David Cameron was in a no-win situation after the Brexit vote, but new PM Theresa May is a probably in a no-lose situation. If Brexit is successful, she gets to take the credit. If it fails, she can point out she was a Euroskeptic carrying out the public’s will against her own wishes.
May has named chief Tory Pro-Leave campaigner Boris Johnson as her foreign minister. Michael Gove stabbing Johnson in the back for his own chance at the Downing Street probably doomed Gove’s bid but made Johnson (who the London establishment hates) a more sympathetic figure. May naming him foreign minister not only pleases the Leave faction, it also works as a case of “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”
(More of May’s ministerial appointments can be found here, but I’m not even going to pretend I recognize all these names.)
It’s a big story, and the reverberations continue to sound around the world:
Boris Johnson withdraws from Tory PM race in favor of fellow Leave campaigner Michael Gove, who is expected to face-off against Remain backer Theresa May, “the no-nonsense domestic security chief.” Evidently the Washington Post doesn’t trust their readers to know what the Home Secretary (her actual title) does in the UK…
It sounds like the UK got out of the EU just in time: “Germany’s foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his French counterpart Jean-Marc Ayrault today presented a proposal for closer EU integration based on three key areas – internal and external security, the migrant crisis, and economic cooperation. But the plans have been described as an ‘ultimatum’ in Poland, with claims it would mean countries transfer their armies, economic systems and border controls to the EU.”
Brexit has caused such panic among our political elites that they’ve openly opposing democracy since it continues to thwart their will to power.
Marine Le Pen: “Do we want an undemocratic authority ruling our lives, or would we rather regain control over our destiny?” The usual Le Pen caveats apply, but she’s not wrong here. (Hat tip: Zero hedge.)
The utter incomprehension of some colleagues at the result would be comical were it not so injurious to the sub-constitutional role played by the Fourth Estate.
There is a sense of indignation that a majority of voters did not cleave to the group-think. The whiff of class-hatred hangs heavy in the air. This morning I risked pariah-status in the canteen queue by suggesting it was patronising to ascribe the working class with prejudices we could neither test nor vouch for. Dismissing their opinions as motivated by xenophobia precludes any notion that those uneducated poor folk might actually have a coherent view on sovereignty or national self-determination.
This democratic deficit has been well ventilated over the weekend. Janice Turner, in particular, wrote beautifully and wisely in Saturday’s Times about the folly of denigrating “retired miners who now drive taxi cabs”. It is no surprise that contrarians like the brilliant Julie Birchill, who has written at length about the demonisation of white-working class ‘chavs’, came out for Brexit.
Part of the seething fury felt by some of my co-workers lies in that feeling of being hoodwinked, of not being as smart, as omniscient as they, hitherto, imagined. Their self-esteem is bruised. Nobody likes to find out that the world they thought existed turns out to have been built on miopia and wishful thinking.
There’s a growing sense, not only in Great Britain, but in the US as well, that the elites, or the political class, or whatever you’d like to call them, are incompetent and have been leading us astray. And the response from elites is to call those criticisms illegitimate. Those doing the carping are assumed to be racists or nationalists, both of which, of course, are unpleasant, dirty types of people. Both the UK’s Leavers and the US’s Trumpers share some commonalities. Among them are skepticism over free trade and free immigration; concerns that elites dismiss as foolish and uneducated. And, of course racist.
Snip.
I think we’re about to watch the elites start paying a price for their incompetence, inattention and contempt. Euroskepticism is on the rise elsewhere in Europe. If EU membership were put to a popular vote in the Netherlands, Spain, or Sweden, there is a good chance that Leave would win there, too. Indeed, it’s possible that a vote to leave the EU might even win in France, the nation for whom creating and strengthening the EU has been the primary policy goal for 60 years.
Perhaps the “Vote Remain, you virulent racist!” PR campaign for staying in the EU needs a bit more thought.
Tory Prime Minister David Cameron is resigning. “Mr Cameron announced shortly after 08:15 BST that he had informed the Queen of his decision to remain in place for the short term and to then hand over to a new prime minister by the time of the Conservative conference in October.” Current favorite to replace Cameron is pro-Leave MP Boris Johnson.
The Pound Sterling is at its lowest exchange rate in 30 years.
Scotland, Northern Ireland and London voted heavily to stay in the EU, while Leave won pretty much everywhere else, including Wales. Now there’s talk of a second Scottish Independence referendum.
I would say the panic selling is largely unwarranted; there’s no reason that UK can’t negotiate an orderly exit from the EU and continue to participate in the European Economic Area the way that Norway and Switzerland do now. There was talk before the Brexit vote that the EU wouldn’t go along with this out of spite, but if the endless Greece crisis has shown, Eurocrats negotiate their non-negotiable demands all the time, and I doubt even Angela Merkel is willing to put Europe through a deep recession (which is to say, deeper even than the current one the Euro seems to have engendered in perpetuity) just to “teach the UK a lesson.”
I’ve got a cold and my dog had major dental surgery yesterday, so pardon me if I seem out of it.
Democratic Party makes it clear they expect reporters to be good little lapdogs, going so far as to escort them to the restroom to keep them from talking to congressmen.
For a shocking change of pace, the Friday LinkSwarm will be on Friday:
“How can we ‘gun people’ honestly be expected to come to the table with anti-gunners when anti-gunners are willfully stupid about guns, and openly hate, despise and ridicule those of us who own them?” Read the whole thing.
The lovely qualities of Jihadi Facebook pages: “The further I crawled down the extremist rabbit hole and the more caved-in skulls and headless corpses I saw.”
“The Euro cannot be destroyed by any craft that we here possess. It was made in the fires of Frankfurt. Only there can it be unmade.” What does it say when Sauron wants the ring, er, Euro destroyed as well? Though once again: Austerity hasn’t failed in Europe, it hasn’t been tried.
“It was one thing to do amnesty during the white hot Reagan economy of the mid to late 80s. It’s quite another to do it in the midst of the Obama depression.”
London mayor Boris Johnson thinks it would be a good thing for democracy if the UK were to just walk away from the EU.
Travis County Democratic District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg is out of the clink after serving half a 45 day sentence for DWI. A jury will evidently determine “whether her drunken driving was habitual or whether the recent arrest was the result of a one-time event.” Because lots of people without alcohol problems suddenly decide “Hey, I’m going to go cruising around town with an open bottle of vodka and a blood alcohol level of .239! That sounds like a great idea!” I might believe that…if Lehmberg was 21.
