What is Boris Johnson’s strategy? To be prime minister and screw everybody else. His calculating eyes and sly grin as he soaks up the camera’s gaze betray the energy and attraction of the seducer. We all love a bit of transgression, don’t we? The only promise you can rely upon is his promiscuity. Nothing is ‘meant’, no commitment can hold him back from making another different commitment, provided it ensures he remains ‘on top’. He is the personification of the British constitution that Adam Ramsay talks about and Laurie Macfarlane nails. Its core principle is pre-democratic: that its sovereignty is absolute, it can do what it likes.
Three questions follow. What lies behind his rise to the top? How is he likely to carry out his strategy? How can it be frustrated?
The simple answers are: first, he is the candidate of global finance opposed to regulation; second, he wants office and this means he does not want ‘No Deal’ (if only because he must hedge his bets on next year’s US presidential election) but wishes to confound his opponents with a Brexit agreement and an eye-watering promise of a programme that lets him call a post-Brexit election; and third, he can be stopped only by an alternative government led by the one MP who can command an alliance as a stop gap and at the same time provide a sense of forward movement essential if suspending Brexit is to be seen as legitimate.
