Boris.
Boris.
Boris? Boris!
Boris. Boris. Boris.
Boris…
Boris. Boris! BORIS?! BORIS?!!
Boris.
BORIS.
Boris? Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris Boris..
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Boris.
unshavedmouse 
Boris
Boris Boris.
Tbh I didn’t realise he’d been chosen. I found out through this post so thanks. At least I got a chuckle out of our IMPENDING DOOM
*sigh*
Boris, huh?
What gave you that idea?
My condolences. 😑
I’d offer condolences to all affected too, but at least this jerk can use words of more than one syllable.
A masterful summary.
I have keyboard marks on my forehead from banging my head against it when I read the news.
I know it’s wrong, but as an American there’s a part of me that’s glad there’s a country whose politics I can look down on.
Yeah, but I feel like I’m standing on the deck of the Titanic, laughing and pointing at the Hindenburg.
I imagine the queen is getting good and drunk right about now.
And dreading the day that America (yet again) says, “What? There’s a country that thinks it can out-stupid me? Hold my beer!”
The weird part is that we Yanks got saddled with our haystack brain slug and its orange clown host in a shock result. It was a sudden and unexpected kick in the nuts and we’re dealing with the aftermath.
While Britain just…ambled its way there.
Dylan Matthew’s observation continues to hold: that while USPol is a blazing circus fire because that’s what you’d expect with a psychotic clown, UKPol is remarkable because you have three years of putatively sane, experienced politicians calmly explaining how they’re going to rip out the pins from a stack of hand grenades and swallow them one by one.
America does have the advantage that it’s possible to vote against the government’s policy without having to go third party. Unlike in Britain, where the government is doing what the leader of the opposition has wanted his entire career.
Boris? Boris.
At least this one wasn’t a total shocker?
Yeah, the hellish inevitability made it better.
I would offer you condolence, except, I saw the other candidates and honestly, they were all pretty terrible for various reasons…so….condolence for the whole Tory party?
As someone who’s had to deal with another boorish politician with no sense of tact and terrible hair all I can say is batten down the hatches and prepare for the storm. And hope that the blow back hits him harder than it does the average person.
What the hell is going on with the anglosphere?
It’s hilarious to see all the pearl-clutching on the internet. Hopefully the Left will be crying and sobbing for years to come!
Well how else would you be able to get an erection?
I was hoping this was leading to a True Lies “Doris!” joke. And now I have to decided to never read the news again, I’ll just take all upsetting articles as out of context movie references from now on, eg.
MAN INSISTS HE DIDN’T KILL HIS WIFE.
Sweet, I love The Fugitive!
Please allow me to thank you for your condolences Mouse; I can only say that the fact this announcement came out almost exactly on time for the audience to lose their respective lunches represents either impressively diabolic pre-planning or a profound lack of consideration.
God Help Me, at this point Parliament has reached the point where we might need to seriously consider the Divine Right of Kings as a preferable alternative (and we all know what happened the last time that particular point of philosophical dispute was unsheathed … ).
On a less depressing note, one can only hope that Parliament will ditch Mr Johnson before he works out an end-run around those of our Elected Representatives who have some vague ideas about AVOIDING self-inflicted Economic Trauma (despite the past few years of Sisyphean politics provoked by a kind of Mass Delusion on the part of those d— aggressive provincialists).
Three points:
1. … Hansel? Hansel! Hansel?
Hansel.
2. Why does he look like the drunken star of an eighties frat party movie?
3. At least it’s no Nicolas Maduro, I suppose?
I cannot answer your other questions with serious hopes of providing the most accurate possible answer, but concerning question #2 –
– Convergent Evolution; in every institution of learning there will always be those more interested in the social & antisocial life of the student than in actual study and apparently ‘Bojo’ was involved with one notorious enough that the eponymous posh-boy criminal conspiracy seen in THE RIOT CLUB was apparently based on them (loosely, so far as I know).
It would seem that Mr Johnson enjoyed the era so much he never bothered to leave it (and if this seems far-fetched, please accept his attitude to the Leave/Remain question as Exhibit A in the case for the present PM being quite thoroughly divorced from reality).
Maybe we should give Boris a chance before you condemn him?
Oh how unjust of me to judge him only on the strength of everything he’s said and done over the last three decades in journalism and politics. The arsonist has been put in charge of fighting the fire. Why the hell does he get the benefit of the doubt?
So… What did he do?
Here’s what he did. He built his whole career on journalism on getting ordinary Britons who really should have known better angry at the EU. And he did this by lying. Over and over and over again. The EU is cracking down on curvy bananas. The EU is demanding all coffins be the same size. The EU is outlawing prawn crackers. You have to think that he was essentially mocking his readers, seeing exactly how much nonsense he could get them to swallow. Maybe he thought no one would believe him. Maybe he thought nobody could be that stupid. Well, they were. And then some.
It’s what happens to a country when you keep electing Tories who care more about low taxes than good schools. So fast forward a few decades and Boris has failed upwards into government but still writes his old column for which he is ridiculously over-paid (what conflict of interest?).
So thanks to the rise in anti-EU sentiment largely (thought certainly solely) enflamed by Johnson, British Prime Minister David Cameron has the UK Independence Party breathing down his neck and promises a referendum on Britain’s membership in the EU. He figures this will be fine because it will leach voters away from UKIP while there is next to no chance of the public actually voting for Brexit because (Cameron assumes) the British public is smart enough to know that even a best-case-scenario, well-managed, soft, Norway-style Brexit will leave the British economy and people significantly worse off than they are now. Keep in mind that at this point in time, if you had mentioned the possibility of a No Deal Brexit, you would have been laughed off the street. That was crazy alternate history stuff. Like Trump winning the US election. Or Leicester winning the league.
So Boris decides to campaign for the Leave side, not because he actually believes that it’s a good idea but because he thinks that Remain will win and knows that Leave is broadly popular with Tory voters so this will get him closer to his one dream that doesn’t involve fathering children on other people’s wives; becoming Prime Minister.
So Johnson personally and the Leave Campaign more generally proceed to wage one of the most spectacularly dishonest campaigns in modern European history. If Johnson is not the most egregious liar on the Leave Side, it is only because he is the company of true masters of the art-form. Vote Leave promises a Brexit that will leave Britain financially better off, in complete control of its borders and regulatory policy but still with access to the EU’s single market. The fact that the EU would never, could never, allow this is dismissed as a bluff. Northern Ireland, the issue that will end of being the most dangerous stumbling block in the whole Brexit debacle, gets barely a whisper in the debate.
So the day of the election rolls around and the world goes to sleep thinking that the British people could not possibly be that stupid.
Well, they were. And Johnson bears a huge amount of the blame for that.
So now we come to the endless, soul-destroying period where the dreams of the Brexiteers run aground hard on the rocks of reality and the Brexit debate becomes more atomised and toxic than the Sonic the Hedgehog fandom. No possible Brexit deal can command enough support to pass because the Brexit deal that was promised (Britain financially better off, in complete control of its borders and regulatory policy but still with access to the EU’s single market) contradicts itself. Scotland and Northern Ireland are now seriously contemplating independence because they voted to Remain and they understand that leaving the EU would be ruinous to the economies of both and would actually threaten to re-ignite the troubles. Meanwhile, England and Wales are facing complete economic ruination because the clock is ticking down on time to re-negotiate a new trade deal with the EU and no possible deal can get enough support to pass parliament.
No one person can be blamed for this situation, but Boris Johnson makes a good stab at it.
So, facing the ruin that he has brought on his nation, with half the UK threatening secession, and the other have facing an unthinkable no-deal Brexit, does he feel shame? Does he admit he was wrong? Does he tell his supporters that he’s sorry but this is no longer fun and should never have gone this far?
No. He tries to use this for his own personal advantage. Boris spends this period hectoring and pilloring the new Prime Minster, Teresa May, and refuses to back her deal, which would leave the UK substantially worse off than it is now (like any Brexit) but at least leaves a working trade deal in place and might stave off the resumption of the Troubles in the North. He does this to garner support of the hard-core Brexit supports in his own party so that they will support him as Prime Minister when Teresa May’s miserable, limping premiership is finally put out of its misery.
So now he’s done it. Boris Johnson is Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Now does he admit he was wrong? Now does he either agree to support Teresa May’s deal or better yet, cancel Brexit to save the country?
No. He commits to a course of action that nobody voted for, a no-deal Brexit. He says, of course, that he wants to avoid that. But it’s too late now. Even if the EU was willing to negotiate a new deal (it isn’t) and trusted him to adhere to it (it doesn’t), you can’t negotiate a new deal with the world’s largest trading bloc in two months. Can’t be done.
So, No Deal is happening and he is more responsible for it than anyone else.
Because of this man, the United Kingdom is more likely than not to split apart. The Troubles and more than likely to re-ignite. England and Wales are on track to complete economic ruin and recession. People are going to die because of this. That is not hyperbole. That is fact.
And he did all this BEFORE HE EVEN TOOK OFFICE.
So THAT is why he doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt.
GOT IT?
We may have got him, but that doesn’t mean we either want (or have to) keep him anywhere nice!