This is a Brexit drama in 7 acts, with each day bringing a new chapter. Follow the link to read the first two acts if you missed it and want to catch up:
Prelude & Act 1: I'm gonna wait 'till the midnight hour
Act 2: Game of chicken on the White Cliffs of Dover
Act 3: The Rockefeller way: turning disaster into opportunity
Otherwise, read on. Brexit packs enough drama for each chapter to be self-sustaining. Unlike, I might add, the UK come 2021.
Act 4: Mad King Boris
David McWilliams sees ”Mad King Boris”; Will Hutton at the Guardian compares Johnson to Winston Churchill – but not the heroic Churchill of the Blitz. The earlier foolish Churchill, the one everyone likes to forget. The man behind the British return to the gold standard in 1925, a principle cause of the Great Depression. This is Hutton’s take:
Superimposed on the disaster of Covid, it [Brexit] will be regarded by future generations with the incredulity we regard the return to the gold standard. British business is to adjust as seamlessly and as quickly to the impending trade wrench as it was meant to do in 1925 to a vastly overvalued exchange rate. World economic pre-eminence will again magically return, as global Britain, freed from the regulatory chains of socialist Europe, spearheads a new era of burgeoning free trade.
No matter that trade in 2020 is not in bulk cotton and coal but in precision-engineered complex artefacts and sophisticated business advice and services. The preconditions are mutually recognised standards, specifications, qualifications and rules, a negotiated framework in which sovereignty is shared to deliver the gains from trade. But Brexiters, as the then chancellor, Winston Churchill, did in 1925, look to an imagined past. Britain is to be a sovereign free trader beholden to no one. That is a green light for hedge funds to speculate, for free ports to become paradises for anything-goes-capitalism and for ministers to spray cash to chums, unconstrained by EU rules.
The metaphor is on-target – Johnson does see himself as Boris Churchill. But it wasn’t a Churchill act that landed him the job of Prime Minister – it was his comedy show made of bumbling speeches and court jester entertainments, all of which made him appear harmless to the public and political enemies alike. Remember the Olympic zip wire stunt gone wrong with its indelible image of dangling Boris, Union Jacks aloft in each mitt? Even Johnson’s name inspires comedy: Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. But the bumbling is performance. Ian Dent is a journalist who copped to the act:
… those whohave watched his speeches multiple times realize that the entirepresentation, including seemingly off-the-cuff jokes and stories where heappears to lose the thread halfway through, is replicated word for word. It’s all pretend.
Another key Johnson pose is indecision. Before deciding which way to jump on Brexit, Johnson secretly wrote two different but opposite editorials on Remain vs. Leave. This was his case against Brexit in the op-ed he opted not to publish:
There are some big questions that the "out" side need to answer. Almost everyone expects there to be some sort of economic shock as a result of a Brexit. How big would it be? I am sure that the doomsters are exaggerating the fallout - but are they completely wrong? And how can we know?
And then there is the worry about Scotland, and the possibility that an English-only "leave" vote could lead to the break-up of the union … It is surely a boon for the world and for Europe that she [Britain] should be intimately engaged in the EU. This is a market on our doorstep, ready for further exploitation by British firms … Why are we so determined to turn our back on it?
This “previously unseen article” conveniently leaked a few months after the Tory “Remainer” PM Theresa May tapped Johnson as Foreign Minister; a key part of the job was negotiating a Brexit trade deal. For Johnson, indecision is a political weapon that hides his ruthlessness and keen sense of timing. It was how he took down two Tory Prime Ministers in succession before grabbing the job for himself. Indecision has also been his negotiating hallmark throughout Brexit, obscuring his quest for the hardest Brexit possible – no-deal being the holy grail from get-go. Johnson is unbothered by the damage he will unleash because he has neither empathy nor any core principles. His North Star is power, the gaining and keeping of it.
Without a doubt Johnson sold his soul to grab the PM job. But to whom? That is the prime question about the Prime Minister; it also is his gambler’s tell for what’s next in Brexit.
Up tomorrow: Act 5: The Bad Boys of Brexit
tease: Can you name all the members of this band — The Bad Boys of Brexit?
I’ll be publishing The Ballyhooed Bigly British Brexit Bust-up in 7 installments on DailyKos, a new act each day. Don’t want to wait? The complete Ballyhooed Bigly British Brexit Bust-up is available now on Medium.