"For God's sake let us sit upon the ground, and tell sad stories of the death of kings.
Richard II, William Shakespeare
Hearing that Boris Johnson resigned as leader of the British Conservative Party, and thus will eventually be removed as Prime Minister, brought back memories of when this happened to John Major in 1994, and Margaret Thatcher in 1990 before him. The day the leader of your team goes down is always a bit sad, even if it was past time for them to go.
The departure of a known quantity means the arrival of an unknown, untried leader, and by our nature we (small and big ‘c’) conservatives are leery of unpredictable change. Boris was larger than life; He was Falstaffian, even a kingly character - more of a later-reign, hard-partying Henry VIII than a hard-working Henry II, but still. Boris will be as well remembered for his considerable flaws (and, like Henry VIII, his women) than for his policy successes, the greatest of which was Brexit, but his large personality set the tone of Britain’s Covid era.
Under Boris, Conservatives did very well tapping into formerly Labor votes. There is a strain of patriotism running through working-class Britain that emerges at times of crisis. The word "jingoism," which today means right-wing patriotism and is associated with a belligerent foreign policy at best and colonialism at worst, comes from a popular rhyme from the late 19th century:
We don't want to have to fight, but by jingo if we do,
We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too!
This was a time of competition between the great powers as to who could dominate the sea and thus control global trade and security. The most powerful weapon of the day, able to project power thousands of miles away from home, was the battleship. For a few decades more, these dreadnoughts with their 12-inch, 16-inch, or even 18-inch guns firing shells the size of cars would remain the world's ultimate weapon, until ceding to airplanes and then nuclear bombs.
In World War I, despite the growing class-based labor movement, British working class men, from miners to farmhands, volunteered in their millions, along with the middle and upper classes, for what was essentially a defence of the Empire against challenger Germany. The Great War churned up an entire male generation through slaughterous static warfare, killing close to a million and wounding many more. Without popular, working-class support, Britain, Germany, and France would never have been able to sustain such a tragically wasteful war for four years. Russia's Czar, of course, lost the people's support in 1917 and we know how that turned out.
After the Second World War, British voters threw out Churchill’s conservatives and voted in a Labor government that would give them free national health care, attempt to tax the aristocracy into extinction, and dismantle the Empire. Starting with the Jewel in the Crown, India, in 1947, the unwinding ended two decades later with all but Hong Kong and a few minor possessions left. Hong Kong went back to China in 1997, and the Chinese promises of special status and freedoms are now revealed as a sham to save face for the retreating British.
Though today's British left seems rather unpatriotic and solidly woke, joining its American cousins in a hatred of everything historical, colonial, and imperial, support for Brexit revealed that the old working-class patriotism wasn’t entirely dead.
The 1970s American TV sitcom All in the Family starts with a song with the line "we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again." Today’s historical orthodoxy is to associate Hoover with the Great Depression, from which FDR rescued America. To contemporaries, though, Hoover, elected in 1928, was also symbolic of the powerful economic boom following World War I. He was regarded as a logistical genius, the man who pulled off an economic miracle in helping a war-torn Europe get back on its feet after four years of war and one of the Spanish flu. In the doldrums of the 1970s, beset by inflation, living in a suburb outside crime-ridden, garbage-strewn New York, one could see how Archie and Edith Bunker might pine for the days of prosperity, low taxes, and small government.
Perhaps Margaret Thatcher had to go in 1990, or soon after. Her work was largely done. She was detested by the left at the time, but she was the Iron Lady who took a Britain completely on the ropes and stood it back on its feet. She took the helm of a Great Britain beset by declining industry, strikes, and inflation, and drew a line against runaway trades unions that undermined the very source of the pie they wanted a bigger slice of. After 40 years of solid Imperial retreat, she led the nation in confronting the aggression of Argentina’s military dictatorship when they invaded the Falkland Islands.
I am sure she would have no truck for the woke nonsense of our present era. A woman from a middle-class background, seeing the diversity of the current Conservative party and cabinet, she’d scoff at the idea that the Western world is so structurally misogynist and racist that one can’t succeed with hard work and determination. A faithful wife to Dennis, she had no sex scandals in her closet, and with no personal venality, she would never have been brought down by corruption. Unlike some politicians, she’d also know the difference between men and women and be able to define them both succinctly.
Mister, we could use a woman like Margaret Thatcher again.
I agree Darrel, the problem with the whole paradigm is that (as a libertarian) it supersedes and gets in the way of us actually solving the pressing policy problems of the age. One of the reason Biden is doing so politically badly is just this; average Americans are wondering whether to buy food or heat their homes due to out of control inflation; while the progressive left warbles on about trans rights. I don't think most Americans care very much; I think they think it is criminally beside the point. we must not get sidetracked, either.
I often smile at these articles but we must stop being so distracted and defeated by the woke narrative in either direction. Live and let live should be the simple response when the media tries to tie politician in knots. Society deserves better debate. What's a women? Whatever you say it is, I'm happy either way and I want you to be too. Let's care about, govern and legislate for everyone. The inequality gap and hungry children are more pressing than who can use which toilet.