The content is quite depressing and at least somewhat relevant to our own situation in the US. It’s pretty clear that Britain – and other Western nations – are even further down this cultural change road than we are. But we’re on the same basic path. One thing I learned from the video of which I’d been previously unaware is that Boris Johnson – a conservative PM, at least nominally – ran on a platform of reducing the enormous numbers of “migrants” entering the country and yet, while in power, did exactly the opposite. Apparently this is the reason that in the next election the Labour Party is projected to do very well.

Why? After all, they will be worse on the subject, won’t they? The speaker (Matt Goodwin) contends that it’s because the right is so frustrated and angry at the betrayal by the Tories that apathy will rule and they won’t vote at all. It’s not that they’ll be voting for Labour.

But not voting at all would – and probably will – facilitate a huge Labour victory and bring about exactly the results those voters are against. The idea is that some day the conservatives may end up regrouping and be more conservative in fact and not just in name. But when? And by that time, what will be left of Britain?

Here’s the video:

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After resisting calls to step down for nearly two days, Johnson admitted to the world’s media outside No. 10 Downing Street in London that “it is clearly now the will of the parliamentary Conservative Party that there should be a new leader and a new prime minister.”

“The process of that should begin now. The timetable should be announced next week,” added Johnson, who went on to thank British voters who propelled the Conservatives to their largest House of Commons majority for nearly four decades in the 2019 general election — a result Johnson had repeatedly cited as he sought to cling to power.

Things can change very quickly in politics.

Johnson was elected because of Brexit, and in a way that was his single mission and his raison d’être. He is a flamboyant and unusual character, and some of that is what brought him down. At least, that’s the superficial reason. The deeper one may be that once Brexit had been done, he seems to have governed mostly as a liberal.

That’s certainly what Mark Steyn thinks:

The post Boris Johnson resigns appeared first on The New Neo.

I think the latter, and so does Melanie Phillips, who certainly knows more about it than I do:

Boris Johnson’s decision to quit as prime minister of the United Kingdom followed unprecedented scenes in the British parliament this week, as he clung on to power despite the resignation of more than 50 of his ministers in an attempt to force him out.

The immediate cause of the revolt was a series of last straws over his perceived personal dishonesty—first by breaking his own COVID laws and, most recently, lying about his promotion of a “sex-pest” Member of Parliament.

The deeper issue was a profound disillusionment among those who had voted him into power for delivering Brexit. These constitutents concluded that he had failed to use Britain’s newly recovered independence to free up the country’s capacity for progress and prosperity.

Nor was he resisting the culture war being waged upon core values, particularly the loss of control over illegal immigration and the trashing of Britain’s history and identity.

He’s quitting as head of the Conservative (Tory) party, but he says he’s staying till October as Prime Minister. Phillips thinks he might be persuaded to shorten that timetable to avoid being a protracted lame duck. There certainly is no dearth of party members calling for him to step down much more quickly.

I don’t agree with a good deal of the rest of Phillips’ piece, which is a comparison of Trump, Netanyahu, and Johnson, but I do agree that the problem with Johnson and the reason he’s being forced out goes much deeper than the scandals.

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It is looking increasingly unlikely Johnson can withstand this onslaught of resignations, prompted by yet another scandal. This latest scandal involves the Conservative deputy chief whip, Chris Pincher, who was forced to resign last week amid allegations he got drunk at a private club and groped two men. That might have been the end of it, but the debacle resurfaced other allegations of sexual misconduct against Pincher, including one from 2019, when Pincher served in the foreign office…officials confirmed that Johnson was, in fact, aware of some of the allegations against Pincher.

Johnson apologized Tuesday for appointing Pincher, saying it was a “mistake,” in hindsight, to name him deputy chief whip. But it looks to have been too little too late. On Tuesday evening, two of Johnson’s top senior officials, finance minister Rishi Sunak and health secretary Sajid Javid, both resigned from the cabinet, calling Johnson’s integrity into question. Their move set off the slew of resignations happening now — more than 35 as of Wednesday, with possibly more to come.

Both Javid and Sunak are major figures in the Conservative Party who may have their own designs on leadership, so their departures were already going to be hard to overcome. Johnson, of course, replaced those ministers. But British media is reporting that some of Johnson’s top cabinet officials are currently mobilizing to convince the prime minister that it’s time to go…

“Partygate” is largely what brought Johnson to this point. Last year, allegations started emerging of Downing Street officials hosting boozy, in-person parties when England was under very strict lockdown rules. Johnson initially denied any knowledge of the parties, but more photos and stories started trickling out, and “Partygate” refused to go away. Juicy details aside, the scandal is fairly straightforward: The people in charge of making and enforcing Covid-19 rules were themselves breaking them.

Johnson survived a no-confidence vote in June, which apparently protects him from another until a year has passed since the earlier one. That’s why his own party is now trying to talk him into voluntarily resigning.

Johnson got elected in order to guide Brexit, and after that I think he outlived his usefulness. COVID was a disaster. He also has always been a wild and crazy guy, and so these scandals shouldn’t have been the least bit surprising or unexpected. He’s become an albatross around the neck of his party, but he’s a stubborn guy who may want to hold on to power past his pull date.

The post Is Boris Johnson finally on the way out? appeared first on The New Neo.

…58.6% of Conservative MPs backed him — a worse result than former Prime Minister Theresa May, who had the support of 63% of her lawmakers (200, in a much smaller parliamentary party) when she faced a confidence vote in 2018.

May survived just six months further in the job, before ultimately being forced to resign.

A quick survey of the articles on this indicates that they say something similar: Johnson won narrowly, and it means he lacks political clout going forward.

I consider the parliamentary system somewhat difficult to fully understand. But it seems to me that 58% from his own party, although low, isn’t so very terrible and isn’t going to inevitably be fatal to his ability to hold on. That said, Johnson has been a big disappointment to me as PM. His fairly strict policies on COVID lockdown for the general public, as well as his relative lenience on the Floyd-type riots and their destructive nature in the UK, were two things I hadn’t expected of him.

At any rate, he lives to fight another day. He’s also continues to face a scandal that could help to sink him in the not-too-distant future. Here’s the story on that; it’s known as “partygate.”

The post Boris Johnson: well, it may not be <i>confidence</i> exactly… appeared first on The New Neo.

Also some good news: Boris Johnson is out of the hospital. He will be recuperating further at Chequers, the official country residence of British prime ministers.

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“The Prime Minister has been moved this evening from intensive care back to the ward, where he will receive close monitoring during the early phase of his recovery,” a spokesman said on Thursday. “He is in extremely good spirits.”

I bet he is.

He has been sitting up in bed but could still be out of action for at least a month, according to reports.

For someone like Johnson, backing off from work will be hard. But he needs to be careful not to push himself.

The post Good news on Boris Johnson appeared first on The New Neo.

Boris Johnson has been moved to intensive care after his coronavirus symptoms worsened, Downing Street have confirmed.

The Prime Minister was admitted to St Thomas’ hospital in Westminster on Sunday after his coronavirus symptoms persisted for 10 days.

After tests and observation, his doctors advised that he be admitted to intensive care around 7pm.

A statement from Number 10 said: “Over the course of this afternoon, the condition of the Prime Minister has worsened and, on the advice of his medical team, he has been moved to the Intensive Care Unit at the hospital.

According to the article, once a person with COVID goes to intensive care, that person’s survival chances are 50/50.

Johnson’s case is upsetting on so many levels, and not just the political ones. One would imagine he has had the best of care (whatever that standard is in the UK). He was in the hospital when his condition worsened. He’s only 55 and has no known previous health problems except overweight. According to the article, he’s 5’9″ and at one point years ago weighed about 234 pounds, but has lost considerable weight in recent years although he remains “slightly overweight.” But slight overweight shouldn’t be a bid risk factor, and he’s also “an avid runner and cycler.”

I fervently hope he recovers.

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“To all our Jewish friends, neighbors, and relatives, wherever you are in the world, let me wish you a very happy Hanukah,” said Johnson…

…Today, as Britain’s Jews seek to drive back the darkness of resurgent anti-Semitism, you have every decent person in this country fighting by your side.”

“Because Britain would not be Britain without its Jewish community.”

Some biographical notes on Boris Johnson’s own rather diverse heritage: did you know that Johnson had a paternal great-grandfather named Ali Kemal who was a Turkish writer and politician during the Ottoman Empire?:

Kemal was a journalist who travelled widely and took his holidays in other countries. On one of several visits to Switzerland, he met and fell in love with an Anglo-Swiss girl, Winifred Brun, the daughter of Frank Brun by his marriage to Margaret Johnson. They were married in Paddington, London, Middlesex, on 11 September 1903.

Early in his life, Kemal had acquired strong liberal democratic convictions, which caused him to be exiled from the Ottoman Empire under Abdul Hamid II, but immediately after the end of the Sultan’s personal rule in July 1908, he became one of the most prominent figures in Ottoman journalistic and political life. Because of his opposition to the Young Turks who had made the revolution, he spent most of the following decade in opposition.

Much more at the link, but I think it’s interesting that Boris Johnson is also a journalist as well as a politician.

But Boris Johnson’s heritage is more diverse than that. He had a maternal great-grandfather who was a Russian Jew:

Johnson’s maternal great-grandfather was a Russian Jewish immigrant named Elias Avery Lowe. Lowe was not a practicing Jew but was descendant of a strictly Orthodox Jewish rabbi from Lithuania…

Throughout his political career, Johnson has been a strong advocate for Israel. Writing for The Jewish Chronicle, Daniella Peled reported in 2007 that Johnson is, “an enemy of politically correct anti-Zionism and immensely proud of his own Jewish ancestry.” She quoted Johnson saying, “I feel Jewish when I feel the Jewish people are threatened or under attack, that’s when it sort of comes out. When I suddenly get a whiff of antisemitism, it’s then that you feel angry and protective.”

In addition to his Jewish ancestry, Johnson has even stronger ties to Israel through his Jewish stepmother, Jennifer Kidd Johnson, who married his father Stanley in 1981.

In 1984, Johnson, age 20, and his sister Rachel spent six weeks in Israel, volunteering on Kibbutz Kfar Hanasi, approximately 22 miles north of the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel.

Quite a contrast with Corbyn.

[NOTE: Here’s a look at Kemal from an Armenian perspective. Interesting. That article also mentions that Kemal was “the son of a Circassian slave and a Turkish business magnate.” And if you want to know something about Circassian slaves, see this:

A large percentage of officials in the Ottoman government were bought slaves, raised free, and integral to the success of the Ottoman Empire from the 14th century into the 19th. Many slave officials themselves owned numerous slaves, although the Sultan himself owned by far the most. By raising and specially training slaves as officials in palace schools such as Enderun, where they were taught to serve the Sultan and other educational subjects, the Ottomans created administrators with intricate knowledge of government, and fanatic loyalty…

Circassians, Syrians, and Nubians were the three primary races of females who were sold as sex slaves in the Ottoman Empire. Circassian girls were described as fair and light-skinned and were frequently enslaved by Crimean Tatars then sold to Ottoman empire to live and serve in a Harem. They were the most expensive, reaching up to 500 pounds sterling, and the most popular with the Turks.]

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Maybe the change will be events, or demographics. But other change or lack thereof will depend on what the new leadership on the left decides is the proper course correction, as well as personalities. For example, how much of their resounding defeat comes from Jeremy Corbyn having been an abominable and especially far-leftist candidate? Will the lesson they end up learning be to run someone smoother and more appealing, whose leftism is more cleverly hidden?

I don’t know tons about politics in the UK, but I know that many people say that the Tories are not really conservative by US standards, and that Johnson is no Thatcher. That seems true. Others are saying that Johnson might go back on his Brexit pledge. I don’t see that happening; it’s the foundation of his campaign and the biggest promise he made to voters. The only possible problem there is if a large enough number of Parliament members in his party turn out to be secret Remains and end up blocking his efforts to Leave. I also very much doubt that will happen, although a few might do so. His margin of victory is too great, and the message the voters sent too clear.

But have the “elites” in the UK learned their lesson – don’t thwart the will of the people or they will turn you out next time they get a chance? I doubt it very much.

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