He’s just as skilled a public speaker as he is a legislative strategist.
Racists and Xenophiles are oblivious to what is obvious.
The EU also has been having issues with Racists and Xenophiles, so perhaps that’s why they are so understanding.
Watching the Tories imploding in a collective nervous breakdown has always been hilarious in 1963, 1974-5, 1989-90, and the slow puncture of John Major’s “back to basics”. But this is the Poundland version. If it’s soap opera, it’s verging on Acorn Antiques.
[quote=“GreenWyvern, post:257, topic:837872”]
Watching the meltdown of Johnson’s government is a schadenfreudefest.
I know the issues are really serious, but it’s still highly entertaining to watch.
His speech at the Wakefield police academy was simply cringeworthy, a public speaker’s nightmare:
[/QUOTE]In Latest Humiliation, Boris Johnson’s Dog Resigns As His Pet
“After wrestling with my conscience for some time, I have concluded that any further association with Mr. Johnson would be damaging to my reputation,” the dog said.
Amber Rudd just resigned from the Cabinet and also the Conservative whip. Here’s her letter to the Prime Minister
which includes the phrases “assault on decency and democracy” and “act of political vandalism”. It’s fair to say that she’s not happy, I think.
I love this note on the bbc article:
Her IMDB listing has her noted as “Aristocracy Coordinator” 
It’s telling that the key mistake here is that Boris Johnson thought that British politics is as fucked as American politics.
She made her attitude to him, and to several specifics of his current stance (no deal, prorogation) clear during the leadership campaign. The mystery is, why on earth she agreed to serve in his cabinet in the first place.
I think it’s called ambition…
How many more rats will leave?
Does this allusion to Plato’s Ship of State try to induce the idea that Boris Johnson should be regarded as a leader equivalent to a naval commander?
Boris Johnson couldn’t be trusted to command a rowing boat on the Serpentine.
No, the idiom of ‘rats abandoning a sinking ship’ has a long history in English, and has nothing to do with Plato’s metaphor. Rats are supposed to be able to sense when a ship is leaking and unsafe, and will take the first opportunity to leave. It is used to refer to people abandoning any enterprise they think will fail.
This whole situation is actually showing the strength and flexibility of the British parliamentary system.
It may look chaotic and ineffectual, but in reality it is (so far) successfully resisting an extremist takeover - and doing that without resorting to the same kind of extremist tactics as its opponents.
And not much grasp of reality, in that case.
I feel sorry for Dominic Cummings. 
He runs an effective campaign to leave (using ‘Trump-like’ lies and slogans) :eek:, gets his patsy installed as Prime Minister :smack:, and then is frustrated by truth and democracy.
Have we really fallen so far? 
I’m afraid we all know the answer to that.
Farther.
What’s interesting about Rudd’s departure is her confirmation of what has been strongly suspected: that Boris and his cohort are doing very little work on an actual deal and are instead devoting most of their resources to a no-deal Brexit. Naturally, this is the opposite of what Boris has said and continues to say, but then it’s hard to find examples of Boris actually telling the truth about anything.
I have been pondering Boris’s motivations in all this. Clearly he thought that he could bluff, bluster, bully and lie his way through his premiership the way he’s done for the rest of his career, but it’s becoming clear that regardless of the consequences Boris has one goal and one goal only: to push through a no-deal Brexit at any cost. Given that this cost includes his career and political reputation, I’m left to speculate wildly on why he’s doing this. Certainly he’ll probably make a few millions off Britain leaving the EU but that’s not enough of a motivation to do what he’s doing. Instead, I note that Boris has a number of extremely rich and powerful pro-Brexit backers, including the Barclays. One wonders whether they have some sort of carrot and/or stick arrangement going on, in that if Boris delivers he gets a significant payoff of some kind and/or if he doesn’t they have major blackmail material against him (which, given what we already know, would have to be of the “live boy or dead girl” variety and possibly something overtly jailworthy).
I have no evidence for any of that, but frankly it’s the only way I can make any sense out of his current scorched earth approach.
Johnson tells Irish leader Brexit deal can be reached:
No, not all sides. That’s just a lie.
Aye, because he’s not ever been producing a new plan. There’s zero evidence he was ever working on or going to try for a new plan.
Back when the GWB administration was pushing for the war with Iraq, I was befuddled by how my fellow Americans could be so stupid, naive and uninformed to believe what the Bush administration was saying, when all available evidence contradicted them.
Right now, I’m wondering the same thing about the people of the UK.
You are excluding the obvious, namely that he really is naive, superficial and inexperienced enough to believe it would all be plain sailing (because people like him will always float to the top of any situation), and that anyone who says anything to the contrary (even or especially if they are genuine experts on the technicalities, and/or have a longer-term historical understanding) is biased by their own personal interests and blind to what he sees as unbounded merchant venturing opportunities (not that he’s ever had much to do with anything so complicated and requiring hard work or hard thought).