Boris Johnson’s well-deserved political fall was, as usual, for the wrong reasons. His many peccadilloes and mistakes, and his inability to take responsibility for them in an unequivocal, honorable, and timely manner no doubt suggest character defects, but character defects are to be expected in our politicians and in those who covet power. They keep us entertained.
The problem now is to find someone better than Johnson, not in the sense of someone more prepared or who is not a party rice that banned other people’s parties, but someone better in the sense of economic policies, that is, someone who believes that economic principles will get the country out of the chaos that Johnson left behind: stagnation, high inflation, high taxes, an incompetent and more interventionist state than ever and extremely indebted, thanks to the issuance of currency and the swelling of a corrupt and corrupting government.
Johnson was unlucky, of course, in the difficulties he had to face and which he did not cause. What British leader would have wanted to deal with the animosity of the European Union – an animosity that was entirely predictable, but for which British politicians, who for the most part wanted to remain part of the Union, were not prepared? In addition, Johnson had to deal with the Covid-pandemic-19 and the War in Ukraine, with all its consequences.
But politicians have to be judged by how they deal with reality, not by how they would have dealt with that reality if things were different or better. In fairness to Johnson, he had some high points. He supported the development of a vaccine against Covid, and for that he needed to show courage, as the political price of failure would have been very high. He bypassed the bureaucracy to launch a rapid and successful vaccination program. He was the first to lift the health restrictions, going against many scientists who would have kept us locked up until no one else in the country sneezed.
He was by far the most perceptive of the leaders. Western Europeans about the war in Ukraine, although he might not have had all that foresight if the UK were more energetically dependent on Russia. Still, whatever the reasons, he supported Ukraine more than any other leader of comparable importance, and that counts in his favor.
Unfortunately in the long run none of this matters when compared to his debauchery economy, for which we will still pay the bill. Johnson’s government has spent billions helping people who didn’t need help — in part, of course, because several generations ago our bureaucracy gave up on distinguishing the needy from the non-needy, sometimes even denying that such a distinction should ever be made. A neighbor of mine, for example, received 50 a thousand pounds, although he didn’t need it.
After spending a good part of his political career laughing at the absurdities of extremism environmentalist, Johnson radically changed his position (through his wife’s influence, they say) and damaged the economy with his zero-carbon policies, stopping fossil fuel exploration at the worst time in history to do so. The move was ridiculous from the start, a cowardly surrender to a teenage utopia. And, thanks to Johnson, many poor people will freeze to death next winter, which might not have happened if he had had the courage to face this absurdity evident at the beginning of his term. In addition, Britons will supposedly switch to driving electric cars, even though there is no electricity to power them.
Despite having promised an economy with less taxes and regulations, one of the benefits of Brexit, Johnson has increased taxes to the highest level of taxation in decades, all to pay for social programs, especially those aimed at the elderly, and did nothing to stop the additional bureaucracy caused by Brexit. In a way, all politicians should be tough, but Johnson took this to a level of excellence.
On second thought, Johnson didn’t deserve to have been prime minister. The problem with the UK is that, in the current scenario, there doesn’t seem to be anyone worthy of the position.
Theodore Dalrymple is a contributor to the City Journal, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and the author of several books.
