BC UK

There's a tragic irony to Johnson's love of Churchill.

When Churchill became prime minister, he said: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat". He was honest about the severity of the situation and what it entailed. He didn't pretend everything would magically be alright.
Johnson's approach is the exact opposite. He runs from bad news like a dog from fireworks. He invents nonsense timetables by which everything will be fine.
He assumes the public need constant good news and sacrifices his own trustworthiness in order to provide it - it'll be over in six weeks, by Easter, by summer, by Christmas, by February, whatever.
It's equivalent to Churchill using his first speech as PM to insist the war will be over by Christmas.
Johnson clearly wants to be him and can muster some of the mannerisms of his language. But in terms of the core proposition of the man - the realism, sense of sacrifice and national mission, he is as distinct from him as it is possible to imagine.

More from Uk

Yesterday, of course, Jeremy Corbyn launched his Peace and Justice Project, to much excitement on here. Laudable goals too:

Take on Murdoch ✅
Green New Deal ✅
Support for food banks ✅
Speed up vaccine delivery in developing countries ✅

That's all excellent.

I'm not sure if anyone can argue with those four aims: they're irrefutable and all massively important. You bet I'd like to see Labour doing likewise; you bet I'm frustrated that it's so quiet on all of it.

HOWEVER...

Contained within the announcement was exactly the same selective blindness which makes the entire thing all too easy to shoot down - and again, means Corbyn is pretty unlikely to persuade anyone who's not already persuaded.

The sort of blindness which makes me tear my hair out.

Peace and Justice - sounds great, doesn't it? So why did the Peace and Justice project proudly announce the support of a corrupt criminal not remotely interested in either of those


Rafael Correa, former President of Ecuador. Let's run through his record, starting with the positives.

Slashed poverty from 36.7% to 22.5% ✅

Reduced inequality from 0.55 to 0.47 on the Gini index ✅

So far, so good. Except, um...

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