Boris Johnson Archives - Public Seminar

Politics

Why Does the Far Right Love a Pompadour?

Big hair and bad ideas

December 20, 2023 • by Adriana Piatti-Crocker

Why do these politicians don big hair? Perhaps their inventively crafted manes serve to hide behind their bad ideas. Or maybe, like the pompadours of male entertainers, their big hair is the best way to be remembered by voters. Who can forget such hairdos?...

Why Does the Far Right Love a Pompadour?

Democracy

Scotland Is Stuck

The Scottish National Party is more popular and powerful than ever – but also boxed in to a constitutional stalemate with the UK

September 3, 2020 • by Simon Jones

------------- “Stick with it Scotland,” say the billboards in Glasgow. It’s a slogan applying both to the continued need to keep wearing masks and to practice social distancing, as the country enters a phase of localised measures to restrict movement in the ongoing Covid-19 crisis after a comprehensive lockdown in spring and ...

Europe & Central Asia

A Year of Boris Johnson

Only a handful of people would be mad enough to covet being prime minister at this particular point in British history, and one of them now inhabits Downing Street

July 27, 2020 • by Simon Jones

Thursday saw the United Kingdom pass an important milestone: one year of life under the leadership of Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson. What was supposed to be a fascinating year of unpredictable political events has been rendered utterly dystopian through the COVID-19 crisis. Still, it’s worth looking back on what ...

Politics

The U.S. and UK Are a Wrecking Ball Crew Against the Pillars of Internationalism

They have undermined the sovereignty of nations and mutilated international law

July 13, 2020 • by Vijay Prashad

Ambassador Kelly Craft, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, spoke at the same meeting. She praised the charter and called upon the member states of the UN to bring its values into the world. However, Ambassador Craft said, “On far too many occasions, we have seen nations that are parties ...

The U.S. and UK Are a Wrecking Ball Crew Against the Pillars of Internationalism

Politics

Is Social Democracy Viable?

If it is, it will need better arguments, organization, and leadership, according to a U.K. Labour Party post-mortem

June 24, 2020 • by Simon Jones

The U.K. Labour party recently released a report that analyses their defeat in the 2019 election. The results should alarm anyone interested in the future of social democracy. The report concludes that the crushing failure of the 2019 Corbyn campaign had been years in the making. Shifting electoral demographics, organizational dysfunction, ...

Europe & Central Asia

Letter from Glasgow

Labour renewed in a Britain unchanged

May 14, 2020 • by Simon Jones

But then in late April, the blossom trees awaken in the resurgent sun, their brilliant petals a thrilling antidote to the months of grey. Within days of their fading arrives the full vibrancy of the parks and countryside around Glasgow, a reminder that the trade-off for living somewhere so apparently ...

Politics

How Disinformation Became a Winning Strategy

Fomenting political fury is something that concerns us all

January 30, 2020 • by Adam Ramsay

The recent UK election was a quarrel about the character of politics. On the one hand, the Labour Party argued that it can be used for good, ‘for the many’. They promised to transform lives and communities, to take action on climate change and poverty. The Conservative Party, conversely, claimed ...

How Disinformation Became a Winning Strategy

Politics

The Prime Minister Versus History

How Boris Johnson misrepresented the United Kingdom’s past to present himself as its political heir

November 25, 2019 • by Alistair Somerville

This is an updated version of an article published at Public Seminar on July 30, 2019. Politicians like to tell stories about themselves. Leaders like to tell stories about their country. The British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, is the first since Winston Churchill with both a prominent personal story and his ...

Feature

A Ticket for the Rome Express

A Strategy for Democracy

September 27, 2019 • by Andrew Arato

In Budapest, and shortly before local elections, some of my friends now speak of the Istanbul Express. As readers know, in that enormous city, followers of the slightly left Republican People’s Party (CHP), of the Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) and a small nationalist grouping, “the Good Party,” united to ...

Politics

The New Prime Minister Versus History

How Boris Johnson misrepresented the United Kingdom’s past to present himself as its political heir

July 30, 2019 • by Alistair Somerville

What do Johnson’s methods of storytelling and the content of his tales tell us about the man and the prospects for his premiership? To many on this side of the Atlantic, he is simply an enigmatic buffoon — little more than a jumped up Trump mini-me with a plummier accent. ...

Podcast

Boris Johnson, Purity Culture, and Spaying and Neutering Dogs

Episode 190

July 29, 2019 • by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Nicole Hemmer and Neil J. Young

Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: Boris Johnson is the new prime minister of Britain. Niki recommended historian Jesse Tumblin’s Washington Post article, “ How the Failure of Popular Politics Triggered the Rise of Boris Johnson.”Evangelical author Josh Harris has separated from his wife and disavowed his influential book I Kissed Dating Goodbye. Natalia ...

Far-Right Über Alles

The Far Right Alignment of Trump, Putin, Orbán, Kaczynski, and Johnson

November 12, 2016 • by Tomasz Kitlinski

This article originally appeared on Souciant on November 10th 2016. A new global bromance has begun: Trump, Putin, Orbán, Kaczynski, Johnson. These powers that be, who now control the planet, could not be more xenophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-woman, anti-queer, and ultranationalist. How could we have ever allowed that to happen? We’re all ...