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Mike Hosking: Why I'm loving Boris Johnson's strategy

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Wed, 11 Sep 2019, 3:51PM
Boris Johnson has the popularity of the wider public. (Photo / AP)

Mike Hosking: Why I'm loving Boris Johnson's strategy

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Wed, 11 Sep 2019, 3:51PM

I am loving Boris Johnson. He is going to take the delay law and tell them to stick it.

The doom merchants suggest he could end up in jail. Guess what? He won't.

He's been boosted this week so far, by two polls both show his popularity is up. Both show he is a a mile ahead of Jeremy Corbyn, both show people are sick of Brexit, and his no deal strategy is the right one. Corbyn has been exposed for the duplicitous, little snake he is. Begging for an election until he got the chance then scampering as fast as he could.

The GDP figures came out. There is no recession, and there has been no recession. Every bit of misery and gloom forecast these past three years has failed to materialise. House prices have not collapsed, jobs have not been lost, and food has not been in short supply.

What Johnson's foray into the house has shown is the Parliament is at odds with the people, and the Parliament has taken democracy and placed it in the nearest bin.

It is not Johnson who has hijacked democracy by suspending Parliament, it is the remainers and the mutineers who have shunned the will of the people. All Johnson is trying to do is give the country what it wants, and what it voted for.

So between now and the end of October the talks go on, and my bet is the Europeans will still bend. The basic premise of all of this has never changed. The British people voted to leave, and the Europeans, as upset and aggrieved as they may be, still need Britain more than Britain needs the EU.

And even if no deal is struck, what works now in Johnson's favour is fatigue. Three years of sheer ineptitude has worn everyone to a stand still. Brexit will be a blessed relief. The minutiae of any sort of deal, or potential deal, has long ago been lost by the simple reality that certainty trumps all. And a Brexit is certainty.

And then we come to the election and there will have to be one, and given it most likely won't be till after the end of October, Johnson then has in his pocket the ultimate policy play, "I gave you what you wanted. May couldn't do it, Corbyn ran from it, and I delivered it."

If he does a deal with Farage and his party, cuts a series of accommodations in strategic seats, with the stars aligned and a fair tailwind a couple of things could happen, Corbyn loses and gets rolled as leader, there is no vote for Scotland thus preserving the United Kingdom, and Boris is shown to be a man for the times, dispelling the image of a clown that once dogged him.

And Britain sets sail for a lifetime of free trade deal, no more cheques to Europe, and charting its own course and future.

He delivers that, he's in the history books. 

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