Wednesday, 27 Nov 2024

Boris Johnson doesn’t give a toss about Brexit. So what is he really up to?

Whatever happens next, we're not about to get the Brexit we were promised.

We're going to get an attack on the sovereignty of Parliament, promises to relinquish control of our borders, and a screaming economic u-turn that are all the precise opposite of what 17.4m people voted for.

But you need to stop worrying about Brexit. All the evidence shows Johnson could not care less about it – to him, it is merely a gateway to his real goal.

After he became president of the Oxford Union by pretending to be a social democrat, Johnson wrote a treatise about how to seize power. He talked of the need to "coddle the self-deception of the stooge" selected to help him.

And so as you watch his Cabinet meet, as you see the Hard Brexit wingnuts preen at the "victory" they think they have won, as you watch the Lefties have a nervous breakdown trying to resolve the idea of brown-skinned Tories, remember that they are his "deluded collection of stooges". Each and every one of them has been persuaded that Johnson can provide that which they long for – a justification for their feverishly bonkers ideologies.

Every newspaper editor who praises his can-do Brexit rhetoric, every minister enthused by promises of cash and crackdowns, every opponent driven mad arguing with his illogical assertions, is playing right into his pudgy paws.

"But Boris promises to deliver Brexit!" you may cry. Yes, and he's previously promised loyalty to Theresa May, faithfulness to his wives and to disport himself in front of bulldozers. Believe his claims of 20,000 new police officers if you wish, but as Mayor of London he accepted £600m of police cuts and shut down stations. Your belief flies in the face of all evidence to the contrary.

Since becoming PM, Johnson has promised to abolish the 'backstop', which would simply kick the Northern Ireland border issue into the long grass of a future EU trade deal, where the conundrum still cannot be solved. He has pledged a boost for GM crops, which would endanger all crop exports to Europe and mean that border would potentially have not just customs checks but also a massive decontamination zone. He has pledged freeports, which could mean customs checks INSIDE the UK.

But Johnson has got where he is by selling us unicorns for 30 years. There is no reason for him to stop now. Everything he and his government say this summer is pure marketing – unmitigated bullshit.

He has already begun the general election campaign this column first predicted back in March, and done it before any of those pesky election-spending laws kick in, or inconvenient rules about Facebook ads.

Which means he is thinking several moves ahead of both his friends AND his enemies.

The plan is not to get the Brexit deal that Vote Leave promised. Nor is it to let Parliament defeat him, like it did Theresa, and then ask the country if it'd like to re-elect a powerless loser.

Johnson will call the vote before losing becomes a possibility. During the summer break, when Parliament can do nothing, he'll blame the EU. In September he'll blame the MPs, and then the civil servants, and in between take great chunks out of Labour's inability to stop arguing with his character and go for his ideas.

And then, as October 31 looms, and unicorns are just around the corner, he'll ask you to vote for the man who says he can see them.

If that happens – if he can rebrand those upholding the law as extremists, if the Tories can grab the Brexit enthusiasts and persuade a few million to vote for an end to knife crime and fair taxation – then the expensive, pointless and suicidal Brexit that not a single voter wanted which will follow will be nothing but a footnote to what comes next.

Since he was a child vowing to become 'world king', Johnson's aim was to seize power, not use it. As he has become more likely to get it, he has attracted those whose uses for it are so bad they've never bothered to put themselves up for a vote.

The only people who benefit from a Hard Brexit crash in the pound are billionaire currency speculators. The only ones who gain from an abrupt end to our trade with the EU are those who wish to buy our goods for less. And the only interests satisfied by fewer regulations are those for whom rules and laws are an unwelcome brake on their criminality.

Those around him – those who have planned, campaigned, commentated and lobbied for all those things for years – are going to seize the opportunity they and their clients have waited for.

And, if he is elected, they'll have at least 5 years in which to rape our rights.

They'll start with Muslim rights. Then transgender ones. Then voter 'fraud', banking regulations, migrant registers, and making the NHS more 'competitive'. By the time you notice we're the money-laundering capital of the world and the NHS is being sponsored by McDonalds it'll be too late.

Maybe you think that's a little extreme. Well, so do I. They intend to get away with it by painting you and I as extremists – that by wanting a socialised health system, to walk around unmolested, for the police to operate in public rather than in secret, we are the lunatics.

It is not Boris Johnson you need to worry about. And Brexit is just chaff, to get him into position. It is the great harm that would be done to the British way of life, to our civil and democratic institutions, to the United Kingdom itself if he wins a general election that is pitched as The People vs Parliament.

He is weak, so the plan is to look strong, and then get you to make him stronger.

Just because that is the plan does not mean it has to happen. Remember what advertising does, remember what usefule stooges do, and remember: Johnson's great weakness is women.


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