Why don't more people hate the awful Boris Johnson?

[Fambo Number Mive]

Such a venal, sneering, narcissistic jumped up little shit. Managed to fool much of Britain that he was funny and likeable by pumping out some books and going on Have I Got News For You a lot.

It's clear he has contempt for anyone with a different view than he has or anyone who is vulnerable. He has no respect for democracy or debate. His parliamentary career has been a disaster for Britain. He's been a rotten Prime Minister, with blood all over his hands from his response to the pandemic and using the culture wars to divide Britain further to make the public focus on The Tiger Who Came For Tea instead of his awful prime ministership. Without his support for the Leave campaign, would Brexit have happened? And who can forget the millions spent on the Garden Bridge?

Yet the response among most people seems to range from indifference to proud support. To the latter, Boris is Mr Brexit and Mr Anti-Woke and nothing else matters. Johnson doesn't seem to inspire the anger that Thatcher, Major and Blair did. Even Cameron faced quite a bit of criticism for his destruction of public services and how he made life much harder for the most vulnerable.

Is it just that Johnson hasn't been in power as long as Thatcher or Blair? Is that that some people feel a bit sorry for the waste of spunk having to deal with a pandemic? Or are people more selfish and more apathetic about politics? Maybe I'm being too unfair on Johnson but to me he seems like a more coherent Trump.

There doesn't seem to be much anti-Johnson satire like there was against Thatcher. XR are doing a great job, but it feels like the opposition to the Tories, which was strong under Corbyn, has been completely neutered by Kier Starmer. I do think Starmer is a large part of why there is so little opposition to this dreadful, cynical cunt who sits in Number 10 despite being totally unfit for any form of elected office.

I hate Boris Johnson. I hate the cult of Johnson e.g. "The Little Book of Boris". I hate how he cynically ruffles up his hair before speaking to the media. I hate how the media is run by people who benefit from Johnson being in power and how little most people in the UK question the media. I hate how selfish, hypocritical and intolerant most of the English people are.

[Fambo Number Mive]

Also, I hate how the media are obsessed with Johnson-Sunak rivalry as if to highlight how this is the only threat to Alexander Johnson.

[mothman]

I'd like to know though, what people think the Opposition should be doing? The next election is at least three years away, and Johnson will go down to the wire on that if needed. He's got the racist segment of the population - which turned out to be much larger than many of us realised - on his side. There's the "vaccine bounce" etc.

I'm not convinced that Starmer is going about it the right way, but his instinct seems to be that constantly sniping from the sidelines during a time of national crisis doesn't play well. He scores well in PMQs, but does that ever really matter? If the RW press doesn't report it? But then they wouldn't report it whoever was in charge at Labour.

And while on the one hand Labour need to be putting their vision for the country to the country, what's the hurry, why let the Tories pinch all their ideas? Milliband and Corbyn ideas ended up being nicked...

[thenoise]

He planted a Tory stooge as head of the BBC. I bet Trump would have been as popular as de Piffle if they had a state media broadcaster that he could manipulate (and the largest generation of people have blind faith in).

[jobotic]

Everyone's exhausted

[Butchers Blind]

He could rape the Queen at the Diana death celebrations next year and the public would go along with it.

[Cold Meat Platter]

"Fear is the path to the dark side ... fear leads to anger ... anger leads to hate ... hate leads to suffering." - Jeremy Corbyn

[idunnosomename]

He could rape the Queen at the Diana death celebrations next year and the public would go along with it.

to be fair that might endear me to him for the first time.

[peanutbutter]

It's just overwhelmingly positive media, the negative media largely being in a jokey kind of way that presents as negative but really isn't that harmful at all and is always counterbalanced with total bullshit.

When they want rid of him it'll be pretty easily done and you'll struggle to find anyone who admitted they ever liked him within a few years of that. It probably won't be before the next election though.

[Dusty Substance]

Everyone's exhausted

This. Plus also some people (a lot of people, in fact) have other things to be doing. Whether it's a job, a family to attend to or both, some people just don't give a fuck about politics and news. Not everyone wants to spend all their spare time watching news, browsing twitter and frothing at the mouth in anger as a result. They want to get on with hobbies, or going down the pub, or booting up their games console, or going for a walk, or meditating or binge watching Netflix.

Unpopular opinion but life's too short to spend so much time getting angry at things that we really have no control over.

[scarecrow]

I'd like to know though, what people think the Opposition should be doing? The next election is at least three years away, and Johnson will go down to the wire on that if needed. He's got the racist segment of the population - which turned out to be much larger than many of us realised - on his side. There's the "vaccine bounce" etc.

I'm not convinced that Starmer is going about it the right way, but his instinct seems to be that constantly sniping from the sidelines during a time of national crisis doesn't play well. He scores well in PMQs, but does that ever really matter? If the RW press doesn't report it? But then they wouldn't report it whoever was in charge at Labour.

And while on the one hand Labour need to be putting their vision for the country to the country, what's the hurry, why let the Tories pinch all their ideas? Milliband and Corbyn ideas ended up being nicked...

This is bobbins. The problem with Starmer (and all centrists) is that he thinks the road to power involves doing politics on the governing party's terms, though all this does is allow them to move the goalposts whenever it suits them. And you can offer clear ideological opposition without giving away specific policy ideas, not that Starmer has any.

I suppose one thing the opposition could try is not suspending all the party members who backed the previous leader, for no fucking reason.

[chveik]

And while on the one hand Labour need to be putting their vision for the country to the country, what's the hurry, why let the Tories pinch all their ideas? Milliband and Corbyn ideas ended up being nicked...

weird take. which corbyn policy have the tories implemented?

[idunnosomename]

well all the handouts in the pandemic I guess? they've even started moving toward the state internet thing.

[Mrs Wogans lemon drizzle]

Johnson stands for nothing.  There is no "Johnsonism".  This lack of ideology probably works in his favour, if anything he's a populist.  We are stuck with him for at last 1 more term, before the electorate get fed up.

[Mrs Wogans lemon drizzle]

This. Plus also some people (a lot of people, in fact) have other things to be doing. Whether it's a job, a family to attend to or both, some people just don't give a fuck about politics and news. Not everyone wants to spend all their spare time watching news, browsing twitter and frothing at the mouth in anger as a result. They want to get on with hobbies, or going down the pub, or booting up their games console, or going for a walk, or meditating or binge watching Netflix.

Unpopular opinion but life's too short to spend so much time getting angry at things that we really have no control over.

Good post.  As you say, life's too short to be angry about politics.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Theresa May being an actual, measurably and objectively, incompetent person plus media misogyny presented politics as useless, ineffectual, bland and irrelevent. Not only was the news always bad, it was always boring and coverage uniformly unpleasant to watch. Johnson had a free space to 'put some colour back in' and it worked, and he shares politics-is-boring  lets-all-banter-instead cynicism of the tabloids that pilloried May for being a sellout. Who needs competency when you're a legend. We're not about helping people we're about GETTING THINGS DONE. Then there's media complicity with the "get brexit done" slogan making it seem like he was a man on a mission, facing bad odds with a cheery smile which I'm sure was still moderating public opinion during the lockdown last year.

Its a fairly unique situation where someone can benefit so much from criticisms against his own party. If his precursor hadn't been a woman and his opponent hadn't been Corbyn, he'd be writing for Quillette instead of running a country full of wonderful human beings into the fucking ground. 

[Johnny Yesno]

There's the "vaccine bounce"

lol

[Tony Tony Tony]

"Every nation gets the government it deserves"

Joseph de Maistre 18th century writer.

Fuck knows what we did to deserve Bozza though.

[chveik]

that's bollocks reactionary thinking

[Echo Valley 2-6809]

Bit of a long shot but did any of CaB's many Wrexhamians ever meet him, or know someone who did, when he was running for Clwyd South in 1997?

"Citizens of Pant, as I said to your esteemed cousins in Rhosllanerchrugog only yesterday..."

He'd have left politics within 2 years if he'd got in.

[MikeP]

The Boris phenomenon is something I've often wondered about too. But in a world that elected Trump to be leader of the worlds second most powerful country, and where Boaty McBoatface was considered a reasonable name for a research vessel, Ive come to the conclusion that nothing really has to make sense any more.
In terms of UK politics, both national and local, I am regularly apalled at the sometimes outrageous activities of those elected to look after us. Not helped by the fact that I still read Private Eye. And yet we seem to continue voting for these people. And it is not a party peculiar thing either. Thankfully there are still people like Douglas Chapman around. Although the reasons for his resignation left Sturgeon and husband singularly unmoved.
I suppose when it comes to so-called democracy we get what we deserve and we deserve what we get even though it may not be what we want.

One consolation is that Boris is just the figurehead of the organisation and has very little actual power. It is only a very small consolation though.

[idunnosomename]

that's bollocks reactionary thinking

welcome to the enlightenment. oh turns out we're better because our skulls are a particular shape. fuck yeah science

[the ouch cube]

He has an uncanny ability to appear relatable despite being an aristocrat, people ask for his autograph when he visits tiny piss towns. Possibly that immediate post-9/11 reality show celeb culture obsession fucked people's brains even more deeply than I suspected it had.

He will be brought down eventually but it will probably be over some tiny trivial thing that normally wouldn't be given a second thought but which gets disproportionately inflated by the press for whatever reason.

[idunnosomename]

i mean hes basically like harold shipman. imagine if shippers had lived, got off, and did tours about how he killed 50k pensioners by ignoring everything and being a cunt and then killed another 50k by opening everything up too early before a vaccine and killing another 50k and being a cunt.

[jamiefairlie]

"Every nation gets the government it deserves"

Joseph de Maistre 18th century writer.

Fuck knows what we did to deserve Bozza though.

Vote for him? Just a thought.

[Kelvin]

He has an uncanny ability to appear relatable despite being an aristocrat, people ask for his autograph when he visits tiny piss towns.

This is a huge part of it, definitely.

Similarly, I also think people see him as an anti-politician; someone who cuts through the red tape and "PC nonsense" that hold other politicians back. Someone who says what he wants, knows what he wants (lol), and isn't interested in half measures (also lol). And his success in getting Brexit through when it had previously seemed impossible really cemented that, I think.

The irony is that he's nearly as directionless and unprincipled as a politician like Starmer. He's just much, much better at hiding it. The public like a politician who knows what he wants (so long as they agree), and they know what Johnson pretends to stand for.  I suspect Covid has helped as well, as it's given him one all-consuming issue to focus on, rather than having to layout his own vision.

[katzenjammer]

A lot of the new Tory voters from 'red wall' constituencies say that he needs to be 'given a chance'.  Nobody likes to admit they've made a mistake so the size of that leeway and the length of time it is given for will be very long.

[Tony Tony Tony]

Vote for him? Just a thought.

The thing is, in my social circles at least, folks don't fess up to voting Tory.

It's a bit like was said of Maggie's victory's, voting Tory is a bit like wanking loads of people are doing it but very few admit it.

[Johnny Yesno]

i mean hes basically like harold shipman. imagine if shippers had lived, got off, and did tours about how he killed 50k pensioners by ignoring everything and being a cunt and then killed another 50k by opening everything up too early before a vaccine and killing another 50k and being a cunt.

And upon getting his murdering habit somewhat under control, so-called 'centrists' would whine about how he was popular because of his 'diamorphine bounce'.

[pigamus]

He makes racism funny. What's not to love?