Aditya Chakrabortty: He may be a clown, but the threat Boris Johnson poses is deadly serious
Now he pursues a
political strategy for a polarised country that deliberately seeks to divide it
further by treating the other side as anti-national. You want Brexit, or you’re
part of the remoaner elite. You want spending cuts, or you can bugger off to
Venezuela. The critics are so busy fact-checking his fibs that there’s less
time and energy to investigate the inconvenient truth. Crucial arguments about
his eligibility for office are sacrificed instead for coverage of his latest
gaffe. Policy loses out to political etiquette. Opponents in the media become
mere accomplices. And so one of the most significant electoral choices of our
lifetime is drained of consequence.
With his plans for a
disastrously hard Brexit, his stated enthusiasm for tax cuts for the rich and
his team schooled in the dark-money thinktanks of the transatlantic ultra rightwing, Johnson poses a serious threat to
the British way of life. The details of the Whitehall-Washington trade talks
released by Labour last week make that clear. Whatever the nervous denials from
Trump and Johnson this week, everything from the food we eat to our rights at
work to the state’s commitment to fight climate chaos spills across the
boardroom table, ready to be bargained away.
Yet voters see not a
danger, but a clown.... In their guide to this new age of autocracy, How Democracies Die, the
Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt compile a
checklist titled “Key indicators of authoritarian behavior”. Intended to
illustrate Trump’s assault on democratic norms, it should serve as warning of
how far Johnson may dismantle the UK’s own checks and balances....
