So Long, Boris

A day after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced hat he would fight on, he finally gave in.  He resigned his office on Thursday.  His last-minute defiance suggested the idea of Robert E. Lee vowing to fight on for the Southern cause on April 8, 1865.

The Prime Minister decided to call it quits after one British Cabinet secretary after another handed in their resignations.  The Tories were beginning to desert him left and right; ironically, they had lost confidence in him after he won a "no confidence" vote.  Johnson's resignation also means that he is stepping down as leader of the Conservative Party, so a replacement for both of his positions is due soon. It is likely that the policies of the Tory government will continue for now, most importantly the policy of aid to Ukraine.

It is wall good and fine to think that Britain can move on calmly into the future without the whiff of scandal or incompetence, but as I noted last month, many of Johnson's anti-democratic measures may remain in place.  But Johnson's resignation and his ability to move on to the next stage of his life without regret are still preferable in comparison to Donald Trump's refusal to hit the showers.  Johnson said he was not indispensable; Trump, with his Reggie Mantle-type superiority complex, believes that the Republic and the Republicans will fall without him.  The Tories, recognizing Johnson's baggage, decided that ending their support for him was the only way to save the party; in America, the GOP has only doubled down on supporting Trump despite his mishandling of COVID and his attempt to overthrow the government because, well, he helped get Roe v. Wade overturned, he stuck it to the Iranians, and he lives rent-free in the Democrats' heads.  The Tories are sane enough not to stick with Johnson; the Republicans are too zonkers to abandon Trump.

What happens in both Britain and America now is anyone's guess.

Boris The Downer

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his hair survived a "no confidence" vote held by the Conservative Party in Parliament yesterday, getting 31 votes more than the 180 Conservative votes he needed to stay in office. 

Johnson may have avoided being forced out of office, but with so many Conservative Members of Parliament having voted against him, experts expect Johnson's remaining days at No. 10 Downing Street to be numbered.  Possibly a smaller number than there are days left in the year.

Johnson's exit can't come soon enough for Labour and Liberal Democrat activists who accuse the prime minister of what Trump tried to do in the United States - undermine democracy.  Johnson's attempts to subvert the democratic process in Britain have been numerous. He suspended Parliament to push through a Brexit day that would escape closer scrutiny back in 2019, but had to back down after the United Kingdom's highest court ruled it unlawful. He's also attempted to pack parliamentary committees - including the Liaison Committee, the only committee in Parliament that can summon and question the prime minister - with cronies who will do his bidding.  

In three short years, Johnson, already in trouble with the British public for flouting of his own COVID restrictions by having office parties, has exhausted the patience of many Britons in many ways, from introducing a bill to strip Britons of dual nationalities (mostly British-born children of immigrants) of their British citizenship to pushing for - yes - voter identification legislation.  "What ties all these moves together," Benjamin Ward wrote in Human Rights Watch in 2020, "is a desire by the government to be free to act no matter the cost to the rights of ordinary people."

Now you know why the Brits have kept the monarchy.

It's nice to think that British democracy will recover once Johnson is gone, but, just as Trump left his own ideology to prosper on its own, Johnson may have set up a way for a future Tory leader to make the United Kingdom - the most stable country in the world - a democracy in name only. 

England's Dreaming

In automotive terms, a variant is a station wagon derived from a sedan design - like a sedan, only larger and a bigger deal.  In medical terms, a variant of a virus is like the original virus . . . only larger and a bigger deal. 

That's what the United Kingdom is dealing with now - a variant strain of COVID that is no more deadly than the original virus but spreads faster and is easier to catch.  It's shown up in southeastern England - including London - and may have already shown up elsewhere on the planet.  Most countries are barring travel from the U.K. for at least two days.

This is happening as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is trying to finalize Britain's withdrawal from the European Union even as he tries to quell a COVID outbreak he originally downplayed before he caught the COVID bug himself.  Oh yeah, and he's had to ban public Christmas celebrations. 

The irony in all this is the Britain, which once ruled an empire with colonies, territories, dominions and dependencies in every time zone on earth and always took pride in being an island separate from the rest of Europe, is no isolated and separated from the rest of the world.  Which means that the British people are pretty much . . . stranded on their island.

And Gilligan is in charge.

Trump was the first nationalist-populist leader to go down.  If there is a God up in heaven  - or at least a mechanism available to get a no-confidence vote in Parliament - Johnson will be the second.

Boris the Victor

Since the House Judiciary Committee forwarded articles of impeachment against Trump to the full House, and since his impeachment is as foregone a conclusion ad is acquittal in the Senate is, I won't talk about that today.  Instead, let's look at Boris Johnson, the prime minister of the United Kingdom.

His Conservative Party's smashing victory over Labour in parliamentary elections on December 12 revealed two things; the Brits are united against socialism but divided by nationalism.  Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn may have taken a stand against British withdrawal from the European Union, but he took a bigger stand for greater nationalization of public services, and his staunch socialist stance led to a crushing defeat.  The British public couldn't see how spending so much money and ceding so much private enterprise to London under a Labour government was going to improve life in Britain. But with the relative success of the Scottish National Party in the elections, a growing nationalism may fracture the Anglo-Scottish union that has survived for over three hundred years, with strong devotion to the nation over the British state possibly setting England asunder from Scotland as well as the other way around.  Scottish nationalism is particularly potent, given the country's efforts to regain its independence (though, ironically, the formal 1707 union of England and Scotland was made possible in part by the Scottish House of Stuart succeeding to the English throne a century before that) and find a way to stay in the European Union.  

As for Corbyn's loss, it certainly sends a signal to the Democratic Party in the United States not to nominate someone too liberal to oppose Trump.  American liberals may not heed the warning, however, because Corbyn had problems that Americans can't relate to.  He called for renationalizing passenger rail transport, while Amtrak is already nationalized (and it may even be in better shape than British Rail, if you can believe that!), and he advocated strengthening the single-payer National Health Service, while candidates like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are still trying to simply establish such a thing here. Also, Corbyn was accused of anti-Semitism, something no one in the Democratic Party has to worry about.  Corbyn's program was far more radical than what Warren and Sanders are proposing, but the Brits, being used to some forms of socialism and government services (the BBC, for example) that are anathema to Americans, found Labour proposing socialism too far left for even continental Western Europe, never mind Britain.  In short,Warren and Sanders are not the leftists that Corbyn is.  But they're still too leftist for many American, and as I said before, the purpose of getting rid of Trump is not to replace reactionary conservatism with socialism (Trump isn't even a reactionary, he's not enlightened enough to be called that!) but to replace Trumpism with what came before it and worry about going left later.  If Democrats go for a sweeping agenda to get rid of Trump that's even remotely like the one the Labour came up with to get rid of Johnson, they'll be in big trouble for 2020.

Johnson will now be able to being the Brexit process on January 31, 2020.  It will be a long process; by the time Britain is finally out of the European Union, the U.S. will have gotten out of everything else already.

Nothing To Laugh About

When I was a kid, back in elementary school in the early seventies, I was taught that America was the greatest democracy on earth, even as the President of the United States was undermining it with his spies and his attack on the press, which my parents and my teachers blissfully shielded me from, seeing as such presidential conduct would be so soul-crushing to a seven-year-old.  Now that we have a President dong far worse than Nixon ever did, including acting like, well, a seven-year-old, we have world leaders at international summits like the recent NATO summit laughing at us.  

On the left is Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, who got the ball rolling with his jokes about Donald Trump rambling on too much at his press conference, which clearly amused British prime minster Boris Johnson, second from left.  Bear in mind that they both serve a queen who has been sitting on the British throne since Winston Churchill was prime minister last, and she's a head of state no one ever elected.  And isn't that the queen's daughter whose back is turned to the camera?  In between Johnson and Princess Anne is French president Emmanuel Macron, an elected head of state whose office is designed to be like that of a king.  But at least the Brits love their queen.  (Prince Andrew, not so much.)   The French haven't shown Macron much love lately.

But here's the point: All three of these leaders - even Johnson - are much more mature and responsible leaders than Donald J. Trump, which is why they're laughing at him.  The United States is supposed to be the world's greatest democracy, yet Trump is being laughed at by two prime ministers serving a queen, the daughter of said queen, and a president who has the trappings of a king.

It's enough of a shame for America to be laughed at, when we're supposed to be the world's greatest democracy.  But while Trump deserves to be laughed at, other world leaders shouldn't be laughing at us; rather, they should be furious with us.  The United States, under Trump's watch, has withdrawn from fighting climate change, abandoned the fight against the Islamic State in Syria, cozied up with the Russians in a way that goes beyond détente, undermined the very organization these leaders were at a summit for, and generally made the world a more horrid place because we're no longer content enough to just make our own nation more horrid with lax gun laws, a poor education system, and a lousy health care system.  Everything America has done to the world under Trump - and Americans who support him are also to blame for being partners in crime - calls for swift, severe, punitive action against the United States.  What America does to its own people - voter suppression, for example - ought to be enough for a boycott against the U.S., like the one against South Africa for apartheid.  I'll repeat what James Howard Kunstler said in 1996: "I begin to come to the disquieting conclusion that we Americans are these days a wicked people who deserve to be punished."

Oh yeah, to any of my fellow Americans who are ashamed that world leaders are laughing at Trump, well, we could have elected in 2016 a President that world leaders wouldn't have laughed at.  But, as I recall, when that presidential candidate - my candidate - was running, you couldn't stop laughing at him!

In case you haven't figured it out already, I'm in no laughing mood.

Brexit Redux Redux

The British are doing their process of withdrawal from the European Union over again.  And again.  And again.  And yet . . . again.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has worked out a deal for British withdrawal from the European Union - "Brexit" - that phases in new tax and trade regulations gradually and offers a deal over goods crossing the U.K.-Irish border that separates British Ulster from the rest of Ireland, which boils down to a streamlined set of rules that avoids unnecessary disruptions.  (If I tried to explain the new Brexit deal in detail, I'd be here too long.)  Instead of pleasing enough Members of Parliament (MPs) to vote for the detail, Johnson angered more MPs than satisfied them, with the Northern Irish Democratic Unionists fearing that the deal would allow for Irish unification under the Republic of Ireland rather than allow Ulster to remain in the United Kingdom, and Scottish MPs increasing their demands for Scotland's independence.  And Labour, which wanted the United Kingdom to remain in the European Union (EU), doesn't like the deal at any rate.  Parliament instead passed a resolution requiring Johnson to ask the EU for yet another delay, beyond the current October 31 deadline.  Johnson has vowed not to ask for another delay, which means the U.K. could crash out of the EU, Johnson could call an election to expand his conservative majority in Parliament and get Brexit passed at a time when the Tories are ahead in the polls, or have an election after a hypothetical crashing-out.  People in Britain are sick of this ongoing soap opera, and I'm tried of following it.

I have to hand it to Brits opposed to Brexit, though . . . they have plenty of power to block Johnson's initiatives.  In America, whenever Trump wants to pull our of anything - Syria being the latest example - Trump pulls out, and despite protests form his opponents, that's the end of it.  Thee's no appeal to a Trump decision.  Not even on protecting the Kurds, as Mitch McConnell is about to find out.     

Boris On the Brink

Boris Johnson - he of the messy blond Beatle haircut - made an effort to get a no-deal Brexit plan through Parliament and got . . . no deal.  The House of Commons wouldn't go along with it.  Then when he tried to call for snap elections to get something resembling legitimacy for his prime ministership, Labour Leader of the Opposition Jeremy Corbyn blocked the effort.  Johnson's efforts were stymied by defections from his own Conservative, or Tory, party, and numerous Tories resigned their Member of Parliament (MP) seats.  Two of them were relatives of famous British prime ministers.  One was the grandson of Winston Churchill, and the other was the brother of . . . Boris Johnson. 

The United Kingdom may still leave the European Union, but Johnson's efforts to subvert Parliament - including an effort to dissolve it - are being met with resistance from a bipartisan group of MPs, the sort of national interest you do not see among Republicans in Congress when Donald Trump tries to buy Greenland or, I don;t know, occupy the Rhineland.  British lawmakers stand up to Johnson when he tries to pull a fast one to take the U.K. out of the European Union.  Here, Trump can force the United States to make pullouts of its own, like withdrawals form the Paris Agreement and the Iran nuclear deal, and that's the end of it.  No one can figure out how to appeal a Trump decision.

Just remember, the British perfected democracy long before we did.

Boris the Primer

That creepy-crawly guy in Britain with the messy Beatle haircut just became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson assumed the top job in the mother county yesterday, and his pugnacious, uncultured approach to politics may be the only British thing that's more difficult to swallow than mutton.  Johnson has long been compared to Trump for his hair and his attitude, and some of his beliefs are in line with the Trumpster as well.  He wants to make the United Kingdom great again, which means withdrawing from the European Union and making his country a force to be reckoned with once agin, even though he's getting off to a shaky start as he's having the same pesky trouble with Khamenei and Rouhani in Iran over harassed British oil tankers that Anthony Eden had with Nasser in Egypt over control of the Suez Canal.  He has to deal with Iran while honoring the nuclear deal brokered primarily by the United States, which has since withdrawn from said deal, but he needs to repair cracks in the 150-year special relationship with the U.S. brought about by differences between Trump and Johnson's predecessor, Theresa May.

And then there's Brexit.  May couldn't get approval for a deal that allows Britain to withdraw from the European Union that maintains Britain's obligation to abide by trade and border-crossing rules set by the EU that Britain cannot change, nor could she secure a deal that allows Britain to get out without having to adhere to EU riles at all - a soft Brexit or a hard Brexit.  Johnson has vowed to get the U.K. out of the EU even of it means no deal at all - something May was skittish about.  He's ready to plunge right ahead (or "straightaway," as the Brits like to say) like a bull in a china shop - he's fired half of the Tory Cabinet - and the next couple of months and years are going to mean anarchy in the U.K. like the Sex Pistols couldn't imagine.

Good luck, Brits, you're going to need it.  Now you'll know what it's like to live in a country run by a lunatic like we Yanks already do.