MAIL ONLINE: Many will remember Henry Kissinger’s joke about the 1980s Iran-Iraq war: ‘It is a pity they can’t both lose’. That is the way millions of British people felt as they trudged to the polls, as if to a gallows, for Britain’s rag-bag of elections.
Seldom in modern history has the electorate felt so disenchanted with all the parties vying for its support. Tories ask what is Tory about David Cameron. Labour voters inspect the rabble heading their own party as if they were greenfly on the roses. Many of the dwindling band of Lib Dems look on their representatives in the Coalition as traitors to every potty value they hold dear.
The election turnout and outcome – a triumph for the Apathy Party no matter how many seats Labour gained – highlights disenchantment with the political process.
Most conspicuous was the expected victory of Boris Johnson in the London mayoral election. He professes to be a Conservative, but in truth is the sole member and spokesperson of the Boris Party, a self-promotional vehicle of supertanker proportions.
It is dismaying that he has become the most popular Conservative in Britain. Johnson is an undisputed whizz as a TV quiz-show panellist. But it is crazy to speak of him as a prospective prime minister. If Boris reached Downing Street, government would become a permanent pier-end panto, probably with a strip show thrown in.
Johnson’s defenders say he upholds ‘proper’ Conservative values such as Euroscepticism, a small state and low taxation. This is true but surely the British people deserve better than a comic, cad and serial bonker, however entertaining. Read on and comment » | Max Hastings | Friday, May 04, 2012
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