The Johnson Dilemma: To Save or Sink Britain

Date: 14 December 2019 - 21:55

News ID: ۷۳۹۰۷

By:Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer

Benjamin Disraeli was the only British prime minister of Jewish birth, but was raised as an Anglican since his father Isaac, the British-born son of a migrant Jew from Italy, had left Judaism and become a Christian.
Little did the imperialists in London knew that a century-and-a-half after the premiership was entrusted to Disraeli – despised by the right-honourable gentlemen’ as a person of Semitic stock – Britain would elect a prime minister of Turkish Muslim origin.
Though a self-confessed atheist with no faith in Christianity, Boris Johnson happens to be the grandson of Osman Ali, the British-born son of Ottoman writer and diplomat Ali Kemal, who after the death of his Anglo-Saxon wife returned to Istanbul, entrusting his son to the boy’s maternal grandparents who christened him Wilfred Johnson (the father of Boris’s father Stanley).
Johnson, like Disraeli, is a member of the Conservative Party, and although he is friendly with Turkish president Rajab Tayyeb Erdoghan, supported Ankara’s invasion of northern Syria, and shares family ties with his second cousin Selim Kuneralp, Turkey’s ambassador to South Korea, we are not sure whether Boris feels proud in defending his Ottoman roots the way Benjamin did in the late 19th century when in reply to a taunt by Irish political leader, Daniel O’Connell, he famously said:
"The ancestors of the right honourable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, while mine were priests in the temple of Solomon.”
Anyway, on Thursday in the general elections the Conservative Party beat Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party by a wide margin of votes, but not before Johnson faced horrors in his own constituency of Uxbridge from 25-year old Ali Reza Milani, a naturalized British citizen of Iranian stock born in Tehran.
Analysts opine that Milani who garnered over 18,000 votes compared to 25,000 polled by Johnson, lost because of the Israeli factor, which plays a decisive role in elections in Europe, and had propagandized this practicing Muslim youngster’s remarks a few years ago during an interview with Press TV: "Israel doesn’t have the right to exist”.
Now it remains to be seen, how Johnson who as foreign minister had opposed his friend US President Donald Trump’s relocation of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to the occupied Islamic city of Bayt al-Moqaddas, and questioned the latter’s unilateral breach of JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action) on Iran’s nuclear rights, will steer the ship of Britain through the choppy seas of West Asia, where the chronic question of Palestine still persists, where the British Prime Minister shamelessly supports Saudi Arabia’s war crimes in Yemen by refusing to block arms sales to the regime in Riyadh, and where in the Persian Gulf waters, he has made the unwise decision of assisting American lawlessness against the Islamic Republic of Iran.
At home, the former London Mayor known for his gaffes, faces serious challenges that could bring down his government well before the 5-year term.
Johnson who cruised to victory in the third general election held in Britain in an matter of only five years, largely by assuring that the United Kingdom will leave the European Union in a matter of months, would find it difficult to preserve the unity of the kingdom, since his party has failed to fare well in Scotland where the pro-Europeans led by Nicola Ferguson Sturgeon of the Scottish National Party (SNP), are calling for complete independent from England.
It is a tough test for a person known for his lack of political insight and refusal to grant the right of referendum to the Scottish people. He might succeed in his Brexit bid with no proper plans to halt the declining trend of the national economy, but would have to use enormous pressure, if not military might, similar to the situation in Northern Ireland, in order to prevent Scotland’s possible exit from the United Kingdom.
SNP has won almost every seat in Scotland in last Thursday’s elections, which Scotland will soon be another country.
Johnson, who seems to regularly change his opinion on political issues and is mocked for his "ideological emptiness”, may find his pal Trump to be on his side, but it is another question whether the opportunist Donald whose mother was Scottish and who owns lands in Scotland, would support Boris or backstab him by backing the disintegration of the United Kingdom.