Over several of the past years, my profession has given me the pleasure of being in London during the first week of November for World Travel Market, where I have the chance to meet with destination marketers from all over the globe. In fact, this year’s just wrapped, and I’m posting this from Heathrow Airport awaiting my flight back home to the US. Sometimes, it means I miss election night (I followed this year’s results on the DailyKos live blog on my phone this time).
For the British, this is an interesting moment. They have Boris Johnson ( BoJo), who’s sort of a mini-Trump, is an abject failure at getting any legislation through is government, and who clearly is in the minority opinion about Brexit (which is a complicated mess and screws with the travel industry here big time — but that’s a whole other diary).
Anyhow, Boris lost his predecessor’s Tory majority in parliament, so they are having an election in 6 weeks. And the campaign just started this week. Like that idea? I love it! The British parties don’t really operate under cultural fault lines like ours do — so Brexit has a group of Labour and Conservative politicians in favor, while it seems a larger group of both are opposed. A third party, the Liberal Democrats, a 100% clearly opposed to Brexit, and are running on ending it.
And — just like Donald — Boris has scandal trouble. He lost a member of his cabinet from Wales this week because a member of that gentleman’s staff tried to tamper with the proceedings in a rape trial. So there we are.
And the British folks I know are concerned and embarrassed when it comes to Bojo — but our fearless (and psycho) leader actually scares them. One said to me that she felt the Tories were always annoying, Boris Johnson was embarrassing, but that she wakes up every morning thankful that we all “haven’t been eviscerated” when Trump is in a “fit of pique.” Very English, indeed.
The rest of the world is paying attention, folks. One director of tourism from a Japanese prefecture asked me Wednesday morning if I saw the results in KY and VA from the previous night. Can you tell me who won the last bi-election in Japan? I can’t.
Last evening I was at a cocktail party talking with a Minister of Tourism (so that’s an elected official) from a South American country. We had been talking about all sorts of things tourism, about climate change, and sustainability, and then about his relatively long career in politics. And that’s when he leaned over to me and said, “My friend, the people of the United States are good people, but they’ve made a tremendous mistake. And the world is waiting for all of your voters to correct this mistake. Otherwise I fear all is lost.” Powerful words, indeed.