Boris Johnson once wrote two leading articles, one endorsing ‘Leave’, the other ‘Remain’. Boris Johnson appeared on the show Have I Got News For You to raise his public profile. Boris Johnson uses his pithier middle name – ‘Boris’ – rather than his real one, Alexander.
It is, apparently, the little touches like these that make Boris Johnson sui generis. His name is invoked as a self-evident punchline, loaded with meaning. We are told that Boris Johnson casts a long shadow; so long, indeed, that serious attempts have been made to recast all of recent history as his personal drama: a schoolboy rivalry with David Cameron that festered, terminating in fratricide and Brexit.
Boris Johnson is not allowed the normal vanity and manoeuvre of a politician – the kind that we freely grant to, say, Gordon Brown. When Boris resigned from parliament on Friday, we were taken on a whistlestop tour to revisit those he had vanquished: George Osborne, Theresa May and more. We were invited to see them not as failed politicians, but as victims who had – at last – lived to see their old oppressor brought low. But why? What exactly has Boris Johnson done to these people? In 2016, and in 2019, Boris competed with these individuals for power. In each instance he did so on a clear political platform, known to all. In the end, he won, and they lost – vanishing into well-renumerated obscurity.
Assertions of Johnsonian uniqueness have never been convincing. Glance at the rap sheet. None of it looks particularly out of place. Hedging his bets? Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May, now bywords for conviction politics, ducked the EU referendum altogether. Parliamentary purges? George Osborne planned to dump his party’s radical wing; Keir Starmer has already done so. Self-promotion and opportunism? Please.
We start to get the sense that all this is deliberate. Exoticising Boris Johnson as something unprecedented is designed to gin up a sense of crisis and emergency. It declares him to be somehow outside the body politic. Old bosses bemoan ever employing him as a young man. He should not have been allowed to write articles or books. From this, the use of special measures to hound a duly-elected politician from public life is only a short step.
Boris Johnson is a degenerate aristocrat who makes an appeal to the people. This archetype is probably older than democratic politics itself. Healthier polities are not so easily rattled by these kinds of adventurers. Regency Britain eventually let Charles James Fox back into the fold, and certainly never considered a lifetime ban from office. For Boris it has always been something of an act: demagoguery, but with a wry face. Only modern Britain, stolid, worthy, and neurotic, could see in this a real threat to the body politic. But see it they do, much to Boris’s own shock. Classical allusions have no doubt inspired him, and he has spent his whole career wondering why no one else seems to get the reference.
The pathology runs deeper still. The main event of Boris Johnson’s political life has been Britain’s departure from the European Union, a momentous act. But Brexit is exactly the kind of about-face that liberal democracy is meant to absorb, on the pattern of 1945 or 1979. The fact that this hasn’t happened simply discredits everyone involved. The real story since 2016 hasn’t been about one man’s ambition, but the collapse into incontinence over an attempt to moderately reform the British state, an attempt that – by the way – enjoys two democratic mandates.
The mandate was thrown away. Boris locked Britain down for over a year, and was only talked out of it by those he now denounces as wets. The temptation is for Johnson’s Rightward critics to cut him loose. But this would be a mistake. Boris’s present difficulty speaks to more elemental questions. What we are confronted with, now, isn’t the decadence and drift of the Johnson Government, but whether opposition politics is possible in Britain at all. Via the Privileges Committee, Whitehall and a declining class of lobby journalist asserts its old control over the executive. In years gone by, this control rested on leaks and on elegant obfuscation. But, enraged by Brexit, their tools have become crude and cracker-barrel. They no longer plot, only harangue. The endless drawing up of rulebook violations is used to keep ministers in quasi-judicial limbo, locked up in the extra-parliamentary barracks of Portcullis House. This is designed to harry and demoralise, or score a lucky hit; at the very least it wastes their time. As a demented last resort, MPs can now – apparently – be banned from Parliament outright.
Under these new rules, policies are of no moment. As are the virtues that Boris was said to lack: probity and ‘fitness for office’ – whatever that means. If personal probity couldn’t save Dominic Raab – who has eaten the same sandwich and ‘superfruit pot’ for lunch every day for the last ten years – then it will not avail anyone else.
So it has proven. Rishi Sunak’s Government is based on a simple idea: probity and ‘fitness for office’ to end the conflict with Whitehall. This idea has now been tested to destruction. Rishi has watched his ministerial bench slowly empty, picked off for trifles. Probing attacks have already been made on Rishi himself, which will end in his own arraignment. Either you assert the House of Commons’ sovereign authority over its rivals, or politics will simply disappear. Defending Boris Johnson would be a first step in this direction. It would say that a majority of 80 from the British people counts for something, and is more important than a nonbinding office handbook.
But ‘Boris’ is more than just a point of principle. Matt Goodwin tells us that Boris the man is less important than the broader ‘Realignment’ he represents. This idea should not be taken too far. Of those who have had any success in centralising power in Parliament there are exactly three: Nigel Farage, Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson. Each of these people – infamously – proceeded on individual will and charisma, not big ideas. A gift for command, gravitas, organisation, a common touch. These are high virtues. And they are rare ones – just ask Ron DeSantis. There is no Bonapartism without a Bonaparte to hand. Boris Johnson has immense popular appeal across the country, and, crucially, a cosy retirement of books and speeches no longer seems to be on the cards. As a classicist, the dilemma will probably feel familiar to him. It should be familiar to us, and we’d be advised to meet him halfway.
Stop Press: Read Boris’s scathing 1,700 word statement on the Privileges Committee’s report into partygate describing the findings as “deranged” and “beneath contempt”.
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What is it about actors? Through a combination of luck, timing, and some acting ability, some of them make it into the ‘big time’. They then assume that they are fit to proclaim on any subject (that grabs the headlines). However, their basic IQs haven’t changed and their lack of awareness definitely shrinks.
We also had dear old Mr Cumberbatch telling everyone to get vaccinated in 2021. I understand he played being a Doctor in Marvel, but that doesn’t suddenly make him a world leading epidemiologist. Ditto Radcliffe and Watson suddenly deciding they are authorities on ‘transitioning’.
These people would do better to realise their obvious limitations and stick to their narrow (well paid) lanes. JK is right not to forgive these charlatans.
There was a study made quite a long time ago that suggested that people stop maturing at the age they become famous. Certainly explains a lot.
Indeed. It would appear that Daniel stopped growing at the same time he stopped filming the Harry Potter movies. I always thought there was something Wicca-like about JK..
I do hope Ms Rowling can hold on to a large measure of revenge for these two ungrateful children. I look forward to tales of their downfall.
“What is it about actors?”
You are implying that all actors are the same. That’s nonsense. You are commenting about a tiny few number of actors and extending your criticism to actors in general.
Solentviews, you seem to think that actors are generally on one side of debates about trans, vaccines and other issues about which you (and I) have opposing views? Why do you think almost all the acting talent comes from one side and barely any from the side that you (and I) are on? Why so little acting talent on our side of these issues?
Or could it be that many actors don’t think like you think they think?
It’s very understandable that many actors don’t speak out and say what they think about these controversial issues, as they would be in great danger of being cancelled at the drop of a hat.
You’re right that it’s hard to know what they all think and that there are reasons why we don’t hear certain views. However I think it’s a reasonable assumption that people who work in TV and especially film are probably more left-wing/”liberal” than the average person, because the output from TV and film in the Anglosphere has been left/”liberal” leaning for a very long time, since long before “cancel culture”.
No forgiveness is exactly right. These ungrateful idiots were made very wealthy by JK’s stories and they turned on her without thinking.
The woke are bleating about reparations for crimes of the past, for which the perpetrators and victims have long since passed.
Meanwhile they are oblivious to the actual crimes of the present, in which they are complicit, and yet they continue to think of themselves as virtuous.
Perhaps if they loudly and publicly acknowledge their errors, put on sack-cloth and ashes, rent their clothes, loudly and repeatedly utter profuse lamentations and beg, then maybe, just maybe, she can show herself to be the bigger person.
Oh! Look! A flying pig. They are not mature enough, and never will be. Insulated from life by their money and the people who lionise them.
I appreciate I was stretching credibility towards the end of my comment. But true and public contrition is the only remedy I could accept.
Good for you, girl. The only thing I will say is; if you meet them be very nice and polite. It will eat at their souls, if they have any. Vile little leeches.
I’m not sure why trans ideology is an attack on women’s rights.
Anyone who cares to look at the stats will find that girls thinking they are boys far outnumber boys wanting to become girls.
Trans ideology isn’t an attack on women’s rights it’s an attack on everyone’s sanity. It potentially affects everyone.
If you are put in a situation where you have to ignore reality and proclaim allegiance to this insane ideology or potentially lose your job as many have had to, both men and women, that is basically cognitive assault.
To me that’s the real damage of the ideology. Far more insidious and widespread than the tiny percentage of the population that has been pushed into a sex change let alone the absolutely miniscule proportion of the population that has had their “safe space” invaded.
The weirdo trans men exposing their junk in female changing rooms is very objectionable. No argument there. But it pales in comparison to an entire society being driven to madness, bullied into having to profess something thry know to be absurd.
I sort of agree, but the most visible consequences so far have manifested mostly against women. It’s worth listening to Joe Rogan speaking to Riley Gaines.
I would definitely agree that the impression created by the media is that one. (But surely the DS community as much as any other is suspicious of traditional media natratives).
The picture portrayed by the media is a distortion. At least based on the figures. And that can be corroborated by people working in education.
In fact, you could make a robust case that it is in fact women most replsponsible for foisting this on young kids given school education is largely dominated by women.
In fact, woke ideology is very much supported by women more than men and there is clear evidence of a political divide emerging between men (generally more conservative) and women who are much more represented on the left.
If trans ideology needs to be defeated by feminists, then I suppose that’s better than not defeated at all. Happy to give them the credit foe that.
Well of course the trans ideology effects everybody. Nobody is disputing that. But it disproportionately effects females, as anybody who hasn’t been in an induced coma for the last few years should be well aware of, with many many examples across various contexts. So if you are claiming that there are more FtM trans people show me the news items reporting on FtM people competing in men’s sports events, infiltrating men’s prisons, being caught perving in the men’s locker rooms or toilets, winning awards that are destined for males. MtF trans blokes even won Miss Universe and Miss Netherlands last year! In Spain they only need to identify as female, not make any effort to live as one, and they’re immediately entitled to all the relevant benefits women would receive. Males are exploiting the system left, right and centre, and only somebody who finds it painful to acknowledge that women do indeed have rights would be in denial of these easily checkable facts.
Another area that pertains to JK Rowling, which is targeted by predatory men exploiting the system, is rape crisis centres, which she has been heavily involved in up in Scotland, as this article covers. I’d imagine when she states, ”vulnerable women reliant on single-sex spaces”, this is what she’s referring to;
”Harry Potter author’s new women-only shelter for survivors of sexual assault has been welcomed by a founder of Scotland’s rape crisis network.
One of the reasons for Ms Rowling and her team creating the new service is the fact that the existing Edinburgh Rape Crisis centre is open to trans women and nonbinary people, including biological males.
The centre’s chief executive, Mridul Wadhwa, a transwoman, told a podcast that women sexual assault victims who requested female-only care would be “challenged on your prejudices” and told to “reframe your trauma”.
https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/scottish-news/scotlands-original-rape-crisis-founder-28737168
I’ve explained above. What you are describing is what the media have been putting a spotlight on and not by any stretch of the imagination the full picture.
If you go on what media reports then you’ll also believe that we are in the midst of a climate catastrophe. You would have also been under the impression that covid 19 was the most dangerous disease since the Spanish flu and you would have been certain that one of the new covid jabs would somehow help you.
This is not to say that what media report regarding male athletes competing as women and freaks trying to weasel their way into female prisons isn’t real. But it is possible to lie by omission and by distortion.
For reasons that I don’t fully know, this is the angle the media has chosen to report trans ideology. My most charitable guess is that (a) women and particularly feminists are over represented in the media and so that is the angle that has been portrayed and (b) perhaps it has been the most effective way to fight it, even if it isn’t by any means the worst effect of it.
Just do the numbers. What is the female prison population? And now, what is the population of children (boys and girls) being fed this crazy ideology, their minds being completely screwed with? It think you’ll agree it’s not even close. One is a tiny population. The other is, well, most children in the country.
Would you mind sharing those stats that you mention about more girls wanting to be boys than vice versa, please? I’d be interested in reading that info.
Here is one. In this one it says it used to be primarily MTF and now FTM is equal, the number of FTM growing much quicker. As the study is 4 years old and the data probably older, and the growth in FTM has been rapid, because transgenderism not much more of a thing, you can assume FTM has already surpassed MTF. Also worth noting is that the age is getting younger, because, as I say, this stuff is pushed primarily in schools.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33644314/
Here is another.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/genderidentity/articles/genderidentityageandsexenglandandwalescensus2021/2023-01-25
Stewart, I wish you would stop trying to minimise the detrimental effects of trans ideology on the lives of many women, especially women who have been traumatised by sexual assault who don’t want men in women’s private spaces. You’re in danger of starting to sound like James O’Brien:
https://twitter.com/AvonandsomerRob/status/1778093522157031509
I’m doing no such thing.
I’m pointing out that the worst effects of trans ideology are not on women’s rights. It’s on children. Many if not most children in UK are being taught that gender is on a spectrum, that it’s perfectly ok to change your sex, that it’s in fact quite normal.
Why are you trying to minimise the insidious, frankly downright dangerous effect of trans ideology on children by claiming that it’s women who are victims of rape that are the most affected?
Tell, me how many women victims of rape have had to encounter a tranny in their toilet or changing room?
And then, compare that to the number of children that are being taught that transitioning to different sex is absolutely ok.
I remind you that our government has so far refused to publish “guidance” on how the matter of gender should be treated in schools. In other words, the government of this country has so far refused to tell teachers not to fill the minds of children with the idea that their sex is something they can just change any time they like and that it’s perfectly normal and ok.
stewart, this isn’t a ”Who is the biggest victim?” contest and I think you are edging very closely to victim blaming here. So there’s more women in education, therefore it’s women’s fault that more girls want to turn into boys and therefore women’s fault that bad things then go on to happen as a result. Why don’t we stick to the original point of the article and JK’s comment as opposed to deflecting away from the very real risks to women/girls and the erosion of their sex-based rights, because anybody in denial that this is happening ( such as the examples I have given above ) is rather outing themselves as somebody who isn’t a real proponent of women’s rights in the first place.
You don’t get to invalidate the concerns of women and the harms that they are experiencing by wheeling out the ”but kids are most at risk of harm”, or, ”most Woketards are women so it’s their own fault” arguments because that is pure deflection.
Same as if more girls are wanting to be boys or vice versa, this is a separate issue and in no way changes the current situation of females being put at unnecessary risks, or awards and opportunities to win them stolen due to these unjust, crazy laws and rights afforded to any male who wishes to identify as female.
Nobody in their right mind would deny the devastating impact that this gender ideology and teaching queer theory in class has on kids and young people. Their minds are being warped with toxic junk that goes against all biological known fact, by trusted adults who are basically brainwashing them and exposing them to a very dangerous cult. It’s then up to us sane parents to undo the indoctrination that happens in class, because not many parents have the luxury of pulling their kids out of school and going the home tutoring route.
So back to the original point: trans ideology absolutely is an attack on women’s rights and what is actually being reported by the media will obviously just be a drop in the ocean compared with the everyday reality because, contrary to your point, most incidents *do not* get reported on in the press.
So back to the original point: trans ideology absolutely is an attack on women’s rights
Well, it obviously is. But women’s rights have a quite powerful lobby, not the least because that used to be one of the ‘classic’ woke topics. Children don’t. Further, the attack on children is more dangerous and more evil on its own while JK Rowling vs Trans is basically woke infighting.
“Trans ideology isn’t an attack on women’s rights it’s an attack on everyone’s sanity.”
It’s an attack on both. They’re not mutually exclusive.
A female friend of mine who has suffered sexual assault does not want men in her changing rooms. Do you not think trans ideology is an attack on women’s rights to dignity and safety in women’s private spaces?
Only in a very small way because it’s incredibly unlikely your friend will ever encounter a tranny in a “private women’s space”.
I don’t think I can impress on you enough that what you hear in the media is a massive distortion of reality.
What you are not going to hear in the media is how children are being brainwashed in schools into trans ideology (as well as climate ideology, race ideology and a number of other toxic ideologies). You’re not going to hear it because the people who run the media and the people who run the schools are basically on the same team.
Stewart, I have formed my views absent any media input. Please don’t imply I’m one of the dupes.
I agree it’s a huge impact on young kids. But the highly visible impact on women has been the ‘canary in the coal mine’.
On your comment that someone is highly unlikely to have their private space invaded by a tranny, I would once again refer you to Riley Gaines on Joe Rogan. She literally did.
We each here hold viewpoints that disagree with the ideology, and we each believe our views to be reasoned and well-formed based on our own perspectives and experiences. It seems the only difference in the views in this thread is the extent to which a specific aspect has priority in the scheme of things. I would ask you not to inadvertently disparage our sincerely held views in your efforts to get your point across. Thanks.
I’m not disparaging your views Im disagreeing with some of them. And you do get your information from the media. You’ve given me one example. Riley Grimes on Joe Rogan.
The cases you know about trans in women prisons? Media.
The cases of women encountering trans in changing rooms? Media
The cases of men competing against women? Media.
Unless you’re going to tell me you know all these people personally.
Well, all of this is ‘media’ if you like. Including here.
Riley Gaines is a credible person, put into an unjust position, who found herself having to fight for her rights. Did you listen to her speak? What’s wrong with Joe Rogan and why is Riley not credible?
I don’t feel like you’re disagreeing with my views, you didn’t refute one word, you’re saying your views and perspective are more valid and I don’t have time for that.
You’re welcome to hold your opinion, you’re also free to think I’m wrong, but instead you seem to have something to prove and it’s a bit of a broken record.
Of course not. But Stewart is perfectly correct in pointing out that the by far overwhelming majority of victims of this are children this is being force-fed to. Not only the relatively small number who end up being mutilated into inhumanity (sex is a really basic property of any human being and crippling someone’s body to the point where it cannot sexually function anymore excludes that someone forever from a real lot of things society values very highly) but also those who are being taught that they’re somehow not real — You may think you’re a girl, kid, but that’s only your opinion! There’s no proof that you actually are because … see … girls don’t even exist, they’re just social constructs!
On the psychoterror level, this easily passes O’Brien in 1984 who tortured Winston in all kinds of ways but he didn’t force him to declare the he actually was a woman and Julia a man. At least today. Tomorrow, things might be different.
And that’s just the start of it. A real lot of our culture is based on men being men and women being women. And the transsexuatics are trying to erase all that.
Rowling and other female writers have pointed out that feminism was always based on biological sex. If a biological male can become female, that undermines the foundations of feminism.
Though the purpose of transitioning is more to do with abolishing maleness. There are no husbands anymore, just partners. At the same time, trans is very different from the small number of people born with intersex characteristics; conditions that are genetic in origin and beyond those people’s control.
I wonder how long it will be before a group of women take this to it’s logical conclusion and remove the ‘junk’ from an interloper in their space, with or without the use of some sort of anesthetic?
There is an illustrative irony for someone who played a wizard in training to criticise the gender ideology that holds that a man can wave a magic wand, cast a spell and abracadabra, sex change! SHE can now access female only spaces, enter female sports teams and go through periods and menopause…
This truly is the stuff of wizardry.
Ouch, JK!
Dear Miss Rowling you are on the right side and are supported by the vast majority. No one wants to discriminate against people and how they choose to live their life, but they cannot live it if it interferes with others living theirs. The obvious examples are female only spaces and what is supposed to be female only sports. ——-Actors and pop stars often have this tendency to want to be seen as important people making a difference to the world and will allow their popularity to be hijacked by those with political agenda’s so their messages can reach a much wider audience. Those in the entertainment industry need to wake up to the obvious——-they are being exploited.
I know nothing about her and I haven’t read her books. They might be a worthwhile conduit into the secret teaching but probably not. The things she says just reflect the way the majority of mainstream women think anyway so there shouldn’t be a problem but there clearly is. That’s just how brittle we have become and how successful the adversary has been in driving us away from the spirit, which is his ultimate aim in our time. We have had counterforces in popular culture – The Wizard of Oz was written by an initiate and lays bare a lot of things. When Glinda tells Dorothy that she is a good witch. Such an idea was completely anti-canonical . In that time people were bible-taught that thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. This period between the present and 2040 is crucial in terms of opportunity for revelation. A lot is at jeopardy because if we miss it we risk the eighth sphere. In occult circles is was not deemed appropriate to mention the eight sphere to low level initiates but Rudolf Steiner felt that the general public should know about it. It is a misstep that humanity could make in terms of the adoption of digital mechanisms, AI etc – essentially pulling us away from our cosmic evolution.
Without Rowling, Ratcliffe and Watson would be non-entities. She has no reason whatsoever to forgive them and nor should she. They are like cockroaches and like cockroaches, they will now scuttle out of sight.
Make no mistake God sent JK Rowling and Satan created Emma Watson and Ratcliffe
They don’t have to apologise IMO, they are entitled to think what they think as long as they afford others (i.e. JK) the same right in the future.
JK Rowling is quite right to dismiss these actors who have demonstrated their gullibility by supporting the cult ideology of ‘gender change’, and possibly influenced many confused young people. What we have been witnessing, and forced to put up with, men in what should be women only areas, by these misguided idiots over the last few years is nothing less than criminal, imho.