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. 

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.