[He] moved the party sharply left on austerity, spending on public services, tax cuts for the working poor, and a higher minimum wage. He outflanked the far right on Brexit and shamelessly echoed the left on economic policy.
This is Trumpism without Trump. A conservative future without an ineffective and polarizing nutjob at the heart of it. Johnson now has a mandate to enact this new Tory alignment, and he will be far more competent than Trump at it. Unlike Trump, he will stop E.U. mass migration, and pass a new immigration system, based on the Australian model. Unlike Trump, he will focus tax cuts on the working poor, not the decadent rich… [If Boris succeeds,] he will have found a new formula designed to kill off far-right populism, while forcing the left to regroup.
The political sweet spot in the next few years will be a combination of left economics and a celebration of the nation-state… If Johnson succeeds, he’ll have unveiled a new formula for the Western right: Make no apologies for your own country and culture; toughen immigration laws; increase public spending on the poor and on those who are “just about managing”; increase taxes on the very rich and redistribute to the poor; focus on manufacturing and new housing; ignore the woke; and fight climate change as the Tories are (or risk losing a generation of support). That’s where the GOP will have to go if they want to recover from becoming an authoritarian cult.
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Also: An interview before the election with Nimco Ali.
December 13th, 2019 at 3:11PM
Andrew Sullivan’s record of analysis and prediction is such that I’m now pretty sure exactly the opposite of the above is going to happen.
Particularly with this — he’s long fancied himself a lapsed Conservative and so he’s always looking for a New Conservative Messiah with which to fall in love. BoJo is just the latest.
December 13th, 2019 at 3:37PM
May 2016
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Not bad.