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This government is for austerity and cutting public services and expenditure. He is no less a reflection of his party. Next PM's in line: Theresa May: Pro snoo

This government is for austerity and cutting public services and expenditure. He is no less a reflection of his party. Next PM's in line: Theresa May: Pro snoopers (spying) charter. I don't like the term police state but her actions are worryingly in line. Boris Johnson? A very charismatic idiot. His selling point being the golden coloured hairy creature that has permanently occupied his scalp. Yes. We have a great line up of next potential PM's for Britain.

fredley 10y ago
Theresa May is one of the scariest contenders as far as I've seen. Very pro-surveillance and anti-open internet. She would be a (nother) disaster for UK tech. If there's anybody left who hasn't moved to Dublin/Berlin by October.
- geff82 10y ago
  The problem we currently have in politics it demography. People get older and older, the baby boomers forgot to "produce" children. Elder people tend to be deeply conservative and anti-technology. And as they are the majority now, they vote for stuff that they think is right ("let's 100% control that freaking thing called internet") and totally strangle the younger generation with their bad taste and shortsightedness.
  - e12e 10y ago
    I find it at a little odd to read this characterisation on HN of all places. I mean, it's pretty much run by "old" technologists, right?
    - geff82 10y ago
      You are absolutely right, while I am, too. Of course there are progressive, far thinking elderly people and I enjoy being around them. I recently talked to a 71 year old who is into fractal programming and wants to get into Linux, soon (all while being politically liberal). But the elections and polls show always the same picture: the older people get, the more conservative/right wing they vote, which is often not what the younger need. I don't think it helps the younger UK generation, that has been used to think globally/European, that they now are politically separated from EVERY neighbor they have.
      - CM30 10y ago
        Well, it'd help if the younger generation actually bothered for things instead of complaining about them on social media. Less online petitions, more going down to the ballot box. If they were represented in the vote, more politicians would listen to them. But they currently don't because the older generations actually show up on voting day.
        ThatGeoGuy 10y ago
        This is disingenuous. Blaming millennials for not showing up at the poll is a strawman argument, as the vast majority of younger folk did show up (80% turnout ages 18-24)[1]. Sure, it's less than the 95+% of people 60 and older, but there's a hell of a lot more baby boomers than there are millennials. The problem isn't as simple as "young people don't vote". [1] http://graphics.wsj.com/brexit-whos-voting-what/?mod=e2fb http://graphics.wsj.com/brexit-whos-voting-what/?mod=e2fb
        CM30 10y ago
        Then I guess its another downside of an aging population and the obsession with money/status/career success over having a family. Gives you more old folk than young ones.
        oarsinsync 10y ago
        > Blaming millennials for not showing up at the poll is a strawman argument, as the vast majority of younger folk did show up (80% turnout ages 18-24)[1] > [1] http://graphics.wsj.com/brexit-whos-voting-what/?mod=e2fb http://graphics.wsj.com/brexit-whos-voting-what/?mod=e2fb I guess nobody followed up on your citation, because the link you supplied clearly states: > Sources: YouGov online poll of 1694 likely voters conducted June 15–17; (demographics); YouGov online poll of 2001 likely voters conducted June 9–10 (economy and immigration); margin of error for both: +/- 3 percentage points Absolutely nothing about the actual vote, just polling predictions.
        munin 10y ago
        the older generations can show up on voting day because they don't have to work
  - mooreds 10y ago
    The demographic problem. Highly recommend reading "The Accidental Superpower" as it explains how this, as well as a few other geopolitical considerations, will shape the next few decades. (Hint: it's not pretty.)
  - panic 10y ago
    Blaming people (older people, immigrants, whatever) for our problems isn't productive. Let's figure out what's broken about the systems we're living in instead of alienating the people we should be working with to fix them.
    - fredley 10y ago
      In both the US general election and this referendum, the primary forces at play are emotive campaigning backed by false or at the very least misleading information (in our case: portrayal of immigrants, the '£350m a week' figure that has already had some very serious backpeddling, etc. etc.). We have an electorate that is woefully misinformed for a whole host of reasons. How you address this is beyond me.
      - ajuc 10y ago
        This was also the reason for the voctory of current anti-european and proto-nationalist government in Poland last year. Misinformation, fear campaign, memes, troll farms. It seems in social media age that's how you do politics. Viral marketing means you never have to say you were wrong.
        jazzyk 10y ago
        I agree the new government in Poland is an embarrassment. But you are mistaken in blaming the electorate. The "misinformation, fear campaign, memes..." have always been around. The primary reason people voted out the previous bunch is corruption and tunneling of the wealth created to a narrow group of people (a problem not limited to Poland only)
      - panic 10y ago
        Honestly I think our best bet is to focus on education and childcare, then try to hold on for a generation. Many parents don't have time to raise their children as well as they'd like. Teachers are underpaid, under-respected and have in many cases had their agency taken away by standardized tests. It's no wonder so many people find it difficult to stay informed when they're starting from so far behind.
  - DanBC 10y ago
    > The problem we currently have in politics it demography. I misread that as "demagoguery", and was going to vigorously agree.
  - siliconviking 10y ago
    I think a better way to come at this is to assume that on average, most people have given this decision a reasonable amount of thought, young people as well as old people. The debates have been going on for months, and pros and cons have been discussed at great length. Further, I don't think it's fair to underestimate the experience and historic perspective old people have, that young people don't. After all, many of the older people who voted yesterday where around before the EU came about, and are able to factor in that extra information, plus their historic perspective in their decision, which, by definition, makes for a more informed decision. You are right that older people tend to be more conservative, but you yourself may end up being more conservative when you are 90, vs. how conservative you are today, and you may only realize the reasons for it once it happens, and perhaps you will think those are actually quite good reasons, who knows. The bottom line is that if you just attribute the older population's decision to "bad taste" and "shortsightedness", you may not realize the true reason behind their decision, which diminishes your ability to understand and influence others.
    - pyre 10y ago
      > After all, many of the older people who voted yesterday where around before the EU came about, and are able to factor in that extra information, plus their historic perspective in their decision, which, by definition, makes for a more informed decision. Not necessarily. You'll still end up with people making decisions based on looking at the past with rose-coloured glasses, which isn't necessarily a fact-based decision. I think it's also equally likely that people will draw conclusions from economic conditions that had zilch to do with whether the EU existed or not. Thinking that experience necessarily leads to a informed decision ignores the way that humans works.
  - junto 10y ago
    No, the problem is that the younger generation is that they don't vote. They whine on Twitter . The only way to take control of the system from within. Today was a very harsh lesson for young Brits. They'll have to live with the outcome of this decision for three rest of their lives. The one positive is that those young people might now be encouraged to actually participate.
  - ryandrake 10y ago
    Truth never triumphs — its opponents just die out. - Max Planck Unfortunately, political progress tends to be the same. For some issues, the only way to move forward is to simply wait for enough old people to die off.
  - yarrel 10y ago
    And that's how Remain lost.
- arethuza 10y ago
  I'm just back from Sweden - Gothenburg or Stockholm are starting to look pretty attractive if things go horribly wrong in the UK.
- secfirstmd 10y ago
  People of Ireland speaking here: -Want to stay in the EU? -Want to trade in the Eurozone? -Enjoy low corporate tax rate of 12.5%? Pro-business government? -Enjoy friendly, well educated, English speaking, Pro-American people, good beer, decent music, nice quality of life, low crime and safe green natural environment? (Look how much fun even our soccer fans are http://www.irishexaminer.com/euro2016/euro2016-banter/10-reasons-why-the-irish-fans-have-won-the-internet-at-euro2016-405576.html http://www.irishexaminer.com/euro2016/euro2016-banter/10-rea...) Invest in Ireland -> http://www.idaireland.com http://www.idaireland.com This has been a public service announcement from the country next door. #irelandlovesyou :)
  - cylinder 10y ago
    What are your thoughts on this thread? Some really negative anecdotes about Dublin living: https://www.reddit.com/r/IWantOut/comments/4p9r9l/dublins_skyhigh_rents_have_made_it_one_of_europes/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IWantOut/comments/4p9r9l/dublins_sk...
    - anonymousDan 10y ago
      My god there is some serious whingey nonsense on that thread. Most of the arguments boil down to accommodation being expensive for students in the centre of a relatively wealthy European capital. Well no shit, as if it's not any worse in most other cities. As a software professional you'd be well able to afford it. I do agree there is a shortage of accommodation at the moment, but that's almost certainly a temporary issue. After the property crash in Ireland a few years ago builders and property developers were cast as the root of all evil. As a result (and because banks were broke and so weren't lending for mortgages), housebuilding ground to a halt even though Ireland has the highest birth rate in the EU and most commentators were warning this would lead to problems down the line. And so it has come to pass that now there is a shortage of cheap accommodation, and in particular social housing. However I expect this to resolve itself over the next few years, and the government has already promised to pump money into public housing.
      - secfirstmd 10y ago
mtgx 10y ago
Theresa May would be a scary successor indeed, and may even top Cameron as the worst UK leader. UK needs to vote conservatives out, and it needs to reconsider switching the voting system (this time to a proportional representation one).
- tonyedgecombe 10y ago
  They probably will at the next election, the trouble is the alternative is looking pretty pathetic.
- gadders 10y ago
  A referendum was held on proportional representation (one method, at least) and was rejected.
  - fnord123 10y ago
    Alternate Voting is not a method of proportional representation. It is another voting scheme. The Liberal Democrats wanted a vote for Proportional Representation and the Conservatives agreed to a referendum, but on the rubbish AV scheme instead. Many many people voted against AV because it wasn't as good as PR and didn't want to change multiple times. PR is superior to AV and FPTP and should be implemented. It shouldn't even have a referendum. It should just be done.
    - tonyedgecombe 10y ago
      Many people voted against AV because the Liberal Democrats proposed it.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      > Alternate Voting is not a method of proportional representation Alternative Voting (AV) is a single member district voting system that produces results where the representations of policy views in the elected parliament are more proportional to the views in the electorate than first past the post, and thus is a method of enhancing the proportionality of the election system for a parliament when the status quo is FPTP. It do so less than Single Transferrable Vote (STV) in multimember districts (AV -- known more often to US audiences as Instant Runoff Voting [IRV] -- is just the single-member-district case of STV, which supports any district size). Its relationship to other PR schemes where not all candidates are directly elected by-name by general election voters (the most frequent being Party-List Proportional and Mixed-Member Proportional) is complicated -- those schemes optimize for proportionality of partisan composition of the legislature, but provide weaker accountability of individual politicians to the general electorate. But PR itself isn't a system, its a (continuous valued, not even binary) feature of an electoral system. You can't "implement PR", you can adopt a system that increases (or decreases) the degree to which you have PR.
rdsubhas 10y ago
And how do all these people get voted in?
Shivetya 10y ago
Still trying to understand how austerity can still mean increasing spending. Looking at their expenditures they peaked in 2009 at 51.5% and dropped to lower forties but much of that has been because the economy finally started recovering faster than the government could spend money mostly because of pressure on politicians not to. However the key here is, they never spent less than the year before, simply reduced the amount they increased spending. Increasing spending is not austerity
- adventured 10y ago
  Simply put, there never was austerity in most of Europe. That's a propaganda line to simultaneously cover the lack of economic growth for nearly a decade, and to use as an excuse to acquire a larger State through even greater spending. You can go line by line down the list of European countries and their government expenditures. Only a few of them reduced spending, most have increased spending. In actual fact, only two or three nations experienced any real austerity, but they all pretend to have. What they're really experiencing, is the total suffocation of economic growth by extreme debt. The exact same thing Japan has been enjoying for a quarter century.
arethuza 10y ago
Boris Johnson is anything but an idiot - that image of a harmless buffoon is a front.
- johnchristopher 10y ago
  I know next to nothing to Britain and London's politics but I can't trust/don't want to have leaders that have to put up buffoon front to get elected or get traction. Because next time you risk getting a real buffoon. Or worse, it won't matter wether politicians are buffoons or not.
- mikekchar 10y ago
  Boris Johnson as Prime Minister. Imagine the bicycle lanes... Which is not to say that I disagree with you. As mayor of London he knew what was important and it was not what most people would think is important.
- MagnumOpus 10y ago
  BoJo was a King's scholar at Eton - meaning he is probably the smartest guy in the room, especially if that room is a Tory party conference room. Which implies him grabbing the leadership and dismantling the UK is not buffoonery, but deliberate. Scary.
darkr 10y ago
> Boris Johnson? A very charismatic idiot. His persona is that of a charismatic bumbling idiot, but idiot he is not. Underneath this persona lies a highly intelligent, disingenuous, manipulative and calculating operator. I genuinely think that he didn't believe in Brexit; rather he saw a potential route into number 10 and took a gamble on it.
- corin_ 10y ago
  Even his choice of idiot persona is an act of genius in terms of how well it has served him.
  - junto 10y ago
    George Bush springs to mind. Though maybe he actually was a patsy.
    - oldmanjay 10y ago
      Let's be fair here. Liberal bias requires people to either believe anyone with conservative leanings MUST be stupid or the received wisdom that liberal philosophies are naturally correct must be incomplete. There's no real choice here, every single person on earth will assume everyone else is stupid before assuming they may be wrong.
      - qdog 10y ago
        That's the exact opposite of liberal, "open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values." There are plenty of intelligent people in all parties, disagreeing with them doesn't make them idiots. Greenspan comes to mind, I think his basic market beliefs are wrong, but don't think he's an idiot, I have read his book. GW is a lot closer to idiot level because of his demeanor AND his actions, but let's be serious few actual idiots make it that far, just not all of them are way above average intelligence.
        SEJeff 10y ago
DonaldFisk 10y ago
I'm no fan of hers, but home secretaries seem to get house trained by the security service (MI5) soon after taking office. The home secretaries of the previous Blair/Brown Labour administration were also dreadful. Someone once said that every home secretary since Roy Jenkins has been worse than the previous one. And Boris Johnson is no idiot. It's part of his act.

fredley 10y ago

Theresa May is one of the scariest contenders as far as I've seen. Very pro-surveillance and anti-open internet. She would be a (nother) disaster for UK tech. If there's anybody left who hasn't moved to Dublin/Berlin by October.

geff82 10y ago
The problem we currently have in politics it demography. People get older and older, the baby boomers forgot to "produce" children. Elder people tend to be deeply conservative and anti-technology. And as they are the majority now, they vote for stuff that they think is right ("let's 100% control that freaking thing called internet") and totally strangle the younger generation with their bad taste and shortsightedness.
- e12e 10y ago
  I find it at a little odd to read this characterisation on HN of all places. I mean, it's pretty much run by "old" technologists, right?
  - geff82 10y ago
    You are absolutely right, while I am, too. Of course there are progressive, far thinking elderly people and I enjoy being around them. I recently talked to a 71 year old who is into fractal programming and wants to get into Linux, soon (all while being politically liberal). But the elections and polls show always the same picture: the older people get, the more conservative/right wing they vote, which is often not what the younger need. I don't think it helps the younger UK generation, that has been used to think globally/European, that they now are politically separated from EVERY neighbor they have.
    - CM30 10y ago
      Well, it'd help if the younger generation actually bothered for things instead of complaining about them on social media. Less online petitions, more going down to the ballot box. If they were represented in the vote, more politicians would listen to them. But they currently don't because the older generations actually show up on voting day.
      - ThatGeoGuy 10y ago
        This is disingenuous. Blaming millennials for not showing up at the poll is a strawman argument, as the vast majority of younger folk did show up (80% turnout ages 18-24)[1]. Sure, it's less than the 95+% of people 60 and older, but there's a hell of a lot more baby boomers than there are millennials. The problem isn't as simple as "young people don't vote". [1] http://graphics.wsj.com/brexit-whos-voting-what/?mod=e2fb http://graphics.wsj.com/brexit-whos-voting-what/?mod=e2fb
        CM30 10y ago
        Then I guess its another downside of an aging population and the obsession with money/status/career success over having a family. Gives you more old folk than young ones.
        oarsinsync 10y ago
        > Blaming millennials for not showing up at the poll is a strawman argument, as the vast majority of younger folk did show up (80% turnout ages 18-24)[1] > [1] http://graphics.wsj.com/brexit-whos-voting-what/?mod=e2fb http://graphics.wsj.com/brexit-whos-voting-what/?mod=e2fb I guess nobody followed up on your citation, because the link you supplied clearly states: > Sources: YouGov online poll of 1694 likely voters conducted June 15–17; (demographics); YouGov online poll of 2001 likely voters conducted June 9–10 (economy and immigration); margin of error for both: +/- 3 percentage points Absolutely nothing about the actual vote, just polling predictions.
      - munin 10y ago
        the older generations can show up on voting day because they don't have to work
- mooreds 10y ago
  The demographic problem. Highly recommend reading "The Accidental Superpower" as it explains how this, as well as a few other geopolitical considerations, will shape the next few decades. (Hint: it's not pretty.)
- panic 10y ago
  Blaming people (older people, immigrants, whatever) for our problems isn't productive. Let's figure out what's broken about the systems we're living in instead of alienating the people we should be working with to fix them.
  - fredley 10y ago
    In both the US general election and this referendum, the primary forces at play are emotive campaigning backed by false or at the very least misleading information (in our case: portrayal of immigrants, the '£350m a week' figure that has already had some very serious backpeddling, etc. etc.). We have an electorate that is woefully misinformed for a whole host of reasons. How you address this is beyond me.
    - ajuc 10y ago
      This was also the reason for the voctory of current anti-european and proto-nationalist government in Poland last year. Misinformation, fear campaign, memes, troll farms. It seems in social media age that's how you do politics. Viral marketing means you never have to say you were wrong.
      - jazzyk 10y ago
        I agree the new government in Poland is an embarrassment. But you are mistaken in blaming the electorate. The "misinformation, fear campaign, memes..." have always been around. The primary reason people voted out the previous bunch is corruption and tunneling of the wealth created to a narrow group of people (a problem not limited to Poland only)
    - panic 10y ago
      Honestly I think our best bet is to focus on education and childcare, then try to hold on for a generation. Many parents don't have time to raise their children as well as they'd like. Teachers are underpaid, under-respected and have in many cases had their agency taken away by standardized tests. It's no wonder so many people find it difficult to stay informed when they're starting from so far behind.
- DanBC 10y ago
  > The problem we currently have in politics it demography. I misread that as "demagoguery", and was going to vigorously agree.
- siliconviking 10y ago
  I think a better way to come at this is to assume that on average, most people have given this decision a reasonable amount of thought, young people as well as old people. The debates have been going on for months, and pros and cons have been discussed at great length. Further, I don't think it's fair to underestimate the experience and historic perspective old people have, that young people don't. After all, many of the older people who voted yesterday where around before the EU came about, and are able to factor in that extra information, plus their historic perspective in their decision, which, by definition, makes for a more informed decision. You are right that older people tend to be more conservative, but you yourself may end up being more conservative when you are 90, vs. how conservative you are today, and you may only realize the reasons for it once it happens, and perhaps you will think those are actually quite good reasons, who knows. The bottom line is that if you just attribute the older population's decision to "bad taste" and "shortsightedness", you may not realize the true reason behind their decision, which diminishes your ability to understand and influence others.
  - pyre 10y ago
    > After all, many of the older people who voted yesterday where around before the EU came about, and are able to factor in that extra information, plus their historic perspective in their decision, which, by definition, makes for a more informed decision. Not necessarily. You'll still end up with people making decisions based on looking at the past with rose-coloured glasses, which isn't necessarily a fact-based decision. I think it's also equally likely that people will draw conclusions from economic conditions that had zilch to do with whether the EU existed or not. Thinking that experience necessarily leads to a informed decision ignores the way that humans works.
- junto 10y ago
  No, the problem is that the younger generation is that they don't vote. They whine on Twitter . The only way to take control of the system from within. Today was a very harsh lesson for young Brits. They'll have to live with the outcome of this decision for three rest of their lives. The one positive is that those young people might now be encouraged to actually participate.
- ryandrake 10y ago
  Truth never triumphs — its opponents just die out. - Max Planck Unfortunately, political progress tends to be the same. For some issues, the only way to move forward is to simply wait for enough old people to die off.
- yarrel 10y ago
  And that's how Remain lost.
arethuza 10y ago
I'm just back from Sweden - Gothenburg or Stockholm are starting to look pretty attractive if things go horribly wrong in the UK.
secfirstmd 10y ago
People of Ireland speaking here: -Want to stay in the EU? -Want to trade in the Eurozone? -Enjoy low corporate tax rate of 12.5%? Pro-business government? -Enjoy friendly, well educated, English speaking, Pro-American people, good beer, decent music, nice quality of life, low crime and safe green natural environment? (Look how much fun even our soccer fans are http://www.irishexaminer.com/euro2016/euro2016-banter/10-reasons-why-the-irish-fans-have-won-the-internet-at-euro2016-405576.html http://www.irishexaminer.com/euro2016/euro2016-banter/10-rea...) Invest in Ireland -> http://www.idaireland.com http://www.idaireland.com This has been a public service announcement from the country next door. #irelandlovesyou :)
- cylinder 10y ago
  What are your thoughts on this thread? Some really negative anecdotes about Dublin living: https://www.reddit.com/r/IWantOut/comments/4p9r9l/dublins_skyhigh_rents_have_made_it_one_of_europes/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IWantOut/comments/4p9r9l/dublins_sk...
  - anonymousDan 10y ago
    My god there is some serious whingey nonsense on that thread. Most of the arguments boil down to accommodation being expensive for students in the centre of a relatively wealthy European capital. Well no shit, as if it's not any worse in most other cities. As a software professional you'd be well able to afford it. I do agree there is a shortage of accommodation at the moment, but that's almost certainly a temporary issue. After the property crash in Ireland a few years ago builders and property developers were cast as the root of all evil. As a result (and because banks were broke and so weren't lending for mortgages), housebuilding ground to a halt even though Ireland has the highest birth rate in the EU and most commentators were warning this would lead to problems down the line. And so it has come to pass that now there is a shortage of cheap accommodation, and in particular social housing. However I expect this to resolve itself over the next few years, and the government has already promised to pump money into public housing.
    - secfirstmd 10y ago

mtgx 10y ago

Theresa May would be a scary successor indeed, and may even top Cameron as the worst UK leader. UK needs to vote conservatives out, and it needs to reconsider switching the voting system (this time to a proportional representation one).

tonyedgecombe 10y ago
They probably will at the next election, the trouble is the alternative is looking pretty pathetic.
gadders 10y ago
A referendum was held on proportional representation (one method, at least) and was rejected.
- fnord123 10y ago
  Alternate Voting is not a method of proportional representation. It is another voting scheme. The Liberal Democrats wanted a vote for Proportional Representation and the Conservatives agreed to a referendum, but on the rubbish AV scheme instead. Many many people voted against AV because it wasn't as good as PR and didn't want to change multiple times. PR is superior to AV and FPTP and should be implemented. It shouldn't even have a referendum. It should just be done.
  - tonyedgecombe 10y ago
    Many people voted against AV because the Liberal Democrats proposed it.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > Alternate Voting is not a method of proportional representation Alternative Voting (AV) is a single member district voting system that produces results where the representations of policy views in the elected parliament are more proportional to the views in the electorate than first past the post, and thus is a method of enhancing the proportionality of the election system for a parliament when the status quo is FPTP. It do so less than Single Transferrable Vote (STV) in multimember districts (AV -- known more often to US audiences as Instant Runoff Voting [IRV] -- is just the single-member-district case of STV, which supports any district size). Its relationship to other PR schemes where not all candidates are directly elected by-name by general election voters (the most frequent being Party-List Proportional and Mixed-Member Proportional) is complicated -- those schemes optimize for proportionality of partisan composition of the legislature, but provide weaker accountability of individual politicians to the general electorate. But PR itself isn't a system, its a (continuous valued, not even binary) feature of an electoral system. You can't "implement PR", you can adopt a system that increases (or decreases) the degree to which you have PR.

rdsubhas 10y ago

And how do all these people get voted in?

Shivetya 10y ago

Still trying to understand how austerity can still mean increasing spending. Looking at their expenditures they peaked in 2009 at 51.5% and dropped to lower forties but much of that has been because the economy finally started recovering faster than the government could spend money mostly because of pressure on politicians not to. However the key here is, they never spent less than the year before, simply reduced the amount they increased spending. Increasing spending is not austerity

adventured 10y ago
Simply put, there never was austerity in most of Europe. That's a propaganda line to simultaneously cover the lack of economic growth for nearly a decade, and to use as an excuse to acquire a larger State through even greater spending. You can go line by line down the list of European countries and their government expenditures. Only a few of them reduced spending, most have increased spending. In actual fact, only two or three nations experienced any real austerity, but they all pretend to have. What they're really experiencing, is the total suffocation of economic growth by extreme debt. The exact same thing Japan has been enjoying for a quarter century.

arethuza 10y ago

Boris Johnson is anything but an idiot - that image of a harmless buffoon is a front.

johnchristopher 10y ago
I know next to nothing to Britain and London's politics but I can't trust/don't want to have leaders that have to put up buffoon front to get elected or get traction. Because next time you risk getting a real buffoon. Or worse, it won't matter wether politicians are buffoons or not.
mikekchar 10y ago
Boris Johnson as Prime Minister. Imagine the bicycle lanes... Which is not to say that I disagree with you. As mayor of London he knew what was important and it was not what most people would think is important.
MagnumOpus 10y ago
BoJo was a King's scholar at Eton - meaning he is probably the smartest guy in the room, especially if that room is a Tory party conference room. Which implies him grabbing the leadership and dismantling the UK is not buffoonery, but deliberate. Scary.

darkr 10y ago

> Boris Johnson? A very charismatic idiot. His persona is that of a charismatic bumbling idiot, but idiot he is not. Underneath this persona lies a highly intelligent, disingenuous, manipulative and calculating operator. I genuinely think that he didn't believe in Brexit; rather he saw a potential route into number 10 and took a gamble on it.

corin_ 10y ago
Even his choice of idiot persona is an act of genius in terms of how well it has served him.
- junto 10y ago
  George Bush springs to mind. Though maybe he actually was a patsy.
  - oldmanjay 10y ago
    Let's be fair here. Liberal bias requires people to either believe anyone with conservative leanings MUST be stupid or the received wisdom that liberal philosophies are naturally correct must be incomplete. There's no real choice here, every single person on earth will assume everyone else is stupid before assuming they may be wrong.
    - qdog 10y ago
      That's the exact opposite of liberal, "open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values." There are plenty of intelligent people in all parties, disagreeing with them doesn't make them idiots. Greenspan comes to mind, I think his basic market beliefs are wrong, but don't think he's an idiot, I have read his book. GW is a lot closer to idiot level because of his demeanor AND his actions, but let's be serious few actual idiots make it that far, just not all of them are way above average intelligence.
      - SEJeff 10y ago

DonaldFisk 10y ago

I'm no fan of hers, but home secretaries seem to get house trained by the security service (MI5) soon after taking office. The home secretaries of the previous Blair/Brown Labour administration were also dreadful. Someone once said that every home secretary since Roy Jenkins has been worse than the previous one. And Boris Johnson is no idiot. It's part of his act.