BRITISH PRIME MINISTER ALMOST DESTROYS BRITISH POLITICAL SYSTEM

…The new British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson

President Trump and Prime Minister Johnson: “Birds-of-a-Feather”.

No one to-date, has been as inappropriate as a government leader than Donald Trump.  But the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has done the impossible.  He has eclipsed the US President at what is being called “Chaos-Maker-In-Chief”!

To quote the British newspapers: “The new Prime Minister, after only a few weeks as the British leader, has taken a wrecking-ball to the British political system.  In doing this, he has ended up hitting himself as well.”

When the British voter just barely voted to leave the European Union, since then, the government has been paralyzed and the British public has been totally dissatisfied with their Prime Ministers and the British Parliament.

Two Prime Minister were taken down, and it is appearing that Johnson might become the third.

The latest Prime Minister is referred to as the British answer to our President Trump.

He tells lies like Trump, he is full of self-promotion, bluff and bluster as Trump.

He always looks as if he doesn’t quite belong in his position, and he also like Trump, seems to delight in political combat with the Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and all the others in the opposition.  And it hasn’t gone well for Boris.

Boris Johnson is the opposite of his predecessor, Theresa May, who was a by-the-book leader who had failed efforts over two-plus years to find a workable deal to take Britain out of the European Union.  That forced her resignation and damaged her reputation.  She must hope that Johnson’s initial floundering and flailing will make her look much better in retrospect.

Johnson is also like Trump in so many ways.

Like Trump, Johnson campaigned for the leadership of the Tory Party, similar to Trump and the GOP.  Johnson had vowed to take Britain out of the European Union as it was scheduled to do on Oct. 31, deal or no deal.  Similar to Trump’s, “Mexico will pay for the border wall”, with no proof that it would happen, and now it won’t.   Johnson insisted, and also based on no evidence, that by drawing that line in the sand, the leaders in Brussels would find it in their interest to produce something different and more acceptable than what May’s negotiations have brought forward.

That was the plan. But as with Trump, getting there has not gone according to Johnson’s plan.  Just like Trump, if Johnson had a clear strategy, it has not shown itself.  Instead, poor Boris has suffered crushing parliamentary defeats that have brought further attention to the dysfunction of the country’s political system.

The reality is that the US has a Constitution with rules and specific ways to deal with these issues.  Great Britain doesn’t have a constitution, just various papers, laws, innuendos, etc.  Therefore, they have no way of dealing with getting out of the European Union, as would the US.

Johnson has seen his power to set the Brexit agenda removed from him.  It has also driven more than 20 of his Conservative rebels out of the party, and this has caused his parliamentary majority to be totally eliminated. It is so bad, that Johnson’s brother has recently announced he would stand down as a member of the British Parliament.  That’s basically Boris’ brother saying that he is not supporting his brother!

The Prime Minister is in the process of provoking the equivalent of a constitutional crisis in Britain.  He has done this by declaring that Parliament would be closed down for much of the next month.  Trump would no doubt like to do the same with the US Congress, if he only had the power to do so.

No one can say how these events will play out.  The House of Commons has approved a measure that would extend the deadline for leaving the European Union, if no deal has been approved by the Oct. 31 deadline. Johnson has insisted he could get a deal by the deadline, but there has been no sign of a new proposal or any negotiations.

President Trump has of course, been a Johnson champion for a long time.  The president had always undercut the former Prime Minister May, at every opportunity and he has boosted Johnson whenever he could.  Johnson has been Trump’s kind of politician.  He is totally reckless, irreverent, disruptive, and like Trump, is not a detail person.

When Vice President Pence met with Johnson last week in London, Trump had sent a message of support for Britain leaving the European Union and for the idea of a new trading agreement between the two nations that would supposedly share a special relationship. “Fantastic,” Johnson said to Pence, while noting that negotiations could be difficult, which was a major understatement.

Like Johnson, Trump has repeatedly challenged the Congress and all of the institutions of the American political system.  He continues to seek to weaken or delegitimize any organization that threaten his power, or him personally.  In his short time as prime minister, Johnson has gone even further, tearing at the underpinnings of the British democratic government in what has since become an all-out war.

How long this can go on in either country is anybody’s guess.  Perhaps President Trump will offer some advice to his new friend. But Johnson has put himself in a serious corner, and his one hope is apparently that he will be rescued by the British electorate, if and when there is a new election.

Whatever the eventual outcome, neither the American, nor the British systems was meant to endure this much stress for very long.

Just as with the coming election in the US in 2020, neither individual is guaranteed that their elections would be their positive “fix”.

Neither President Trump or Prime Minister Johnson are being considered as the obvious winners, when they are both tested with another public election.

Copyright G. Ater 2019