The resistance to the Johnson-Farage axis [a conspiracy? Cohen retracts a bit later] will not come from the parliamentary Conservative party. In private, MPs, who once made sure demagogues did not become prime ministers, admit that Johnson is a phoney, unfit for high office or any office. But the Tory party’s guardians no longer care. The gatekeepers are lifting the lock and urging the bullshitter to charge into the china shop.
Farage more than any other politician is responsible for Brexit and feels no shame for the pain he has inflicted on [48% max of] the country he professes to love. He can threaten to run candidates against the Tories and let Labour in unless they recognised his greatness by making him, say, deputy prime minister....One way or another, what we call “populism”, a feeble euphemism for an ideology that tolerates no constraints on the leader or his party, will soon be here. Indeed, it already is. For it is one thing for the Putinesque [?] no-hoper Dominic Raab to say that he would suspend parliament to force through a no-deal Brexit. Quite another for Johnson, “our” next prime minister, to tell the Tory right he won’t take bypassing the Commons off the table either.
Whatever mistakes they made, no previous administration has deliberately wrecked the economy. But then no administration in the modern era has dared to contemplate inflicting economic misery without a mandate from the Commons or the electorate. You cannot say often enough that a no-deal Brexit was not on the ballot in the 2016 referendum.
Populism is to blame:
Farage and Johnson are proving that in the populist state the leaders are sovereign and the people get what they are given. You shouldn’t be surprised. What kind of popular democracy do you expect when the decisive voice in choosing the national leader is not the electorate’s but the voices of 160,000 Tory activists?
Johnson is rather unsympathetic to members of the press (especially the ones who have heaped class abuse on him, I expect), and his supporters boo such people (I would too -- sloppy partisan journalism and moralist lecturing where personal beliefs have clearly intruded, and abuse triumphed over analysis and questioning. Hectoring virtue-signalling turns into sudden vulnerability as ever)
[Corbyn's] failure to support Remain has fractured the centre left, opening the prospect of a united right coming through the middle in a general election. In any case, look at my description of rightwing authoritarianism. It applies as well to the far left [could be a good argument here, but never pursued and intermixed with Cohen's Middle East politics].
So Cohen issues a call to arms:
Opposition must now be as much without as within parliament. I am heartened to see that the next pro-European march on 20 July will be the start of a full-throated defence of EU membership rather than a process argument about the need for a second referendum. [Stops the hypocrisy at least] Protests on the streets will not occur in isolation. If any government risks no deal, the financial markets will go wild and employers will warn staff about their jobs. [nothing riuaghtwing or authoritarian about that]. MPs may act independently and reconvene away from a shuttered Westminster.[R Stewart's plan to set up an 'indeendent Parliament' if Parliament is prorogued?]
A bit of a violent undertone to his closing remarks too:
The critics don’t realise it has never happened here before because enough “hysterical” citizens have stamped on it early and hard. We are late in the day this time around and the moment to start stamping is now.
A Rawnsley goes for simple abuse (a particularly sad trahison des clercs):
Say what you like about Boris Johnson, he can always be relied on to let you down. He is a serial liar who is trusted least by those who know him best. He is also an industrial-strength incompetent whose parliamentary supporters include just one of the ministers who served with him during his rackety [smear suggesting corruption?] two years as foreign secretary. Then there is the hefty back catalogue of offensive remarks and a private life that would stagger David Lloyd George or the Duke of Wellington.
Can't have that! Good Lord! Man's a bounder! He'll be challenging traditional gender boundaries next! A bit of despair too:
The cliche of his campaign is “the only person who can beat Boris is Boris”, which is why his team have strictly rationed the media appearances of a man who usually gorges on publicity. Colleagues enjoy conjecturing what could possibly now derail a man who has miraculously survived so much previous scandal....One of his career hallmarks is a capacity to bounce back from episodes that would have been terminal for other politicians.
Could be that the public and/or Tory MPs are not as shocked or surprised by these misdemeanours as newly-Puritanical petit-bourgeois journalists? Lloyd-George and Wellington seemed to be popular too. There is something else, and here the old Rawnsley nearly comes back to life:
but there is a sort of rational explanation for his success. One component of it is the widespread feeling among Tory MPs that their next leader has to be someone who campaigned for Brexit.This belief is not just confined to Leave-supporting Tory MPs. A lot of those who were Remainers think this as well....The belief is that only a Brexiter stands any chance of selling a compromise to the party without being called a traitor to the cause. Another reason for thinking that the next Tory prime minister has to be a Brexiter is that putting one of them in charge is the only way for Brexiter fantasies to be tested to their final and irrefutable destruction.
There is some traditional dark artery:
Mr Johnson’s campaign is much slicker [and involves two former chief whips]. [There is ] the state of the competition [quite well analysed] ...a bandwagon is rolling...The climactic parliamentary phase may well involve some of the chicanery for which Tory leadership contests are renowned....Don’t imagine that Tory MPs aren’t...perfectly conscious of [Johnson's flaws] as they equally know that he is a wild gamble that could go disastrously wrong for both their party and their country.
And there is a character flaw:
Fear is the key to understanding why, fear most of all of Nigel Farage....By far and away his [Johnson's] biggest-selling proposition to Tory MPs terrified of losing their seats is that he is the only one of them with the force of personality to stand any chance of suffocating the Brexit party and defeating Labour.
All this rather obvious, and probably irrelevant stuff is preceded by a rather misleading headline:
The dirty secrets [geddit?] of Boris Johnson’s seduction of Conservative MPs
Keegan just bangs on as usual with his version of Operation Fear -- ho hum. He himself is up there with the Greats:
In common with this year’s Reith lecturer, Lord Sumption, I do not like referendums, and believe in representative democracy. Moreover, in keeping with Edmund Burke’s address to the electors of Bristol some 250 years ago, I think MPs should regard themselves as representatives, not delegates.
Finally, clear evidence of the increasing Guardianisation of the Observer comes with two misprints/typos in the web edition: 'Tor (sic) veteran Kenneth Clarke' and 'Leters(sic) / It's time to embrace electoral reform'
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