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--
   John Harris

   Boris Johnson’s run of bad decisions on Brexit and Covid have their
   roots in a saga of elite entitlement and superficiality
   Boris Johnson in 10 Downing Street, London, 24 December 2020.
   [ ]
   ‘Then came the Brexit trade deal, and a familiar idea returned, that
   under the shambling exterior, the prime minister is some kind of
   swashbuckling genius.’ Photograph: Pippa Fowles/No10 Downing Street
   ‘Then came the Brexit trade deal, and a familiar idea returned, that
   under the shambling exterior, the prime minister is some kind of
   swashbuckling genius.’ Photograph: Pippa Fowles/No10 Downing Street
--
   The words are a cutting summary of the far-off era of upper class
   treachery and cold war subterfuge, but also fit the less romantic time
   of Brexit, the pandemic and a Conservative party whose leadership by
   two public schoolboys has so pushed us into disaster. Therein lies a
   huge part of the national tragedy that, amid stranded lorries, a
--
   Margaret Thatcher, they were harder to malign as chancers and stuffed
   shirts. But in the buildup to Christmas, as I watched Johnson deny the
   nightmare of a no-deal Brexit, row back on his stupid promise of a
   normal Christmas and then yet again offer the prospect of a return to
   normality (this time, he seemed to suggest, by Easter), Orwell’s words
--
   Just before Christmas, dismay about the Johnson government and its
   apparent distance from reality seemed to be reaching a peak. But then
   came the Brexit trade deal, and a familiar idea returned – not least in
   the rightwing press – that under the shambling exterior, the prime
   minister is some kind of swashbuckling genius. This is an archetype
--
   for any scrutiny. Combined with the economic effects of the pandemic,
   the result will be damage and uncertainty that is only just starting:
   all the talk about Brexit now being finished is further proof of the
   ditch we have been led into.

--
     * Conservatives
     * Coronavirus
     * Brexit
     * Inequality
     * David Cameron