UK prime minister Boris Johnson is not a conservative but, he is a blithering idiot. He has just confirmed this by insisting that there is ‘nothing wrong’ with being woke.
True, it was a floundering response to a tricksy question about President Joe Biden asked by a journalist from the left-wing TV channel Sky News. But to appreciate what a spineless, craven, ideological pigmy Johnson is you only have to consider how Margaret Thatcher would have answered the same question.
Margaret Thatcher would have said, in no uncertain terms, that there is EVERYTHING wrong with being woke.
We know this because Mrs Thatcher always spoke her mind, answered questions directly and honestly, and fully understood that ideologies like communism and socialism – or their modern variant ‘wokism’ – are not merely wrong and stupid but dangerous.
Woke means statues being torn down by historically illiterate mobs; the race-baiting divisiveness of Black Lives Matter and the physical aggression of Antifa; the dumbing down of universities and the indoctrination of college kids with anti-intellectual drivel like ‘decolonising the curriculum’; men who have designated themselves female being put in prison with women – and then raping them; turning a blind eye to organised Muslim rape gangs for fear of being racist or Islamophobic…
Almost everything wrong with the world today can be laid at the door of the ‘woke’ ideology – which is essentially just an updated version of Marxism.
That’s why Margaret Thatcher would never have argued – even when caught on the hop by a difficult questioner – that there was ‘nothing wrong’ with being woke. Sure, she would have found it awkward being asked such a question about a newly appointed president, for clearly the transatlantic relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States is a valuable one. But she would not have considered the need to foster friendly relations with the U.S. president a good enough reason to lie about something so important.
The problem with conceding such territory to the left with that throwaway ‘nothing wrong’ is that you are effectively redesignating ‘wokism’ as a harmless lifestyle choice – no worse, say, than dressing up as a goth or collecting rare books or Morris dancing.
But political positions matter: they have consequences. If your woke ideology leads you to believe — as Biden appears to do — that ‘transgender’ men should be allowed to participate as women in sport then you are not merely (as woke ideologues might kid themselves) striking a blow for equality. What you are actually doing is putting real women athletes in danger (especially in sports like boxing), as well as creating a very un-level playing field in which women who were born women will continually find themselves losing to ex-males with more powerful muscles and residual testosterone. You’re effectively killing women’s sport in the name of fairness – and in the process creating more division and inequality, not less.
It goes almost without saying that Margaret Thatcher is the only recent Conservative prime minister who would have answered the Sky reporter’s question honestly. All the others from John Major and David Cameron to Theresa May would have fudged it, just as Johnson did, because none of them is particularly conservative in outlook.
It’s this lack of ideological conviction which is why the Conservative party is in such a mess – and has been for some time. When a Conservative prime minister does the equivalent of declaring on TV — “Yeah, being a commie is just fine” — you know the cause of conservatism generally is in serious trouble.