There’s an argument to be made that without David Cameron’s decision to sacrifice the country’s relationship with Europe and appeal to UKIP with the Brexit referendum we wouldn’t have had May, Brexit, Boris, Truss or Sunak. To be honest I think we would have had Boris anyway but we maybe wouldn’t have had such a lurch to the far right as we’ve had.
Having said that, I think the shift to the right was already underway, a Boris follow-up was pretty inevitable with how skilled he is at fooling people with charisma (that somehow made everyone forget or forgive his leaked conversation to have a journalist assaulted). His legacy will always be his completely inadequate and corrupt handling of COVID. The one good thing I’ll say about him especially compared to Sunak is that he does seem to genuinely care about the environment and did enact some positive environment policy.
I think any Tory leader would’ve been forced to do the same as Cameron did in that political climate. I know he made the actual decision to have a referendum which was arguably the worst decision in the recent history of our country, but I think with the impact UKIP was having at the time, it was relatively inevitable.
Similar to how the SNP making such huge gain is what forced a Scottish independence referendum.
Edit: I also dread to think about the ‘what if?’ would be like if we didn’t have Covid to kind of push Bojo out.
The 2015 general election definitely feels like a Sliding Doors moment.
It’s debatable that BoJo would have been elected without him (cynically) going all in for Leave and we’d have had someone more competent during the pandemic.
There’s an argument to be made that without David Cameron’s decision to sacrifice the country’s relationship with Europe and appeal to UKIP with the Brexit referendum we wouldn’t have had May, Brexit, Boris, Truss or Sunak. To be honest I think we would have had Boris anyway but we maybe wouldn’t have had such a lurch to the far right as we’ve had.
Having said that, I think the shift to the right was already underway, a Boris follow-up was pretty inevitable with how skilled he is at fooling people with charisma (that somehow made everyone forget or forgive his leaked conversation to have a journalist assaulted). His legacy will always be his completely inadequate and corrupt handling of COVID. The one good thing I’ll say about him especially compared to Sunak is that he does seem to genuinely care about the environment and did enact some positive environment policy.
I think any Tory leader would’ve been forced to do the same as Cameron did in that political climate. I know he made the actual decision to have a referendum which was arguably the worst decision in the recent history of our country, but I think with the impact UKIP was having at the time, it was relatively inevitable.
Similar to how the SNP making such huge gain is what forced a Scottish independence referendum.
Edit: I also dread to think about the ‘what if?’ would be like if we didn’t have Covid to kind of push Bojo out.
The 2015 general election definitely feels like a Sliding Doors moment.
It’s debatable that BoJo would have been elected without him (cynically) going all in for Leave and we’d have had someone more competent during the pandemic.