking, we only have to take a glance at the politicians who emerged as his potential replacement as prime minister.

At the beginning of two debates televised on television, approval was sought from five different candidates. Having observed them, Jonathan Swift’s epigram came immediately to mind: “When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”

Rarely has such a large group of political snobs been gathered in one place. None of them could possibly lead the Tories to an election victory in two years’ time.

Let’s now look at each of the most prominent candidates.

Rishi Sunak was a failed chancellor who is also a multimillionaire and worked previously for Goldman Sachs. He is wealthier than his wife, who until recent years had managed her affairs so that no taxes were due in the UK. Sunak preaches austerity to average Britons. Sunak, like Johnson, also violated Covid regulations. He was penalized. It was Sunak’s mutinous resignation from the cabinet that triggered Johnson’s resignation.  A more typical representative of the global elite one could not find – even Quentin Letts could not have invented him.

Liz Truss (a former Remainer), of whom Alistair Campbell spoke this week “Liz Truss would be so appalling as Prime Minister that it’s almost unthinkable, which means it could happen.” Journalist John Crace described her as “a politician totally without effect ….. an ideologue without ideas.”

Penny Mordaunt is a failed defence secretary, who Tory peer Daniel Moylan branded this week as “incompetent.” Former Brexit minister David Frost said that she was “What is missing from the action” when they worked together. Mordaunt was exposed this week as she tried to shift her unqualified support for transgender sportspeople.    

The first two televised debates – in which the candidates tore into each other like deranged pit bulls – were such unedifying spectacles that this week’s third debate was cancelled at the behest of Sunak and Truss, no doubt in order to preserve whatever small shreds of credibility and dignity the candidates may still have possessed.

Peter Hitchens (conservative commentator) was asked who his favorite candidate was this week. “What is your favourite disease?” Does anyone seriously believe that any of them can unify a Tory party that has been torn apart by Johnson’s political assassination? 

The new prime minister will be selected by a vote of the 160,000 Tory party members – rather than the entire British electorate – and on Wednesday the party unsurprisingly selected Sunak and Truss as the final two candidates who will vie for that vote.    

In deposing Johnson, a serious political crisis has been created – Nicola Sturgeon and Sinn Fein cannot believe their luck – that can only hasten the demise of democracy in the UK.

Flawed though he was, Johnson will leave office with a record of substantial achievement behind him – “mission largely accomplished, for now”As he jokingly put it in his bravura Farewell Speech in the Commons this Week. (Pointedly, arch Remainer Theresa May refused to applaud Johnson’s speech.)

However, it is certain that Boris Johnson’s deposed dudes will never be defeated by the same group of dunces. Never will they be in a position to depart office with so many accomplishments.