Yawn on the Fourth of July
It's understandable that people search for complex conspiracies, the reality is boring corruption.
Previously:
Has Boris Johnson made his secret daughter a peer? No. Is there a secret super-injunction to stop the press from mentioning his secret daughter? No.
The truth about the elevation of 30-year-old Charlotte Owen to the peerage is that Boris Johnson valued her loyalty (and perhaps more), and wanted to put an ally in the House of Lords for a very, very long time.
Owen’s ennoblement stinks but it stinks no more pungently than the placing of the equally unqualified Ross Kempsel, a journalist-turned-Johnson-turd-catcher. Kempsell is 32 and a former News UK employee.
So why does Owen’s honour get the most heat? She’s a woman and she shares a surname with Boris Johnson’s first wife. That’s it.
Many people on the FBPE wing of centrism have gone hog wild with the conspiracy theory about Owen; it follows their ongoing obsession with Russia as the source of all of Britain’s woes, and with the idea that Donald Trump will be felled by an explosive dossier any day now.
The centrists who push this stuff are quick to dismiss real questions — with a factual basis— about their favourite politicians — imagine having a favourite politician — as conspiracy theories created by ‘cranks’ but will jump on every spurious claim about people they despise. It’s a powerful kind of cognitive dissonance and they need it to explain away the fact that their dream Britain (from some time around the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony) never existed.
To suggest that Johnson is by turns a Machiavellian genius and the world’s stupidest man is common in FBPE circles and beyond. It plays into a mirror version of the right’s delusions about Johnson’s ‘great abilities’ (he has none; he’s a grifter) and also stems from an attitude to politics that has more in common with football fandom than actual engagement with policy and the principles underlying that policy.
Where there are conspiracies, they are mundane and massive at the same time: privatisation of state industries and cash for the old boys. Uncovering them requires time-consuming and often tedious work. Far easier to suggest that Boris Johnson has, for some reason, decided to reveal his secret daughter by making her a member of the House of Lords.
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The Schrödinger's Putin - master tactician, string puller and clueless buffoon dichotomy.
Mic: if you'd responded to my initial comment in a civil manner (by which I don't mean you had to agree) all this could have been avoided. Instead, you've proved yourself to be immature, thin-skinned and unable to take criticism. And - by the way - *of course* I've read what you've written; it's just that I don't agree. How is it you can't get your head round that?