One Last Chance for Boris?

The news from London that Boris Johnson will re-enter the race to lead Britain’s Tories certainly ups the ante in Prime Minister Truss’ resignation. It comes as the United Kingdom speeds toward a danger whose outlines first emerged as Mr. Johnson was forced out of office: The reversal of Brexit. To head off this threat, it will require Mr. Johnson to once again make the case to the nation for the “sunlit uplands” of British independence. If he is so disposed. Mr. Johnson, who once proved to be the leader best equipped to articulate the pro-growth, pro-freedom argument for independence, won in the last general election his “colossal mandate” for “getting Brexit done.” His ouster, we said at the time, buttressed Brexit opponents, like Lord Heseltine, whose mantra “if Boris goes, Brexit goes” is symptomatic of the anti-Independence infection caught in Europe. As Mr. Johnson’s own Ministry and his successor’s imploded, the mandate he secured — and the logic of Brexit — fell, as least in some quarters, into doubt. In the Tory establishment, opponents of independence slithered back into power. The pro-Brexit chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, was replaced by, as our Brexit Diarist, Stephen MacLean, puts it, the “arch-Remainer, Jeremy Hunt.” A remainer, too, replaced the pro-Brexit Home Secretary.“These are tantalizing times for Cameron conservatives,” the Financial Times’ Robert Shrimsley writes, noting the return of the “metropolitan liberal Tories” who had been “routed” by Brexit — like Mr. Hunt, who “served in every Cameron cabinet.” Yet Mr. Shrimsley warns that this ascendant coterie will have trouble resolving the contradictions that brought them down. Quoth he: “There is no such thing as Brexity Cameronism.”“The grown-ups may be back,” Mr. Shrimsley condescends, “but Brexit has robbed the country of a grown-up economic policy.” By “grown-up,” Mr. Shrimsley appears to mean the policies of the Keynesian economic establishment — or what Ms. Truss calls the “anti-growth coalition.” Count among these the IMF, which meddled in British politics to torpedo Ms. Truss’ pro-growth, supply-side tax cut proposal for fostering “inequality.”“Business tax cuts will not deliver inward investment,” Mr. Shrimsley cavils, “if the rest of the world sees you as a bad bet.” He calls lower taxes “a pipe dream.” His “grown-up” agenda similarly suggests abandoning “costly Brexit purism,” blaming it for “a hole in Tory economic strategy.” Mr. Shrimsley overlooks the fact that these ostensible grown-ups are the ones who precipitated the mess in which Britain finds itself in the first place.These are, after all, advocates of the same policies that have driven Britain’s economy toward stagnation even as inflation — spurred by ill-advised stimulus spending — soars for September to a 40-year high of 10.1 percent. So why the hysteria after Ms. Truss tried to induce growth by cutting the top income tax rate to 40 percent, the level set by Prime Minister Thatcher in 1989 and maintained under the Major and Blair governments?We can see why Mr. MacLean reports that Nigel Farage calls Ms. Truss’ ouster a “Globalist and Remainer coup” and contends that the “Conservative Party of the small state and entrepreneurship is now dead and needs to be replaced.” Faced with possible reverses on immigration policy and the power of Europe’s Human Rights Commission, Mr. MacLean asks if “even the smallest bits”of “the Brexit agenda” will “be junked for the Establishment status quo?”Mr. MacLean, we don’t mind noting, has had all of this right from the beginning. Observing the developments in Great Britain from the rock of Nova Scotia and through the lens of Disraeli, he has been among those inspired by the prospect of an independent United Kingdom emerging from under the thumb of Brussels, even if he is less sanguine about Mr. Johnson’s merits. He is for the lowest possible taxation and most limited government.As for Mr. Farage, he sounded the call for preserving British independence, against the anti-Brexit, anti-growth coalition. The stage is set for a dramatic race to replace Ms. Truss and resume the drive to “get Brexit done.” Messrs. Farage and MacLean nurse little hope for the Conservative Party, though the last time Mr. Johnson stood for premier, the Tories won one of their greatest landslides — less than three years ago.

One Last Chance for Boris?

More from the New York Sun

‘Schmigadoon!’ Gleefully Sends Up Broadway Classics, but Soon Runs Out of Gas

Can GOP Conservatives Block Elizabeth Warren?

Banking, Blockading, and the Final Iranian Financial Squeeze

Judge Spares Suspect in Bizarre Plot To Kidnap a North Korean Diplomat From Extradition to Spain

Angry Anti-Trump Journalists Urge White House Correspondents Group To ‘Demonstrate Opposition’ to Trump at Dinner

House Republicans Demand Answers Over Mysterious Deaths, Disappearances of High-Level American Scientists

UN Peacekeeping: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Exclusive: Trump Mounts New Push To Move Appeal of Stormy Daniels Case to Less Hostile Federal Court