Brexit Redux: The Dude Punches Back

The New Yorker with the wild yellow hair has done it again.

No, not that New Yorker with the wild yellow hair, the other one, the one with the funny accent, no, not that funny accent, the other funny accent. You know, the accent some folks have in exotic Olde England, you know, not the billionaire one from Celebrity Apprentice, but the one who could be in Downton Abbey as a middle class grocer. Yes, Boris Johnson has done it. He has proven himself a master politician, possessed of nerves of steel, with other key organs to match. As a New Yorker, myself, once with wild yellow hair, I like Boris "The Dude" Johnson. He and Trump renew my faith, severely tested of late, in the electorate's common sense and patriotism.

Britain's December 12 elections proved a stunner. Johnson's Conservatives have won a dominating majority in Parliament and a clear mandate to put paid to all that destructive toing-and-froing over Brexit. The message from voters was clear: Get Britain--especially England--out of the clutches and jaws of that monstrous EU swamp creature! The election also administered a huge rebuke to the Deep State, and to that desiccated and imbecilic anti-semite, the Communist Corbyn.

I am not British, and do not play a Brit on the internet or anywhere else. I have zero British ancestry; I cannot trace my roots in America back to the Mayflower, unless that sturdy vessel made a North African detour. I have visited Britain many times and always enjoyed the history, the book stores, the museums, the conversations, and even--oh blasphemy!--the food, especially the cheeses. In my overseas life and at the UN, I had many British friends and always liked their company even when they were giving me a hard time about something. As I have stated often, Britain is perhaps the most consequential nation to have existed since, well, at least since the fall of the Roman Empire. Britain and its creations, including great places such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the USA, have transformed the world; they are probably the best places on earth in which to live--certainly as a Jew I wouldn't live anywhere else. Those countries are still the world's repositories of freedom, that despite the ceaseless assault on the British traditions and culture which made them so.

OK, now to election night. I watched much of it unfold on the BBC. I enjoyed very much the obvious pain that the presenters on that once enviable and now execrable institution were suffering when presenting the news of the Torylanche. They tried to spin it this way and that to minimize the victory but, in the end, they couldn't. So they tried as much as possible to ignore it, focusing on the electoral triumph in Scotland of the loopy Nicola Sturgeon of the SNP and on the losses suffered by the DUP in Northern Ireland.

They, however, indirectly did hit on one thing accurately: this was a victory for England. The "Scottish" voters--more on that--decided to go with the establishment and stick with the bromides and false promises of the leftist establishment. The results might just give another fillip to the drive for Scotland's "independence," defined as trading the benevolent "rule" of London for the clammy and suffocating hands of the hideous and failing nanny-state of Brussels. I noticed that Sturgeon's victory speech, delivered in English, spent a great deal of time thanking all those from outside who have made Scotland their home. That made me think that, despite what some official records might claim, we have a significant demographic change underway in Scotland, and the SNP has decided to capitalize on it for opposition to Brexit. This is a so-called "nationalist" party which has decided, it seems, to have given up on a Scottish nationalism based on Scots, in favor of one that is a melange of outside flavors and colors, oops, colours. We'll see how well that goes. Let me know where I am wrong.

Wales went Tory. That was somewhat surprising, but again I suspect demography might have played a role there. I wonder how many Welch Welch there are in Wales. I suspect, again, don't know, that as London and other big cities have joined the growing club of unlivable Western cities, thanks to leftist policies, people from those places have decamped to Wales.

I just don't know enough about the situation in Northern Ireland to be even wrong, must less right and perceptive, so I won't try any deep or long range analysis. Having thrown out that qualifier, I, however, think voters there might have been frightened by hyperbole from the Remainers about what would happen with the Irish border and access to the Republic and, hence, to the EU. As I said, I don't know, so don't hold me to that.

Anyhow, this was a victory for common sense and patriotism. Johnson now has a clear mandate to act. It seems that he is ready to do so. I hope that's true.

Oh, one more thing.

I heard some Conservative "thinkers" dinging Johnson for not being a "true" philosophical conservative, and doing it in terms similar to what we heard here about Trump from the same sort of dilettante conservatives. I have written about this before (here, here) and noted that I just don't care that Trump is not a perfect conservative. While we wait around to find one, the country goes to hell. I will say the same thing about Johnson. Both men have tapped into the unease and discontent of average people who see their culture under assault, their values ridiculed and labelled as racist, their jobs exported, and their children taught rubbish. Both men seem to have some practical solutions that might just work in the real world. Certainly deregulation and tax cuts have done wonders for the US economy and, I suspect, they would do the same for Britain. If Scotland and N. Ireland don't want to participate, fine, that's on them. As I have said before, were I English, I would support Scottish independence--better said, I would support England's independence.

Go Dude, go!