https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/britain-tories-and-kemi-badenoch-bruce-bawer/
“Briefly put, she’s incredibly smart, broadly knowledgeable, articulate, self-possessed, and gutsy – a no-nonsense expounder of good old-fashioned British common sense. In debate, she shines in a way that brings Mrs. Thatcher to mind. So, given that the Tory establishment is essentially Labour lite, nobody expected her to be the last person standing when the game of musical chairs was over. She fell out of the competition after the fourth vote, on July 19; the next day, happily, Trade Minister Penny Mordaunt, a slavish advocate of gender ideology, authoritarian hate-speech legislation, and other progressive rubbish, was voted off the island. ”
These days, Britain’s Tory Party is not unlike the neverTrump GOP in the U.S. The problem is that so far, at least, there’s no close British approximation to Trump. When Boris Johnson ascended to the prime ministership, to be sure, some of us who had read and admired his Spectator columns for years thought that, after being handed the reins of power, he might very well deliver the goods in a way not unlike The Donald. Alas, no. As it turned out, being a sharp, snappy political writer – even one who, thinking on his feet in front of a live audience, can put up a witty argument for the superiority of classical Greece to ancient Rome – doesn’t necessarily mean that one will be a first-rate head of government.
It’s still depressing to look back on it all. The Tories won the 2020 election by a landslide – giving them a clear mandate to take back Britain from the London-based progressives – but Boris, for all his power, did less with it, at least in that regard, than any of his admirers could ever have expected. Yes, he got Brexit done. But taxes went up anyway. So did rates of illegal immigration. He ordered a very strict lockdown (which he famously violated) and pursued an environmental policy that might have been cooked up by the EPA. As “woke” ideology spread – a far more dangerous virus than COVID-19 – he repeatedly resisted opportunities to score meaningful victories against it that would only have enhanced his level of public support. Perhaps most appalling, during his tenure, horrific revelations of mass grooming-gang rapes kept on coming even as the nation’s police, to their everlasting discredit, remained far more interested in locking up critics of Islam than in nabbing Muslim rapists. But B.J. just shrugged it all off, seeming strangely detached – perhaps, some wondered, uneasy with power.
Which, of course, is why the Conservatives, taking advantage of a relatively trivial scandal or two, finally decided a few weeks back to give old Boris the heave-ho and find a new party leader.
