Andrew Sullivan: evaluation

Transcript context

…More generally, what is it that intelligent, educated Americans get wrong about British politics? Well, they’re wrong to think that it’s somehow a more elevated discourse. It can be at times, but it’s just as raucous as here. I think Brexit has been terribly misunderstood by Americans because they conflated it, for understandable reasons, with Trump, and they conflated Boris Johnson with Trump. Simply not the case. If you had had a less crazy — Boris is not crazy at all; he’s a very smart person and he’s also not, like Trump, a complete outsider. He’s the insider’s insider. Editor of The Spectator, Oxford, Eton, mayor of London: these are not outsider positions. And therefore dismiss it, and don’t really understand that in fact, I think the Tories have developed a very canny strategy to represent the voices and feelings of those who feel they’re left behind without abandoning an important segment of the elite. And that’s the role of the Tory party historically — it’s been to co-opt populism for elitism, as it were to prevent revolution by co-opting. I think what Boris has done, in fact, and one of the things you’ll notice in Britain, is that the far-right parties that were gaining strength have collapsed and the Tories basically own the entire right-of-center vote. Whereas the Left is split between Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party and the Greens in a way that gives Boris a constant advantage. That, I think, is not very well understood. Do you think the United Kingdom will split up in the next few decades, as we know it?…

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