OPINION: Taking pleasure in the ongoing misfortunes of Boris Johnson
THE Germans have a word for it – schadenfreude: to take pleasure in the misfortune of others. Not that you or I would contemplate such a thing in this the season of goodwill. But, it’s Brexit. And Boris. And Lord Frost. And I feel like Sylvester the cat in one of my favourite cartoons.
He (Sylvester) had given up birds (feathered kind!) but then spots luscious, yellow Tweety and – as his good angel and bad angel battle it out over what he should do, he pleads “…. just one more. Please, just one more!”
Even if the timing is a bit off, it is wholly understandable where the great majority of us on this island are concerned, if we take just a little pleasure in the ongoing implosion of the Johnson administration in London.
Don’t worry, this could take some time, so – even if we do feel somewhat constrained by the season that’s in it - there will be time, there will be time in the weeks and months ahead to sit back and be fascinated as hardline Tories get to work and do what they do best – savage a leader they are unhappy with. Yes, it will be as good as any Netflix series in 2022.
And it’s goodbye to Lord Frost – Frosty the Showman, never elected to any office, accountable only to Boris and as morally culpable over the withdrawal agreement they signed with the EU and set about dismantling before the ink on it had dried (so to speak).
Frost’s exit is seasonal, timely too, and significant in so many ways but particularly as it suggests London has finally realised there will be no progress in dealings with the EU as long as you adopt the position of unstoppable force hitting at the immoveable force that is the Brussels.
It was his Lordship (appointed to the House of Lords by Boris) who decided to introduce the European Court of Justice (ECJ) element for the first time last July as another unacceptable element in the Brexit process. He never did raise it in negotiations for the withdrawal agreement he had previously concluded with the EU and he had to know that supervision of the EU single market rested with the ECJ.
He had to know the EU could never agree to the ECJ not having a role in supervising the operation of the single market in Northern Ireland. But, true to his fundamentalist outlook, he introduced it anyhow, either hoping to trade it down the road for a major concession or to bend the EU to the UK’s will. That would look good in true blue Tory constituencies, such as North Shropshire for example. Then, maybe not.
When it was announced that the UK was to drop its demand on the ECJ, it should have been clear Lord Frost was in difficulty as Number 10 clearly had shifted ground. Most would have assumed he had agreed to this until his resignation was reported, in a letter where it was dressed up as a major difference over policy in general.
Clearly this resignation is good news for the EU, for Ireland and for prospects of a pragmatic agreement over implementation of the Northern Ireland protocol. Of course the DUP is unhappy. Their natural state, some would suggest.
However, people should not get too carried away just yet. UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, who takes over Brexit negotiations from Lord Frost, may have been a Remainer in the 2016 Brexit referendum but she had adopted the leave position since then with all the zeal of a convert, an ambitious one too.
She is also of the same libertarian mind-set on economics as most hardline Tory Brexiteers, with whom she is popular. “I’m probably one of the more ideological among my colleagues, in that that’s what motivates me,” she said in a comment last March. So, let’s be careful what we wish for. A Johnson loyalist, she is considered a frontrunner along with UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak to succeed him in any future leadership challenge. In a recent poll by Conservative Home she was ranked No 1 in “satisfaction ratings”, ahead of UK Defence secretary Ben Wallace, Lord Frost, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and Rishi Sunak.
Meanwhile her boss Boris is experiencing that observation of Shakespeare’s that “when sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.” All of his own doing too. All those Christmas parties, the expensive wall paper, the North Shropshire by-election, the lies, the lies, the lies, etc, etc. etc. etc. This should be no surprise to anyone, not least the British people, not least his own party. What did they expect from a man who was fired not once but twice for lying? In 1988 he was sacked from the London Times for fabricating a quote in an article he wrote in 2004 and he was “relieved of his duties” as shadow arts minister of the Tory party for allegedly lying about an extra-marital affair.
As Daily Telegraph correspondent in Brussels during the early 1990s he peddled lies and half truths about the EU - his high point, according to himself, being his made-up ban on British prawn cocktail-flavoured crisps, from which German EU official, Martin Bangemann, became known in the UK tabloids as 'Sour Kraut'. As Mayor of London he promised to totally eradicate rough sleeping on the city’s streets. It doubled while he was in office. He also said he would reduce transport fares in the city. They increased by an average 4.2%. In an unpublished article for the Daily Telegraph, written in February 2016 two days before his announcement that he would campaign for Brexit, he wrote: “Britain is a great nation, a global force for good. It is surely a boon for the world and for Europe that she should be intimately engaged in the EU.” He continued: “This is a market on our doorstep, ready for further exploitation by British firms. The membership fee seems rather small for all that access. Why are we so determined to turn our back on it?” He also warned that Brexit would cause an “economic shock” and could lead to the “break up” of the UK.
According Rory Stewart, his former rival for the Tory party leadership, Johnson is “the most accomplished liar in public life—perhaps the best liar ever to serve as prime minister.” Johnson had “mastered the use of error, omission, exaggeration, diminution, equivocation and flat denial. He has perfected casuistry, circumlocution, false equivalence and false analogy. He is equally adept at the ironic jest, the fib and the grand lie; the weasel word and the half-truth; the hyperbolic lie, the obvious lie, and the bullshit lie—which may inadvertently be true.”
Johnson has already broken his 2019 election pledge not to increase taxes in the UK. And on a visit to New York City he claimed that he had always been clear that Britain would struggle to reach a trade deal with the US despite having previously told voters that the ability to negotiate such agreements was one of the key benefits of Brexit.
At the time of the Brexit referendum in 2016 he said Brexit would both save British taxpayers £350 million a week in contributions to Brussels—money that could be better spent on Britain’s National Health Service—and free up the country to negotiate a trade deal with Washington. Last October he announced Britain’s most significant tax increase in 20 years—to pay for an increase in health spending and despite Brexit. What more is there to say!