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.

Anarchy In the U.K. (Again)

Brexit is coming.  An the United Kingdom is completely unprepared for it.

The British Parliament has been trying to find a deal that would allow the U.K. to leave the European Union with some sort of financial or economic ties with that bloc, and every effort to come up with a deal that would spare the British people an abrupt transition to being left on its own has failed. The U.K. is scheduled to leave the European Union this coming Friday (April 12) and Tory Prime Minister Theresa May is scrambling to get a deal working with . . . the Labour opposition. Led by a guy some of called a Marxist.  Yeah, that'll work out fine.

Many of the British people who support Brexit pine for an imperial past, a strain that has persisted  long after the Empire was dismantled.  People saw that strain fifty years ago when the British sent troops to put down a pro-independence faction in one of their remaining colonies . . . the West Indian island of Anguilla.  It was obvious when Margaret Thatcher allied herself so closely to Ronald Reagan and dragged her heels negotiating the fate of Hong Kong with China.  And of course, there was the Falklands War.  Britain is still a global power in terms of its influence and multilateral activity, but it's going to end up being a global pretender, the way things are going with a backward scheme like Brexit.

The only consolation I get from watching the Brexit controversy is that there's at least one national government out in the world as screwed up as the American government.    

May In June

After denying that she would seek an early election in Britain, Prime Minister Theresa May is now doing just that, calling Parliament to stand for a vote in June in an effort to shore up public support for her Conservative (Tory) Party.

May wants a larger majority in the House of Commons for the Tories to strengthen Britain's position going into negotiations with the European Union over British withdrawal from that body.   She doesn't have a solid mandate with the current Tory caucus, and she hopes that she can put Labour aside for awhile, as that party is spectacularly weak despite - or even because of - underfunded social programs and the socialistic Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party.

Right now, the only thing that's stopping May from getting that solid Conservative majority she wants is the party of the Liberal Democrats, a left-of-center group that opposes a hard, clean break from the European Union and demanding a "Brexit" strategy that will produce "a Britain that is open, tolerant and united."  They can do it, too; they forced the formation of a coalition government in 2010 after the Conservatives failed to gain a majority in Parliament, which involved a lot of compromising to get anything done.

As for May, the shock was not that she broke her promise to avoid another election until 2020 but that she broke it so soon.

European politics are about to get even more interesting.