My first reaction on new British Prime Minister Theresa May’s cabinet appointments: I’m happy, hope you’re happy too…
As an ardent Brexiteer, certainly, I feel a lot more optimistic about the future than I did two days when I penned this gloomy piece for the Spectator. (Gosh, I sounded so angry and bitter I could almost have been a Remainiac…)
Yes, of course, Amber Rudd is going to make a ghastly Home Secretary. Heaven knows, she was already promoted far beyond her talents as head of the Department of Energy and Climate Change. Plus, she actually believes all the greenie crap. Plus, she came across quite appallingly during the EU Referendum campaign: strident, vindictive, easily bought, self-serving and a bit thick.
But the thing you need to remember about the position of Home Secretary is that it’s a poisoned chalice. So much can go wrong for you – and almost certainly will for her. So it won’t be too long before Rudd’s fox is shot, I’m guessing.
On the bright side, meanwhile, we’ve got a healthy quota of Brexiteers in the positions that could really make a difference:
David Davis: Secretary for exiting the European Union. Sound!
Liam Fox: International Trade. Sound!
Boris Johnson. Foreign Secretary. Well whether he’s sound or not is anyone’s guess – I personally believe he’ll be great – but if nothing else you’ve got to admit, his appointment is truly a piece of top trolling by Britain’s new Prime Minister, suggesting that she might even have a hidden sense of humour.
Already, I’m enjoying greatly the wailing and gnashing of teeth it has caused among the wankerati…
…and at left-liberal institutions like BBC, whose first reaction, naturally was to compile an appalled round-up of responses from all the foreigners Boris has offended so far.
Apparently we’re supposed to feel embarrassed that this man is now representing us abroad. I’m not. I think it’s jolly well about time that Johnny Foreigner was reminded that we’re the world’s fifth biggest economy (fair set to be the fourth biggest, post Brexit, I’d say) and that we either ran or civilised or invented well over half the globe and that, not so long ago, we were sending gunboats up the Yangtse to enforce our opium trade (and quite right too!).
Not that Boris is actually the jingoistic buffoon he sometimes pretends to be: he’s well-travelled, supremely cultured, intelligent, entertaining and witty and I’ve little doubt that the most of the various diplomats and dignitaries on his mission to promote the new, post-EU Great Britain will warm to him hugely.
I think at this stage in Theresa May’s premiership, we need to give her the benefit of the doubt – fearing the worst, but hoping for the best.
No. She certainly wouldn’t have been my first choice of leader – not on her political track record so far in which, it seems to me, she has embodied some of the worst aspects of conservatism: dirigiste, authoritarian and leaden.
Andrea Leadsom would have been a much bigger win for us small-government revolutionaries.
Even better, in my view, would have been Michael Gove. (He and May don’t get on: hence his defenestration from her cabinet. But I can’t see him remaining in the wilderness for too long – as the cleverest, most talented MP in the Conservative party, he’s just too good not to use).
But here’s the thing we should keep in mind. Right now, there is an entire industry willing Britain’s exit from the EU to prove a spectacular disaster. That industry includes: President Obama; Christine Lagarde; the European Commission; Goldman Sachs and all the other big banks; George Soros; most of the leaders in the EU member states, though probably not Angela Merkel oddly enough for she’s an arch-pragmatist; the BBC; the Guardian; the New York Times; the Washington Post; all the US TV channels except Fox; the vast majority of the British, European, and US commentariat.
Already, they are rubbing their hands with glee that May has appointed so many Brexiteers into key positions related to leaving the EU. And these frustrated Remainers actually believe that this is a win for their malign cause because they are convinced that these Brexiteers are going to screw up and be seen to screw up.
Our job, now, is to hold our side to account and make damn sure they don’t cock things up. This will be good for Britain; good for most of the world; but, perhaps most important of all, an endless source of misery and frustration to all those reprehensible, unpatriotic, slithy, EU-cock-sucking, anti-democratic, control-freakish, smugly elitist, copper-bottomed wankers out there who did everything they could to stop Brexit happening.
Well those bastards lost and now we’re going to show them why they lost.
Viva la Revolución, boys and girls. Brexit is on its way!