Congratulations, Boris!

Dear Boris,

I could hardly sleep last night. Many scenarios played in my head: Corbyn the new PM, a hung parliament, endless parliamentary sessions, battles about prorogation. What a relief this morning: you had secured and you had strengthened your position as the democratically chosen PM.

It was certainly not easy to get there. No other British politician had to spread so many flagrant lies as you did, but they were absolutely necessary to secure this spectacular victory, to finally “GET BREXIT DONE”.

Your political enemy, Mr Corbyn, turned out to be your best friend, after all. His complete lack of popularity was a gift from heaven. Not only is his physical appearance a guarantee for instantaneous distrust, his completely outdated Marxist class struggle theories and his entirely unclear Brexit position were enough to undermine Labour’s political credibility. Congratulations, too, Jeremy!

Of course, many of your critics envy your great success and keep nagging about problems you will encounter when implementing your Brexit strategy. Industrial investments, already declining at an alarming rate, will dwindle even more rapidly. Large parts of the automobile industry, which depend on flawless supply chains, will move to Germany and other European countries. Head Quarters of many international companies will prefer Dublin or Amsterdam. Labour shortages will haunt many organisations, especially in the service and health sector. Serious conflicts will threaten peace in Northern Ireland again. Scotland’s motivation to leave the Union will strongly increase. The money for all the beautiful presents you promised during your campaing will not be there. After all, the net payments to the EU are many times lower than you said: you tactically forgot to include agricultural payments from the EU to the UK, for example.

These critics tend to forget two important things. First, they seem two assume that Brexit was and is your main political goal. It is not. Your political goal is to collect power, as much power as possible. Brexit is not your first goal. Brexit is your means to your end. Second, they seem to assume that you have a Brexit strategy, but you haven’t. You certainly have a beautiful collection of Brexit slogans and these were exactly what you needed until today. The slogan “GET BREXIT DONE” was more than brilliant, but you can only admit that you do not know at all what it means. The same for “GETTING BACK CONTROL”: psychologically superb as it refers to basic human needs and fears. Who does not want more control? The critics will ask: “control over what, for whom, etc.?”, but these are irrelevant questions. The important thing is that you managed to strike exactly the right chord in large parts of the UK population with the right political result: Boris PM with a large majority, Boris getting back control.

Now that you have secured your power position, you can get to work and even think about how to get Brexit done. I wish you lots of success during the 2, 5 or 15 years this will take.

Sincerely,

Reinier de Man