Reflections on the Election in Britain

Boris Johnson--islamophobe, racist, misogynist--led the British Conservative party to victory. There goes the theory that the Brits are so advanced on gender issues. Johnson won by appealing to uneducated, uninformed white males (sound familiar?) Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn was the target of a smear campaign that labeled him an "anti-Semite." Nobody sees any kind of double standard here. Apparently, in Britain you can get away with any sort of bigotry except "antisemitism." This is a clear case of selective outrage.

British politics are structurally and culturally different from American politics. It is difficult to correlate political trends from one country to another. One example was the British elections of April 1992, which George Bush I thought was going to guarantee his reelection. It didn't.

One gets the sense the Britain, like the rest of Europe does not have a future, but only a past.