John Cassidy's Blog, page 26

Boris Johnson and the Crisis of British Leadership

Having started out as a drama and turned into a tragedy, the Brexit story line has now descended into farce. On a day when the governor of the Bank of England indicated that he and his colleagues would have to take emergency action to protect the British economy from the disastrous results of last week’s vote, Boris Johnson, the mop-topped Tory cheerleader for the Leave campaign, took to a podium at St. Ermin’s Hotel, in Westminster, and said, “This is not a time to quail; it is not a crisis, nor should we see it as an excuse for wobbling or self-doubt.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
An Independent London?
What’s Up with the U.K.? A Handy Lexicon of Exiting
Marine Le Pen Prepares for a “Frexit”

Sunderland and the Brexit Tragedy

In 1986, as a young reporter just out of the Columbia Journalism School, I went to Sunderland, an old and proud but depressed shipbuilding city on the River Wear, in northeast England, to report on an effort to get jobless people back to work. From the train station, I asked a cab driver to take me to the shipyards, which peaked in the nineteenth century, when they provided many of the sailing vessels and, later, iron-hulled steamers that serviced the far-flung British Empire.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Marine Le Pen Prepares for a “Frexit”
Brexit, Seen from the Top of Europe
What Brexit Means for British Food

Why Brexit Might Not Happen at All

As I noted on Friday, Britain won’t be exiting the E.U. anytime soon. If and when the U.K. government invokes Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty of 2007, which grants member states the right to leave, there will be at least two years of negotiations about the terms of Britain’s future relationship with Europe. And that invocation of Article 50 is likely to be delayed for quite a while.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
On Brexit, the 2016 Euro Championship, and Trump
Daily Cartoon: Monday, June 27th
The Day After Brexit

Why the Remain Campaign Lost the Brexit Vote

To many people around the world, the United Kingdom’s vote, on Thursday, to quit the European Union came as a great shock. But the result, with fifty-two per cent of voters in favor leaving the E.U., shouldn’t have been such a surprise. The fact is, the E.U. has never been particularly popular with ordinary people in the U.K., particularly England, and in the weeks leading up to the vote many opinion polls showed the Leave side with a narrow lead. The financial markets and most commentators, myself included, were assuming that, at the last minute, prudence and risk aversion would generate a swing in favor of Remain. That didn’t happen.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Did the Markets Overreact to Brexit?
Cover Story: Barry Blitt’s “Silly Walk Off a Cliff”
Brexit Should Be a Warning About Donald Trump

Brexit Vote Throws Britain and Europe Into Turmoil

At about three-thirty in the morning British time on Friday, Nigel Farage, the loquacious head of the anti-European Union U.K. Independence Party, gave his second public address of the night. The first one, which he delivered around midnight, had been a defiant concession speech. With an exit poll carried out for Sky News and other indicators pointing to a narrow defeat for the Leave side in the eagerly awaited referendum on whether Britain should exit the European Union, Farage had said, “It’s been a long campaign, in my case twenty-five years. But whatever happens in this battle, we are winning the war. . . . Even if we do stay part of this union, it is doomed.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Why the Remain Campaign Lost the Brexit Vote
Did the Markets Overreact to Brexit?
Cover Story: Barry Blitt’s “Silly Walk Off a Cliff”

What Do the Brexit Movement and Donald Trump Have in Common?

If things go as expected on Thursday, British voters will reject the option of leaving the European Union. Likewise, if things go as expected come November, American voters will reject the option of electing a President Trump. Both outcomes would be reassuring, but they wouldn’t mean the end of right-wing populism on either side of the Atlantic—they may merely represent new high-water marks.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Britain Votes, Maybe for the Last Time, on Whether to Stand Alone
Donald Trump and the “Amazing” Alex Jones
Fighting Brexit, with Six Hundred Croissants

Getting Serious About Trumponomics

On Monday, as Hillary Clinton was preparing to fly to Ohio to give a speech portraying Donald Trump as a menace to the country’s financial well-being, Moody’s Analytics, the research firm, published a report on the presumptive Republican nominee’s economic program which claimed that his policies could plunge the U.S. economy into a deep recession.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Why Hillary Clinton Needs Elizabeth Warren on the Democratic Ticket
Extreme Conventions: San Francisco, 1964, and Cleveland, 2016
Donald Trump’s Problem Isn’t Corey Lewandowski. It’s Donald Trump

Donald Trump’s Problem Isn’t Corey Lewandowski. It’s Donald Trump

These days, American Presidential campaigns are ludicrously long, ludicrously bloated, and ludicrously costly—but the basic principles haven’t changed in decades. To win, you first have to put together a majority (or plurality) of primary voters, and then you have to appeal to the country at large.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Extreme Conventions: San Francisco, 1964, and Cleveland, 2016
A Corporate “thankyou”? No, Thanks
More Fighting Words from Bernie Sanders

More Fighting Words from Bernie Sanders

If there was any doubt what Bernie Sanders would say in his live online address on Thursday night, he quickly resolved it by making clear that this was no concession speech, but rather a rallying cry for his supporters, and a road map for a future that extends well beyond Tuesday, November 8th. “Election days come and go,” Sanders began. “But political and social revolutions that attempt to transform our society never end. They continue every day, every week, and every month in the fight to create a nation of social and economic justice.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Hillary Clinton, After the Clintonites
The Paul Ryan Delusion
A Former Soldier Explains Why Trump Was Wrong About the Troops

Murder of British M.P. Heightens Uncertainty Over Brexit Vote

As I sat down to write this post, on Thursday morning, there was a week to go until the British referendum on whether to leave the European Union, and a “Leave” vote was looking like a live possibility. Politicians who had endorsed a vote to “Remain” were getting nervous, and the financial markets were gyrating with every new opinion poll. As for the British people—well, until Thursday lunchtime many of them were busy watching the Euro 2016 soccer tournament, which is being held in France. Then, Thursday afternoon, came the shocking news about the brutal murder of a Member of Parliament by a man who, reportedly, shouted “Britain first!”—the name of a far-right organization that is virulently opposed to immigration and to the E.U.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
A New Way for the Wealthy to Shop for Citizenships
The Economic Arguments Against Brexit
The E.U. vs. B.D.S.: the Politics of Israel Sanctions