Re: Boris Johnson's persona

Indeed, Corbyn has been hedging his bets, though I think he was a bit of 
a Eurosceptic himself, back in the day. Disappointing to me, of course. 
But Labour seems to be deeply divided -- demographically, politically, 
regionally. So are the Tories, of course, so it's an odd moment. Perhaps 
a new party system is struggling to be born.

RH is correct that between Blair and Cameron there is very little 
daylight. In this respect Brit politics and US politics have converged: 
all the respectable politicians are indistinguishable.

I also think RH is probably right that if the Tories don't deliver 
Brexit, they will pay a heavy price. BJ (love those initials) seems to 
have figured this out, whatever his personal views -- and again, I think 
RH is right that he was never a committed Brexiteer; it was always game 
theory to him.

And of course if the Tories don't deliver, and Labour inherit the 
resulting shipwreck, they will have their work cut out. Since they're 
not so much a party as a dog-team of mutually hostile factions, always 
snarling and snapping at each others' throats, the outlook isn't good.

I am very glad that RH takes such a dim view of the EU. I applaud his 
sentiments to the echo; they are elevated and correct.

Best, MJS

On 7/31/19 4:33 PM, Ralph Hancock wrote:
> I don't like discussing modern politics on this list, but do feel the need
> to reply to Michael Smith.
> 
> There is an organisation called 'Labour Leave', consisting of Eurosceptic
> members of the Labour party, of whom the best known is the admirable Kate
> Hoey, an MP so good that even Tory supporters in her constituency vote for
> her. She has, of course, been deselected by Corbyn's Marxist entryist group
> Momentum, along with the equally decent Frank Field. And now that Corbyn,
> after years of dishonest shilly-shallying, has decided to plump for Remain,
> Labour Leave is probably doomed.
> 
> You really cannot say that the present Tory party is the party of Margaret
> Thatcher, except of course in historical sequence. It is the party of those
> who plotted against her and eventually brought her down. If it is the party
> of anyone today, it is the party of Tony Blair (who was, of course, a
> Labour prime minister) -- ex-PM David Cameron actually described himself as
> 'the heir to Blair'.
> 
> I think it fair to say that no one of any political shade trusts Boris
> Johnson. He has wobbled in his support for leaving Europe for too long, and
> even now, having presented himself as the Leave candidate and won on that
> ticket, he is backing away from the clean break that is urgently needed. I
> say 'urgently' because if we do not get out of this corrupt, dictatorial,
> undemocratic and wasteful bloc before 2020, when the Treaty of Lisbon kicks
> in and effectively reduces European nations to regions of a superstate, it
> will be very hard to leave indeed -- harder than it was for the southern
> United States to secede from the Union, and look how that turned out.
> 
> All that can be said for Boris is that he is not the unspeakable Theresa
> May, who can reasonably be described as the worst prime minister our
> unfortunate country has ever had. But if he does not get us out, the
> desertion of Tory voters will ensure that his party is crushed as badly as
> the Canadian Tories were in 1993, and we will likely see an even worse PM
> in the appalling Corbyn. This is not a good time to be British.
> 
> RH
>