He’s a clown, a chancer, an egoist and incorrigible self-publicist,
and the sort of man who will make claims and promises which are quite untenable
in order to further his interests. He’s also an Old Etonian, an elevated and
outdated background which suited the job well two hundred years ago but which
hardly accords with modern times. I have referred to him on this blog as ‘the
British Donald Trump’, and sections of the media have recently done the same.
He even looks a bit like Donald Trump.
So how did he become Prime Minister? Let me explain for
those who are not fully au fait with the British political system.
Britain
does not have a President. We’re a constitutional monarchy with the Queen as
effectively the non-executive head of state, which means that the Prime
Minister is not elected by a ballot of the British people. A General Election
determines which political party has the greatest number of seats in Parliament
and that party forms the Government. The leader of that party automatically
becomes Prime Minister. At the moment the Tories are in power and the job of Tory
Party Leader was recently vacated by Theresa May. Somebody had to fill the position and Boris got the job.
So if the British people did not elect Boris Johnson, who
did? The rank-and-file members of the Tory Party did. They form a very tiny
percentage of the British electorate, and I gather they are predominately male,
ageing, highly conservative in their attitudes, and wealthy. In effect,
therefore, Britain
has been saddled with a leader chosen mostly by a bunch of rich old men with
right wing values. And Boris has expressed his support for suspending
Parliament so that those elected by the people can’t stop him taking Britain out of
the EU without a deal. It all promotes the sense that democracy is dead in the
water here in Britain
at the moment.
I thought of including a picture of Boris at the head of this
post, but chose not to because I have a strong aversion to pollution.
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