White House Chronicle

News Analysis With a Sense of Humor

The Future of Britain is on the Ballot

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By Llewellyn King

Long before our election in November, a much greater upheaval may hit Britain. Probably in late June, the country will vote on whether to stay in the European Union. Leaving is called “Brexit” in the British press.

While polls have consistently shown that voters favor Britain remaining a member of the 28-nation bloc, there are signs that things are changing. British business, which has until now seen its future as being in the EU, is beginning to rethink its support for British membership. A recent poll shows industry believing it could prosper out of the EU.

This is a big problem for British Prime Minister David Cameron. He has promised dramatic changes in Britain’s membership, which will be announced at the European summit next month.

Britain wants less-oppressive regulations and a change in immigration policy. It wants an end to what has been a fundamental part of the European structure: the freedom of movement between countries. In short: no more immigration to Britain from Europe.

It is a complex negotiation which Cameron believes he can win; particularly when Europe is in shaky shape after the economic crisis in Greece and from the surge of migrants from the Middle East and North Africa.

Although Europe’s political elites may have to hold their refined noses, the chances are better today than ever that they would rather their unruly island neighbors stay in than further damage the European project by withdrawing.

Predictably some economists say that Britain will do just fine without Europe, while others see dire economic consequences.

When the referendum comes, it will be a free vote with about half of Cameron’s Conservative Party voting to withdraw. These are the rambunctious “Euroskeptics” that have bedeviled British elections for generations and have made the role of Conservative prime ministers particularly trying.

The opposition Labor Party is divided on a Brexit. But Labor has so imploded under the extreme leftist Jeremy Corbyn that it is likely to go along and lend its support — feeble though it is — to the forces wishing to stay in the EU.

The Scottish Nationalists will also support continued membership. They hope that if they break away from the United Kingdom, they will get succor from the EU.

But the forces for exiting the EU are powerful and articulate. They are emboldened by Europe’s problems and the fact that they will no longer be bound by the dictates of, as they say, “faceless bureaucrats in Brussels.”

The wild card in the referendum may be England’s wild man: Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.

Now finishing his term as mayor of London, Boris Johnson is a lovable version of Donald Trump. He has gone from scrape to scrape and has come out ahead of the game. For instance, three years after having won a seat in Parliament in 2001, Johnson was sacked by the Tory leader at the time, Michael Howard, for allegedly lying over an affair with journalist Petronella Wyatt. Johnson called newspaper stories about the affair “an inverted pyramid of piffle.” He was also sacked from his editorship of The Spectator, where the piffle took place.

But being elected to higher office is such a compensation, so Johnson, a bicycle-riding, tradition-loving maverick got himself elected mayor of London. In this office he saved the iconic double-decker buses, presided over the 2012 Summer Olympics, and endeared himself to an even wider audience.

The British revere Johnson’s eccentricity and voted him back into Parliament in the last election. Now people talk openly of him being Cameron’s successor after the referendum.

Johnson has hedged his bets on British membership in the EU. Just this week he declared that he will not lead the “Out” forces, but he does not totally endorse the “In” forces.

Here is the possible scenario: Cameron has to produce a deal that satisfies some of the Euroskeptics and set a date for referendum. Then the vote. Then the hangover, one way or another. Then Johnson makes his move – unless some schemer, like the current Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, has not outmaneuvered the charming and brilliant Boris.

Cleverly Johnson has written a long political treatise comparing London to Athens, and leaving room for people to believe he has the qualities of Pericles, without actually claiming the great Greek’s mantle. Then, just to be safe, he has knocked off a highly laudatory biography of Churchill, which invites the idea that Johnson shares some of his hero’s traits.

This kind of effrontery makes British politics a perpetual night in the pub. Cheers! — For Inside Sources

Boris Johnson: The Man Who Would Be British Prime Minister

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Make a note of the name: Boris Johnson. He is mayor of London. And in a few years, he has a high chance of becoming British prime minister.

In a time when politicians tend to be bland, and to believe it necessary to claim a politically correct pedigree, Johnson is a mold- breaker. 

He has been larger-than-life and in scrapes of his own making throughout one of the most colorful careers in public life. Yet Johnson has the knack for transmuting disaster into celebrity — and celebrity into fame and electoral success.

At Balliol College, Oxford, some claim he won the student presidency by pretending to support the Social Democratic Party, the dominant faction at the university. He was a member of Oxford's Bullingdon Club – a raucous dining group that specialized in trashing restaurants and willingly paying for the damages later. A film about these goings on, called “The Riot Club,” is in preparation. 

After taking a less-than-impressive degree in Classics, Johnson, whose family on both sides was well-connected, launched himself on the world as a management consultant. But that was short-lived because, as he said, “Try as I might, I could not look at an overhead projection of a growth-profit matrix and stay conscious.”

On to journalism — a refuge of sorts for scoundrels — and a trainee job at The Times of London. Oops! Johnson gets fired for falsifying a quote from his godfather. He works on a provincial paper for a while, and then moves on to the high-Tory Daily Telegraph, where he rises to assistant editor.

Meanwhile, Johnson has political ambitions and gets himself elected as a Conservative member of Parliament, where his antics enliven the House of Commons. As the British are a lot less sensitive about conflicts of interest than are Americans, soon he was editing the prestigious literary and conservative political magazine The Spectator while rising in the ranks of the Conservative Party. He is one of the most prolific writers to have sat in the House of Commons since Winston Churchill.

Johnson, who has a great, white shock of hair that belies the fact the one grandfather was Turkish, rides a bicycle and litters his oratory with classical references. He likes to use his knowledge of the ancient world to illustrate contemporary issues. He even made a television program on the Romans.

But scandal has a way of finding Johnson and his rake’s progress toward greatness. The Spectator – with a tiny staff — erupted sexual scandal during his time in the editor's chair. Get this: the publisher, an American woman, was having an affair with a blind member of the British cabinet, the features writer was having an affair with a secretary and Johnson, rising political star and father of four, was, you got it, in what the British like to call a “leg over” with a star columnist.

He was demoted in the conservative party, so he left the House of Commons and ran for mayor of London, defeating the socialist Ken Livingstone. He won a second term again running against Livingstone.

As mayor Johnson championed a revolutionary, new London bus. He cheered on London and the Olympics, took credit for its success and when he got stranded on a zip line with two British flags, one in each hand, he turned the disaster into another Johnson publicity success. He entertained the world’s press while suspended in mid-air.

Johnson is now planning a return to national politics in 2015, when he will contest an expectedly safe Conservative seat near London. As a kind of campaign opener, he has penned an extraordinary article in which he links London to ancient Athens and British democracy to the original. He glosses over the failings of the Greek state and the fact that Pericles, his hero, finally lost to the Spartans, while humorously making antiquity available to the British voter of today. It is political literary fun at its best.

Johnson’s re-entry into national politics will come at a critical moment when extreme-right parties threaten the old conservative bloc and Prime Minister David Cameron’s standing is low, and he is accused of the “re-toxification” of the Conservative Party. 

Read one of the greatest pieces of political writing by seeking out The Spectator on the Web. It is glorious stuff. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate
 

Boris Johnson: Mayor of London, Clown of England

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I would like to introduce you to the new Conservative mayor of London, Boris Johnson. He is remarkable. He is unique. His political success is based on the oft-repeated pratfall. Yes, Johnson has committed every political sin and is now at the helm of the most important city in Europe, and the one best beloved by Americans.

In the age of the technocrat, Johnson is more like something out of a P.G. Wodehouse novel. For more than a decade, the British media have been regaled by Johnson’s “scrapes.” For example, he was demoted in the Conservative Party from a position on its front bench (which means that if the Tories had come back to power, he would have been a cabinet member) for variously insulting the city of Liverpool, antagonizing Pacific Islanders, and having an extramarital affair with Petronella Wyatt, a columnist at The Spectator, the weekly magazine which he edited.

Indeed, everyone at The Spectator seemed to be having an affair at the time Johnson occupied the editor’s chair. Publisher Kimberly Quinn, an American, was having an extramarital affair with David Blunkett, the blind British home secretary. Associate Editor Rod Liddle was having an extramarital affair with a Spectator secretary. Given that the staff is very small, that it is the oldest continuously published magazine in England (1828), and it is the seat of the Conservative intelligentsia, you can imagine how the tabloids loved the goings on. In fact, they took to calling Johnson “Boudoir Boris” and the magazine “The Sextator.”

Johnson was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and with which he has been able to cut himself. From Eton, the world’s most exclusive boarding school, Johnson sailed into Oxford University, where he distinguished himself as president of its debating society, The Oxford Union. Many a future prime minister has honed his skills debating at Oxford, and it seemed inevitable that Johnson would find his way into parliament. In 2001, he became a Conservative member.

Johnson’s running for mayor of London had all the characteristics of William F. Buckley Jr.’s running for mayor of New York. The only difference is that Johnson secured–to the horror of his party–the formal Conservative nomination, and now he is the mayor. At 43, he is one of the few executive mayors in England. He is a man known for his dazzling white hair, disorganization, irreverently witty tongue, and a sense that absolutely everything is not to be taken seriously.

Johnson was aided in his campaign because he was running against an equally bizarre, but more calculating, Ken Livingstone, also known as “Red Ken.” Livingstone had a long history in London politics and was elected to the new post of executive mayor eight years ago. Livingstone’s admiration of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, coupled with his newly found affection for big business, offended the left and the right of his party. Yet, to his credit, Livingstone introduced congestion pricing, which has eased London traffic, and coped with the al-Qaeda subway bombings on July 7, 2005.

But in this election, the big issues like the 2012 Olympic Games in London and street crime were dwarfed by a silly argument over buses. Livingstone had decided that it was time to replace London’s double-decker fleet with flexible single-deck buses, commonly called “bendy” buses. The argument is one of tradition versus modernity. Johnson, who mostly rides a bicycle, wants the double-decker Routemaster buses redesigned and saved. He wants to ban the bendy buses that he believes hurt the image of London as well as being, well, un-English: the Routemasters are made in England and the bendys are made in Germany.

The Conservative Party is not so happy about Johnson winning the executive mayoral race. They feel that he will embarrass the party leader, David Cameron, and generally humiliate Tory values. Johnson has the wit of Will Rodgers and none of the temperance. Here are some of Boris’s best:

“My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.”

“I don’t see why people are so snooty about Channel 5. It has some respectable documentaries about the Second World War. It also devotes considerable airtime to investigations into lap dancing, and other related and vital subjects.”

“I love tennis with a passion. I challenged Boris Becker to a match once and he said he was up for it, but he never called back. I bet I could make him run around.”

“I have as much chance of becoming prime minister as of being decapitated by a Frisbee or of finding Elvis.”