From View from the EU: Britain ‘taken over by gamblers, liars, clowns and their cheerleaders’, a view from Helene von Bismarck:
“Populists depend on enemies, real or imagined, to legitimise their actions and deflect from their own shortcomings,” she said. If the EU has been the “enemy abroad” since 2016, it will steadily be replaced by “enemies within”: MPs, civil servants, judges, lawyers, experts, the BBC.
Oversimplification, lack of nuance are greedily seen as ways of cutting the Gordian knot of complex debate and “getting things done”. There are times and places for such methods, but not permanently in running a country.
Also, from John Crace in the same paper (On Boris’s big day, Tories kid themselves this is the deal they always wanted)
“He had united his party – if only temporarily – over Europe. So it was job done for Boris, as Brexit had mainly only been about divisions within his own party. “
