Boris johnson where is he

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The logic behind this is straightforward: if Johnson can make life better in areas that don't have the same opportunities as some cities, most notably London, the resentment in those run-down areas toward the elite will be reduced, Johnson will be hailed a nation-unifying hero and he will tighten his grip on the UK's electorate.

Boris Johnson on the campaign trail in , when he pledged to "get Brexit done. There are questions about how the PM plans to fund his ambitions. Yes, some members of his own cabinet have been outspoken about the government's idea to raise taxes in order to pay for things like social care.

Others in the party, mostly traditional fiscal conservatives, are uncomfortable with the amount of state intervention and funding Johnson has seemed fine with during the pandemic. However, when these grievances are weighed against the fact that Johnson delivered the Conservative party its largest majority since the s, it turns out that power at any cost apparently tastes better than losing with honor.

One government minister told CNN on Monday night that "fuel problems, food shortages, arguments over tax, all this stuff is definitely happening. But riding on his wave of success is ultimately just more fun. Poor opposition. CNN asked multiple government officials, including cabinet ministers, why the very real problems facing the country were not being discussed at all. Their replies all pointed to the fact that -- as they see it -- if an election were held tomorrow, Johnson would win comfortably.

It's absolutely intoxicating to be part of," said one government official. The reasons for Johnson's success are most likely down to poor opposition on numerous fronts. Boris Johnson's reign is becoming one long crisis. Within his own party, he is an unrivaled king for the reasons outlined above.

It's very rare for any party leader to face as little public dissent as Johnson does. Even ministers who were sacked in the most recent reshuffle are full of praise for their leader.

Outside the gated conference in Manchester, the official opposition Labour party has also failed to make any real capital out of the recent crises plaguing the country. Even at their own party conference last week, Labour members were more focused on internal party politics than attacking an incumbent government that has been forced to call in the army to deliver fuel. Andy Burnham, the Labour mayor of Manchester, even offered to work with Johnson on his "leveling up" agenda , acknowledging that the country has suffered from far too much division following Brexit and the pandemic.

The truth is, there's probably very little to be gained from attacking the Prime Minister anyway. Outside the gates in Manchester, even the numbers of anti-Conservative protestors are smaller -- and much less vocal -- than at other conferences in recent years, when British politics was deadlocked by Brexit.

On Monday night, the EU Commission held a reception in the conference center. Time and again, when controversy has engulfed him, he has emerged unscathed. Read: Boris Johnson keeps defying gravity. Part of his electoral genius lies in his ability to stop his opponents from thinking straight: In their hatred for him, they cannot see why he is popular, nor what to do about it.

In the end, Johnson himself gave the green light. When I finally got to see him, it was March and the country was just starting to come out of its most stringent lockdown.

Visiting Downing Street is a strange business: You have to be precleared to enter and you pass through airport-style metal detectors, but then you simply walk up the street as if it were any other and knock on a door to be let in.

It is not a single building, but a warren of Georgian townhouses that have been connected, extended, fixed up, and perpetually tinkered with. At the heart of the complex is No. Behind the smart black bricks and polished front door, an air of shabbiness hangs over the place. Stepping inside, you find yourself in a high-ceilinged entrance hall where the house cat, Larry, is often asleep.

Discarded modems sit on windowsills; thick red carpets lie worn and uneven with bits of tape stuck to them. Downing Street is extraordinarily ill-suited to its function as the nerve center of a modern bureaucracy.

It manages to be both modest and cavernous, iconic and underwhelming. It is outdated and dysfunctional—and yet somehow it works. It is a physical incarnation of 21st-century Britain. Johnson believes the British state showed unforgivable weakness in its Brexit negotiations, and some of his advisers told me it also exhibited fatal incompetence during the pandemic.

As a result, Britons were being vaccinated in the millions long before the rest of Europe. But this way of working has created layers of complexity and confusion that have left no clear lines of accountability. In his office, Johnson steered the conversation to a subject he raised nearly every time I saw him. In an early phone call with Joe Biden, an aide told me, Johnson said he disliked the phrase special relationship after the president used it.

To Johnson it seemed needy and weak. To Johnson, Smiley might be a cynic, but he is also a romantic—a believer. I asked. Johnson is a romantic who urges the country to believe in itself, but who plays the political game, stretches the truth, stands against his friends, and deposes his colleagues. Here was Johnson offering a rare moment of self-reflection.

During the time I spent with him, whenever we got close to anything approaching self-analysis, he would parry, swerve, or crack a joke. At Downing Street, I heard Johnson repeat a saying his maternal grandmother was fond of quoting.

She told me their mother was also fond of the saying. Johnson often carries a notepad around, a habit from his days as a journalist. A former aide told me that you know he has taken your point seriously if he writes it down. In , one year out of Oxford, he was fired from The Times , the newspaper of the establishment, for making up a quote in a front-page story and attributing it to his godfather.

He made a name for himself with outlandish, not-always-accurate stories about European regulations ostensibly being imposed on Britons—rules governing the flavors of potato chips, the bendiness of bananas, the size of condoms. I asked Johnson about his change of mind. Critics allege that he only backed Brexit because it provided him with a path to power. And Johnson told me Britain had never been able to lead the EU in any case, because it was too hamstrung by division and doubt over the project to be anything but a brake.

This seemed anathema to him: better momentum, whatever the direction, than playing the role of spoiler. In , Johnson gave a lecture about the Roman poet, in which he reflected on the lasting influence that poets and historians and journalists have over how people are remembered.

But Johnson very clearly appreciates the importance of shaping perceptions. I had just been treated to a long monologue about his liberal internationalism and support for free trade, climate action, and even globalism.

This is the central argument against Johnson: For all his positivity and good cheer, the verses of Latin and ancient Greek he drops into conversation, he is much closer to Trump than he lets on.

What, after all, is Brexit but a rebellion against an ostensibly unfair system, fueled by the twin angers of trade and immigration, that aims to restore to Britain a sense of something lost: control. The prime minister certainly understands that this perception has taken hold. As for Johnson himself, his past language about members of minority groups is, to some, evidence of a kinship with Trump. His partisans note, defensively, that his first finance minister was the son of a Pakistani bus driver; his second is a British Indian.

There is also the issue of immigration. During the Brexit campaign, Johnson did call for—and has since delivered—stronger controls on migration from Europe.

Even so, the Trump question is the first thing many Americans will want to know, I told him. I ventured that the curse of international politics is that each country looks at others through its own national prism.

It emphasized the importance of deepening alliances outside Europe and the need to more robustly defend democratic values. This is not an ephemeral, insubstantial thing: Voters will not accept a laissez-faire attitude toward free trade, deindustrialization, or the rise of China any longer.

Johnson and his allies emphasize that Brexit did not happen in a vacuum. But when this bargain began to reveal its emptiness, particularly after , voters demanded more control. In Britain this was particularly acute, because the country was more exposed than most, with its oversize financial sector and open economy.

Beijing and Moscow have shown us the limits of the rules-based order. To do so, Johnson insists, Britain must be independent, united, and nimble. The world is messy, and Johnson likes mess. He believes the key is to adapt. He has spent a lifetime turning ambition, opportunism, and ruthless self-promotion into extraordinary personal success.