June 24, 2016

"Following a vote to leave the EU the former Mayor of London was called 'scum' and 'racist scum' by crowds waiting outside his home..."

"Wearing a blue suit and red tie [Boris] Johnson, a leading Leave campaigner, was forced to move swiftly as a large group of people chanted and screamed at him following the vote."
Johnson said nothing the dozens of journalists waiting outside his London home when he finally left. He was flanked by several police officers who escorted him to a waiting car, while one member of the public was heard to shout 'twat'....

A crowd of roughly forty cyclists and bystanders blocked a junction, taunting him with "where are you going Boris?".

One man yelled: "The pound is down, what do you say about that? Is it going to be all right, Boris? Is the UK going to be all right, Boris? Are we going to be all right, mate? Come on, man up."
Here's a picture of Boris Johnson, whose resemblance to Donald Trump is very weird.



He may be the next British Prime Minister (and David Cameron just announced, after the Brexit vote, that he's stepping down). And Johnson has been compared to Donald Trump. Here's former Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg saying: "Perhaps Boris has looked across the Atlantic at the Republican presidential front-runner and decided that with enough bluster and bravado he can get away with ignoring the facts and saying whatever he wants."

And Donald Trump is in the UK right now. What's going on? WaPo columnist Dan Balz writes that Trump's trip may just be a coincidence (really?) but there are similarities in the "emotional issues of national and cultural identity at a time of growing demographic diversity, highlighted in both countries by often-angry debates over immigration."
In this new arena [of social media and cable television], Trump proved more skillful than his Republican opponents at mastering communication. In Britain, there are complaints that Cameron and others leading the “remain” campaign have been outdone in this category by the likes of Boris Johnson, the flamboyant former mayor of London and a Conservative member of Parliament, whose ambition to take Cameron’s job is well known....
And here's Politico's Joseph J. Schatz:
An American in London could be forgiven for having Donald Trump flashbacks Tuesday night. In the penultimate debate before Thursday’s landmark vote on leaving the European Union, held at Wembley Stadium, former London mayor Boris Johnson delivered what might be called his “Make Great Britain Great Again” speech, telling the British people that "if we vote leave and take back control, this Thursday can be our country's independence day.”

But rhetorical similarities to “Make America Great Again” aside, Boris Johnson is not Donald Trump. And for all the common misgivings about globalization in both countries, and the parallels being made between Great Britain’s nativist-tinged debate over leaving the EU and the rise of conservative populism in the United States, a vote for “Brexit” doesn’t exactly equal a vote for Trump....

... Cameron has appeased the anti-EU backbenchers in his ranks for years, but instead of strengthening him, the appeasement has expended him. To [Tim Oliver, a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science] it’s very much like how GOP leaders stoked anti-Washington rage among their members, inadvertently fueling the rise of Trump. Cameron kept “throwing concessions to his Euro-skeptic backbenchers” in the same way that U.S. Republican leaders kept saying “no, no, no” to Obamacare and promising again and again that they would repeal it, Oliver said. That helped discredit the GOP establishment—and lead to Trump.
AND: Here's the NYT: "Populist Anger Upends Politics on Both Sides of the Atlantic." Excerpt:
“Basically, they took back their country,” Mr. Trump said Friday morning from Scotland, where he was promoting his golf courses. “That’s a good thing.”

Asked where public anger was greatest, Mr. Trump said: “U.K. U.S. There’s plenty of other places. This will not be the last.”...

73 comments:

rhhardin said...

Multiculturalism doesn't work anywhere. It's a borders deal.

With normal commercial contact and home rule, everything that happens benefits both sides instead of just one.

It's an organizing principle for large populations.

Left Bank of the Charles said...

It's Brexit for breakfast in Britain! And I'm betting Trump will offer the United Kingdom a trade deal for lunch.

Hagar said...

I have not seen it mentioned much, but there is a deep difference in people's opinion of what constitutes "law and order" between the northwestern tier of European countries and the rest of them.

MayBee said...

There is a certain amount of hectoring that is going on from certain liberal voices these days.

Obama yesterday saying not wanting illegal immigrants to stay here brings us further away from the nation we strive to be.
Calling people who want to leave the EU "haters".
Democrats sitting on the floor of Congress yelling "Shame" at Paul Ryan, when all they needed was a signed petition.

It's just such an unpleasant political conversation these days.

Quaestor said...

Just by being there Trump is associated with the Brexit cause. He's said almost nothing on the subject. except that if he were a Briton he'd favor Leave — pretty innocuous compared to Obama's veiled threats. The #NeverTrump press, i.e. the usual suspects, reading the polls like all the other "pundits", assumed Remain would triumph and Trump would suffer an embarrassment by proxy just by being there. Nevertheless Trump turned the tables on his critics. Flummoxed and confounded by the Leave victory the press are now in speechless awe of his prescience and foreign affairs acumen just by being there.

The "Art of the Deal" in action.

tim in vermont said...

I don't get why it is bad for France to want to remain French and England to want to remain English and Scotland, Ireland, Holland, Thailand, Japan, etc, etc, etc, for wanting to keep their cultural heritage. Why use the word "tinged" with "nativism." How many people have criticized native Americans for "nativism," or aboriginal Australians? Why can Merkel just make a pronouncement that she is going to profoundly change the nature of all of Europe?

Darrell said...

"Racist" means you disagree with a Lefty.

David Begley said...

I don't buy the nativist and racist charges one bit.

The United States has NO DUTY to take refugees or illegals from Mexico and South America. A nation's FIRST DUTY is to protect its current citizens. There was never a vote to allow 11 million illegal aliens into this country including the white Brit who wanted to kill Trump at a rally.

MikeR said...

Whoa. And all the punditry had finally settled on Remain, based on what? The polls were essentially tied by the time of the vote, with _11%_ undecided. Even the betting markets had decided 3:1 in favor of Remain. Based on what? I think Nate Silver said yesterday that he would buy Brexit at 3:1. And all the economists agreed that Brexit would be a disaster, so there you go...
In the end, it's not easy for people to understand any point of view but their own.

tim in vermont said...

I guess we only have sympathy for cultures *after* they have been destroyed.

tim in vermont said...

I look forward to buying a pint the next time I am in Britain.

lgv said...

I think it is much simpler than those in power make it out to be. The UK existed just fine before the EU. They will survive after. There will be bumps and complications, but they will all be overcome. There have always been pros and cons to EU membership. Those pro EU folks tried to oversell the dire consequences of leaving, but the public didn't buy their crap. Time to move on. Once the rest of Europe realize that British society didn't collapse into post-apocalyptic poverty, others will follow. The EU is a very uneven alliance. Those that subsidize the others will have to subsidize it even more now. The only people who are ahead in the game are those whose lifeblood depends on the existence of the EU, mostly bureaucrats and public employees. All they ever really needed was a free trade association.

Quaestor said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
David Begley said...

MayBee

You exposed a favorite fallacy of the Left. The Left screams "hater" at anyone who disagrees with them.

Darrell said...

Winston Churchill has reconsidered--THIS is your finest hour!
Make Britain Great Again!

Bill, Republic of Texas said...

The masses are revolting!

tim in vermont said...

"Post democratic" Europe, LOL.

Quaestor said...

Trump is typically lampooned as a brash and irresponsible loose cannon, an ungoverned blowhard, and yet, and yet, he had the good sense to remain silent on Brexit until asked point blank, and said something could fairly be interpreted as merely personal, and not some kind of shadow foreign policy press release, which is what Clinton did, and only after a resounding win for Remain seemed sure thing. (Will someone please remind about just how Clinton made a hundred-fold parley in cattle futures?) In other words, a "me too" victory bought on the cheap. So who has egg on the face now?

rhhardin said...

I don't get why it is bad for France to want to remain French and England to want to remain English

Trade restrictions, other things being equal, make nations poorer, if not individual cases and cronies.

A lot of factories were set up in Britain for their access to Europe that now have reduced value, and so there's fallout.

So somehow borders have to be put back without also getting destructive trade restrictions, to keep native cultures intact but not screwing up the value of trade.

That gives you home political problems and a new set of cronies, but at least it's more local instead of Brussels-based.

The two issues have to be separated where they are not now.

tim in vermont said...

The electorate is become intolerably insolent!

MadisonMan said...

Markets don't like change.

I did see an interesting graphic on Facebook -- older Britons voted overwhelmingly to go, younger Britons voted overwhelmingly to stay. In the 40-49 age group, the vote was split.

Quaestor said...

There'll be a torrent of Leave plebiscites pretty soon. Who'll go next? France or Italy?

tim in vermont said...

Trade restrictions, other things being equal, make nations poorer, if not individual cases and cronies

Well, telling the Brits that they can't sell their beer in pints would be a "trade restriction." Taxing Brits to pay "tribute" to Greece so that Greeks can dodge taxes and still retire at taxpayer expense in their mid fifties also makes nations poorer.

I say welcome Britain into NAFTA.

Darrell said...

Will someone please remind about just how Clinton made a hundred-fold parley in cattle futures?

Sure. She didn't. Tyson foods went to a shady commodities broker that made simultaneous puts and calls. Whatever happened, he would sell gains to people that needed to launder money and losses for tax purposes to others. Hillary's gain was a bribe. 60 Minutes broke the story, but the rest of the media kept quiet. The broker had already cut a deal for immunity before the Clinton story broke. Little could be done then.

tim in vermont said...

Now we need to let Germany start paying for her own defense or make her peace with Russia. Get the fuck out of that blood soaked continent!

tim in vermont said...

Tyson foods went to a shady commodities broker

You forget the important and indisputable detail. Tyson foods was a huge polluter of Arkansas rivers with their chicken operations and Bill was in charge of regulating them.

This was not Hillary taking money from somebody who had Arkansas's best interests at heart.

Michael K said...

A lot of the business and especially technology in London is being done by Europeans who have fled the economic restrictions in Europe. A French tech guy said, "France has its own Silicon Valley. It is in the Thames Estuary."

Negotiation will solve most of the trade problems. Brussels brought this on itself by overbearing and Socialist rule. The EU Parliament is the real "Parliament of Whores."

Brussels is also over run by Muslims who seem to running a cheap bazaar everywhere. It looked to me like an explosive mixture when I was there last September.

Michael K said...

"This was not Hillary taking money from somebody who had Arkansas's best interests at heart."

Hillary has always been the bagman for the couple.

MikeR said...

"Trade restrictions, other things being equal, make nations poorer, if not individual cases and cronies" All economists are always against trade restrictions. They are right about the money, but wrong about the politics, always have been. The economics doesn't help an individual in that country whose job has been outsourced, even if you can show that on the average everyone gets their goods cheaper from outside. Part of a government's job is to protect its citizens' jobs against outsiders.

Darrell said...

Tyson got $millions from Arkansas--roads and sewerage systems. Hillary strong-armed them for $100K because she couldn't countenance them getting nothing out of the arrangement. Bill essentially stayed out of it, because he was happy with Tyson's jobs.

David Begley said...

Boris Johnson is quite a good writer. I bought one of his books at the sale table at UofW bookstore.

MikeR said...

"Negotiation will solve most of the trade problems." Indeed; look at what Switzerland does. Take a look at a map of the EU (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland%E2%80%93European_Union_relations); I was fascinated by the blob of orange in the middle. Do you think that the EU wants to have trouble with commerce with Switzerland?
I'm guessing that many of the dire predictions of economists are based on assuming that the EU will immediately put up all the trade barriers again. And maybe they will, for vengeance. But not for long.

Lost My Cookies said...

Today's markets are what happens when the financial class believes its own press and lives in a bubble ao tight that they forget to hedge. They were out to lunch, out of touch and, honestly it's shocking.

tim in vermont said...

We have so much shit now, everybody has a flat screen, even the beggars on street corners have smartphones, homes are full of cheap shit, how much do we really need? I am sure that most people would choose a secure job and future over the flood of Chinese crap in their lives.

I am doing fine in this economy, but I do see what it is doing to friends and acquaintances, and it is not good.

tim in vermont said...

Tyson got $millions from Arkansas--roads and sewerage systems. Hillary strong-armed them for $100K because she couldn't countenance them getting nothing out of the arrangement. Bill essentially stayed out of it, because he was happy with Tyson's jobs.

That sums up in a nutshell why Hillary should never be President and why Bill did OK in a lot of ways.

MadisonMan said...

Norway is not a member of the EU and it seems to do just fine, trade-wise, with the EU. I don't see why Britain won't do the same.

Subsidizing other countries will never work out in the long run. The USA has been subsidizing European Defense for a long long time, and I suspect that will end sometime, to the benefit of both parties.

tim in vermont said...

The EU is going to have to walk back a lot of threats they made in the heat of the moment.

Amadeus 48 said...

Regarding Joseph Schatz's reference to the "penultimate" debate on Tuesday, was there another debate on Wednesday?

MAJMike said...

Seems "The Donald" has a better grasp upon international politics than our own feckless President.

Original Mike said...

"Seems "The Donald" has a better grasp upon international politics than our own feckless President."

My neighbor's dog has a better grasp of international politics than our feckless President.

Darrell said...

George Soros tells our feckless President what to think.

Hagar said...

The French do not only wish to be French; they want everybody else to be French too.
They have never got over losing the Napoleonic wars.

Guildofcannonballs said...

Without surprise I note none of you know the irony. With compassion I shall inform you.

The hatred of Trump prevented the Remains from playing The Clash "Should I Stay or Should I Go" over and over and over to the point the persuasion of the lyric "if I go it will be double" would swing the election of the Remains' position.

Too busy screaming about how other people are haters, these lost souls of gools will never acknowledge their bigoted hatred of Great Brittain of the Magna Carta and Churchill blinded them from a path that could have achieved their stated goals.

MadisonMan said...

Following a vote to leave the EU the former Mayor of London was called 'scum' and 'racist scum' by crowds waiting outside his home

Votes matter. The people yelling at Boris are likely leftists, since they toss around the racist word. They should hear the words of Nobel Prize-winner Obama: I won.

Michael K said...

Cameron has announced he will resign. Johnson might well be the next PM and should get on well with Trump as soon as the Kenyan is gone. I don't believe Obama was born in Kenya but I think he inherited his hatred of Britain from Obama Sr.

JCC said...

Just 2 months ago, London elected their first Muslim mayor, Mr Khan, a member of the Labor party. Mr Khan immediately decided that racy posters and ads were no good and should be banned from the subways and streets of London. No more photos of women in bikinis or underwear is apparently an important issue for the first Muslim mayor.

Cultural assimilation, my foot. Things like this just had to influence the election.

But disagreeing with this kind of thing makes one a "hater."

Remember, too, that Corbyn is the new head of the Lan=bor Party. Jeffrey Corbyn is so far left, he makes Bernie Sanders look like Herbert Hoover. I think maybe the voters looked at the crowds of Middle eastern refugees mobbing the end of the cross channel tunnel, heard about "no more provocative posters", see Corbyn actually as the head of the Labor party, and decided Enough.

Kind of like here.

n.n said...

Immigration in the interest of international relations. Once the anti-native factions exceeded, and, in fact, rejected the rate of assimilation (i.e. [class] diversity), not even redistributive change is sufficient to sustain their schemes.

That said, as if illegal immigration, excessive immigration, and abortion/planning of Posterity were not enough, they really destroyed their credibility with the creation of refugee crises.

Sebastian said...

Trump actually said that is was a "great" thing. Heard it. On the BBC.

Not sure if it will work out for UK. But an FU to the anti-Boris screamers is one bonus.

Rick said...

lgv said...
all they ever really needed was a free trade association.


This is right, the EU is a massive bait and switch. Voters were promised a free trade market and got rule by apparatchiks. Saying no thanks and walking away is the right response to a bait and switch technique. Brits will have a free trade agreement with us at least as soon as a Republican is in office, maybe even with a non-Obama Democrat.

As far as the economic impact I'd say it's unclear whether it will hurt the Brits overall. Certainly the main measures like GDP will drop. But since they no longer have the useless EU bureaucrats siphoning off their production it's unclear whether the net impact is negative or not.

cubanbob said...

Let's see what happens next. Merkel's nonsense was the straw that broke the camel's back.
With the roiling of the markets there should be enough reality seeping into Brussels that they are going to have to make nice with the UK. I suspect when all is said and done the free trade zone relationship will remain along with standardization of regulations for commercial purposes and a harmonized customs union to prevent a form of trade arbitrage. I suspect a lot of the member countries are going to rethink the EU Super State and walk the EU back a bit to what it was originally proposed to be.

Darrell said...

Vote Barrackit!
Vote Hillexit!

Sydney said...

What are the consequences of this for the United States?

Darrell said...

What are the consequences of this for the United States?

A glimmer of hope for freedom lovers? A Trump victory in November? Sadz for the Republican elite and the Democrat NWO crowd?

Mike Sylwester said...

the former Mayor of London was called "scum" and "racist scum"

Whenever Scientific Progressives discuss political and social issues, they reflexively make racism accusations against people who disagree with them.

Original Mike said...

"he EU is a massive bait and switch. Voters were promised a free trade market and got rule by apparatchiks."

Yep.

Bruce Hayden said...

I think that it is good. Europe has essentially been committing suicide in the name of multiculturalism and humanitarian care for Muslim refugees from the (Obama and Hillary caused) chaos in the Middle East. Islam has never been a religion of peace, but rather is a religion of conversion by the sword. Through what I consider serious shortcomings in that religion, Muslims fell far behind the west as the latter entered the industrial revolution. It was only with the discovery of oil under Arabia, Persia, etc that they have been able to reclaim some of their previous glory. Nevertheless, what is important to remember here is that the new Muslim immigrants are not assimilating, but rather are attempting to conquer these countries from within. It isn't an accident that a large proportion of these "refugees" are military aged males. The solution from the elites has been essentially to pretend like it isn't happening. But everyone knows that it is. The rapes and molestations in Germany and elsewhere, the no-go zones in France, the terrorist attacks all are closely linked to this situation. The problem is not keeping The UK British, but rather keeping it from becoming Muslim. And staying in the EU meant that their borders were controlled from Brussels, and not London. The big question for me is whether or not the rest of Europe will wake sufficiently to this threat to save themselves.

Captain Drano said...

More on the Clinton's and Arkansas http://www.gaypatriot.net/2016/06/20/hillarys-husband-and-aids/

Hagar said...

Quite aside from the late invasion from the Middle East, the comment above about the EU being a massive bait and switch scam is correct. What the promoters actually were up to was government by the French "intellectual elite." The Germans may have thought they were the big ones with their economic power, but the style of the Brussels bureaucrats have been unmistakably French.

Bruce Hayden said...

The French do not only wish to be French; they want everybody else to be French too.
They have never got over losing the Napoleonic wars


And, I know Brits who are still talking about their loss of France. Or the large part of it that they controlled at one point in time. Of course, that was when French was still their court language. Still, moving back from Napolean, I think an argument could be made that they were already falling behind at that time. By then, they had mostly been pushed out of North America, and the remainder of their colonies were never as lucrative as the British or Spanish ones were.

Big Mike said...

Cameron has appeased the anti-EU backbenchers in his ranks for years, but instead of strengthening him, the appeasement has expended him. To [Tim Oliver, a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science] it’s very much like how GOP leaders stoked anti-Washington rage among their members, inadvertently fueling the rise of Trump. Cameron kept “throwing concessions to his Euro-skeptic backbenchers” in the same way that U.S. Republican leaders kept saying “no, no, no” to Obamacare and promising again and again that they would repeal it, Oliver said. That helped discredit the GOP establishment—and lead to Trump.

Reading that I get the impression Schatz thinks the alleged "appeasement" stoked the anger. The anger was there already, just as the anger is already here in the "flyover country" part of the United States (i.e., the people Schatz needs to talk to, the people that David Brooks promised to talk to, but hasn't). The rise of the Tea Party was like the piercing whistle of a safety valve on a boiler. McConnell, Boehner, and now Ryan thought they could join with Pelosi and Obama and Reid to just wire the valve down and that would get rid of the noise.

Come this fall the boiler is gonna explode.

The nattering nabobs who lead us need to listen to Dylan: "You don't have to be a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows."

Anonymous said...

JCC: Just 2 months ago, London elected their first Muslim mayor, Mr Khan, a member of the Labor party. Mr Khan immediately decided that racy posters and ads were no good and should be banned from the subways and streets of London. No more photos of women in bikinis or underwear is apparently an important issue for the first Muslim mayor.

Cultural assimilation, my foot. Things like this just had to influence the election.


What was telling was that the mayor made his move with feminist "negative body image" blabbity-blab, not any too-obvious conservative (that is, Muslim conservatism) rhetoric. The unholy lefty-Islam alliance, large and in charge.

I predict that over time the arguments for imposing alien cultural rules will gradually shift from the former (SJW-speak) to the latter, and the lefties will go along with it every step of the way. Wonder when they'll start going after the ubiquitous nudes of traditional Western public sculpture?

Anonymous said...

For the past two years, "Mohammed" has been the most popular male baby name in England. This is about that. The English voters are looking thirty, forty years ahead and they do not like what they see. There is a pervasive sense that the EU is keeping England from closing the door. There are refugees camped out in Calais trying to hjiack trucks coming through the Chunnel just to get into England. That's what this is about.

The markets will survive, but wow. The exchange rate is upside down.

Hagar said...

The court language was Norman French. Look at the Bayeux tapestry. What do those guys remind you of?

Napoleonic wars is a bit of a misnomer. The modern rivalry between France and Britain goes back to Louis XIII days, but there was a large break between the ancien regime and the revolutionaries, and Napoleon grew out of the French Revolution and the Enlightenment. It turned out to be a mirage, and the French people at large became renowned for their cynicism, but for some people, a vision of Utopia never dies.

Robert Cook said...

"Winston Churchill has reconsidered--THIS is your finest hour!"

Churchill really was a racist.

Robert Cook said...

"What are the consequences of this for the United States?"

Possible turmoil in the stock markets.

Static Ping said...

All things being equal, free trade is better than not free trade.

Things are rarely equal.

jr565 said...

If there weren't problems with the EU the UK wouldn't get enough votes to leave. Since everyone would have realized that the EU was great.
Why did a plurality of voters, though decide enough was enough and opt out?
Those who have a problem with this choice really need to look to their own actions or inactions.

Michael said...

Robert Cook typed:
"Churchill really was a racist."

Which means that every book he wrote, every sentence he uttered, every action he took as PM during the war are irrelevant and frankly somewhat vile.

He did have an opinion on the ability of sub Saharan nations to run themselves. And look at how wrong he was there! Just have a look at a modern map of the Congo and compare it with one fifty years old. LOL

Hagar said...

And speaking of Utopians, here comes Robert Cook!

Darrell said...

Cookie should bottle his bitter, bitter, sweet tears.

James Pawlak said...

Islam is NOT a "race". Opposition to Islamists is a great virtue and not "racism". Those boorish Democrats contamination the pit of the House Of Representative's chamber cried "Racist" at a fellow Member who reminded them Orlando's Massacre-Monster was a Muslim waging Jihad against real Americans. They committed TREASON by aiding those waging war against our nation.

Dave in GA said...

"it’s very much like how GOP leaders stoked anti-Washington rage among their members, inadvertently fueling the rise of Trump."

Really? Trump's rise (which I'm not a fan of) is the direct result of the GOP leadership in DC failing to follow through on promises made.

Whoever wrote that tripe was merely expressing their belief that people who don't want to go along with an all-powerful and intrusive government are stupid and easily led by demagogues. Their arrogance fair drips through the screen.

Robert Cook said...

"And speaking of Utopians, here comes Robert Cook!"


Wrong, as usual. There is no Utopia and never will be. There is only the imperfect human race and its imperfect social arrangements. There can be better and worse social arrangements, but there will never be an end to disagreement as to which social arrangements are better and which worse.