Being realistic about it, Boris is going to be our next PM. The Tory party see him as, somehow, being someone who can win elections against the Labour party and have decided that this is clearly more important than resolving Brexit in a way that doesn’t destroy the country and indeed more important than what is best for the country in general. Concerns about his lack of competence and integrity have been pushed aside in the interests of preserving the Conservative Party and their grip on power. Standard, but depressing nonetheless.
More broadly, though, is there anything more indicative of how badly we’re fooked as a society than Boris and Trump coming to power? Neither man is remotely capable of the job they have been tasked with, both are where they are solely on the back of white male privilege and nothing more. They are the definition of the triumph of elitism over meritocracy.
Let’s start with Trump. The man is a thick bigot, the most fragile egotist imaginable. The Trump blimp triggered him so badly precisely because it was so accurate. He pitches himself as a successful businessman who knows how to get deals done, someone who is not part of the establishment and who has been a huge success. Bigly successful. And yet, if he’d simply put the vast wealth he inherited from his father into a savings account he would be wealthier than he is now. He has failed as a businessman many times over and any mitigating success has come solely because his vast inherited wealth has enabled him to try and try again. His one selling point is based on smoke and mirrors.
He has managed to ride a wave of mainly white working-class discontent through carefully managed populist rhetoric that is as dangerous as it is vacuous. His litany of misdemeanours would make him unemployable if he came from any other background, yet pure wealth and privilege has enabled him to bankroll his way to power. If his followers really feel that white males are being marginalised by liberalism, they need only look at the fact that Trump is in power as proof that this is not remotely the case.
As for Boris, the man is simply a nasty, power-hungry incompetent. Born to wealth and privilege, from very early on his character was marked by seeking power at all costs. Even at Eton and Oxford he was more concerned with gaining power and notoriety than actually excelling as a student, and he was willing to do whatever was needed to get there. Sounds familiar? As a journalist he was sacked for falsifying a quote, a journalistic offence so egregious that it would usually spell the end of a career. Yet Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson has been given chance after chance, purely because of his name and privilege rather than his talent.
As an MP he has held one cabinet position and was an abject failure. Not only did he fail to achieve anything at all of note, numerous reports suggest that he was simply unfit for the role; frequently he was not well-briefed, not interested in detail, and seemingly uninterested when attending important meetings. That’s without even considering that he endangered the life of a UK citizen through his own lazy carelessness when talking about why she was in Iran. He still refuses to take any responsibility for that, despite it once again being such an horrendous error that it would cost most people their job, let alone somehow pave the way for them to hold an even more responsible job. All this before we even consider the overt racist remarks, the dog-whistling, the general question marks over his poor character and total lack of any principles (writing two articles backing both remain and leave, anyone?).
Sorry for the lengthy rant, but it really boils my piss that we have these snake oil salesman in positions of power. They are where they are not because of any talent they have, not because they are the best men for the job, not because they have a positive vision for their countries. They are where they are because of wealth and privilege, nothing more. Their sole focus in on maintaining their privilege and on preserving a system that rewards such privilege.
The worst of it is that they are doing so by exploiting unrest amongst the working classes, unrest caused by the kind of social and economic inequalities that they and their cronies are responsible for. And they know this, yet they point the finger at other disadvantaged groups and lay the blame at their door. It’s easy to do, it plays on a base instinct in people to blame the ‘other’ rather than someone that looks like them and speaks their language (in more ways than one). They are backed by the wealthy and powerful in the media who share their overriding agenda to preserve the dominance of wealthy elites, and this simply makes the power train an irresistible force with no immovable object available at our disposal to oppose it.
All thoroughly depressing, really. |  |
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