The Guardian - 31.07.2019

Section:GDN 1J PaGe:1 Edition Date:190731 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 30/7/2019 18:53 cYanmaGentaYellowbla

H

ow to beat Boris Johnson? British

politics has no question more

urgent. The prime minister is mere

weeks from crashing the country

out of the EU, a feat for which he is

even now buying public consent

with £100m of propaganda. He has

just appointed a cabinet whose

top fi gures – from Dominic Raab to Jacob Rees-Mogg –

espouse some of the most extreme ideological positions

ever voiced in Whitehall. He has it all: the personnel, the

politics and the imminent catalyst to reshape Britain and

to rip up what remains of its social contract. And it falls

to the rest of us to fi ght.

So where is the resistance? Much of the press remains

slack-jawed with awe at every announcement from

the new government, elevating even trivia such as the

formation of administrative committees to front-page

news. The mouthpiece of big business, the CBI, this week

sounds the alarm that “there are no areas of relevance

to the economy where the UK, the EU and the business

community are all prepared well enough for no deal” –

but then chucks Downing Street a bone and burbles on

about “pragmatism and fl exibility”. Then there is Her

Majesty’s opposition.

During the pretend-race for the Tory leadership, I

would canvass Labour contacts to see how they were

braced for the coronation of Johnson. The responses

betrayed little concern. He’d lost the love of the public,

I was told. He wasn’t the old Westminster stand-up

but had become instead Bad Boris of the Lying Bus. I

believed this to be complacent, and said so. Over the

weekend I did another phone-round, only to fi nd top

Labour people increasingly panicky, even while their

party continues to slumber.

All last week, while Johnson was being chauff eured

to the palace, making his victory speeches and

assembling his fi rst XI, Jeremy Corbyn held not a single

meeting with his own politicians on the new prime

minister and how Labour would fi ght him. Oh, it had

come up at shadow cabinet, I was told, but “towards the

end, and the discussion didn’t really go anywhere”. No

major strategy meeting is planned.

“It’s as if nothing has changed – but everything has

changed,” said one senior frontbencher. A Corbyn

loyalist, he despairingly described a party already

packing up for the holidays even as Johnson prepared

for an autumn election.

Yet if Labour continues to sleep through

the summer, it risks wipeout. For the fi rst

When Trump says ‘infested’, it’s clear who he means Afua Hirsch, page 3

Mark Field: this feels like men closing ranks Sian Norris, page 4

How the arts are helping Danes with depression The Upside, page 10

The Guardian

Boris Johnson

in Stretford,

Greater

Manchester,

27 July

PHOTOGRAPH:

REUTERS

Wednesday 31 July 2019



Labour risks

wipeout if it

fails to see the

Johnson threat

Opinion

and ideas

G2

Daily

pullout

life &

arts

section

Inside

Aditya

Chakrabortty

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