My thoughts on Boris' strategy

[UP13]

Regarding Whitty and Valance, my belief back in March and remains my belief is that they're real purpose is to be Boris's human shield. They are wheeled out when unpopular decisions are made and Boris Dan hide behind 'science' and his advisors can take the brunt of the backlash as he was only acting on their advice. Judging by many of the comments on here it looks it is working.

He has engineered it so that it is judged to be a success then history will remember him as a Churchillian Prime Minister who made bold decisions to lead us in our hour of need. However if it all goes pear shape then anti-lockdown folk will blame the scientific advisors and 'locktivists' and the pro-lockdown folk will blame members or the public for being selfish and 'granny killers'. Classic divide and rule.

It is the same with Brexit - if it is successful then he is a hero who defied all the nay sayers and if it's a failure then it's because of sabotage by the EU and by remoaners who were deliberately being obtuse and trying to make Brexit fail.

My big contention with him is that he is obsessed with bring a great prime minister in the history books and wanting to be the next Churchill. He took a gamble with Brexit (let's be honest, he only supported it as he knew it would pave the way for him to be PM) and now he is gambling during Covid. He is simultaneously trying to be the PM who isn't a tyrant but also not the PM who lets people die. He has ended up with both a big death count and a big economic price tag to go with it.

He is so obsessed with future history that he has forgotten about the present and instead of being Churchill he is now Chamberlain.

 

[DustyBin]

Regarding Whitty and Valance, my belief back in March and remains my belief is that they're real purpose is to be Boris's human shield. They are wheeled out when unpopular decisions are made and Boris Dan hide behind 'science' and his advisors can take the brunt of the backlash as he was only acting on their advice. Judging by many of the comments on here it looks it is working.

He has engineered it so that it is judged to be a success then history will remember him as a Churchillian Prime Minister who made bold decisions to lead us in our hour of need. However if it all goes pear shape then anti-lockdown folk will blame the scientific advisors and 'locktivists' and the pro-lockdown folk will blame members or the public for being selfish and 'granny killers'. Classic divide and rule.

It is the same with Brexit - if it is successful then he is a hero who defied all the nay sayers and if it's a failure then it's because of sabotage by the EU and by remoaners who were deliberately being obtuse and trying to make Brexit fail.

My big contention with him is that he is obsessed with bring a great prime minister in the history books and wanting to be the next Churchill. He took a gamble with Brexit (let's be honest, he only supported it as he knew it would pave the way for him to be PM) and now he is gambling during Covid. He is simultaneously trying to be the PM who isn't a tyrant but also not the PM who lets people die. He has ended up with both a big death count and a big economic price tag to go with it.

He is so obsessed with future history that he has forgotten about the present and instead of being Churchill he is now Chamberlain.

A few months ago I'd have agreed with you in regard to the scientists being lined up as fall guys, however I think you're giving Boris too much credit. I'm increasingly of the opinion that Boris is merely a useful idiot for his own advisors....

 

[UP13]

Boris gives the impression of being a bumbling idiot. Brexit was cleverly engineered to get him in power and he will have engineered the Covid response so that other people get the blame instead of him.

On here people are primarily blaming the scientists and you yourself seem to be implying that they are running the show, with Boris as their puppet. On social media, everybody is blaming other members of the public for not following the rules.

Either way there is at least one group getting as much blame, if not more blame than Boris.

 

[Richard Scott]

Boris gives the impression of being a bumbling idiot. Brexit was cleverly engineered to get him in power and he will have engineered the Covid response so that other people get the blame instead of him.

On here people are primarily blaming the scientists and you yourself seem to be implying that they are running the show, with Boris as their puppet. On social media, everybody is blaming other members of the public for not following the rules.

Either way there is at least one group getting as much blame, if not more blame than Boris.

Always blamed Boris never trusted him after he sat on the Brexit fence until he saw an opportunity to get himself into number 10. I don't think he believes in Brexit but I don't think he has much of a clue about handling this virus, either.

 

[UP13]

Again he is very much intelligent. Brexit was cleverly done and was all about his self interest not the national interest. I suspect the whole fiasco with the negotiations is a clever charade to justify no deal, which may be what he wants all along as certain influential individuals are set to make big money from a no deal.

Covid is obviously something he didn't plan for or even wants hence the muddled approach. Boris is at his strongest when he has had years to plan for something i.e. becoming prime minister. This whole thing doesn't suit his strengths.

He is trying to be all things to all people. He has tried (and failed) to find a middle ground between saving lives and saving the economy and he has failed to do both. However he'd have been smart enough to ensure somebody else gets the blame.

He's cultivated an image of being an idiot for years. This will ultimately suit him as people will refuse to accept him being the one making the decisions and will thus think a clever person such as a scientist must be really the one in charge...

 

[bramling]

Regarding Whitty and Valance, my belief back in March and remains my belief is that they're real purpose is to be Boris's human shield. They are wheeled out when unpopular decisions are made and Boris Dan hide behind 'science' and his advisors can take the brunt of the backlash as he was only acting on their advice. Judging by many of the comments on here it looks it is working.

He has engineered it so that it is judged to be a success then history will remember him as a Churchillian Prime Minister who made bold decisions to lead us in our hour of need. However if it all goes pear shape then anti-lockdown folk will blame the scientific advisors and 'locktivists' and the pro-lockdown folk will blame members or the public for being selfish and 'granny killers'. Classic divide and rule.

It is the same with Brexit - if it is successful then he is a hero who defied all the nay sayers and if it's a failure then it's because of sabotage by the EU and by remoaners who were deliberately being obtuse and trying to make Brexit fail.

My big contention with him is that he is obsessed with bring a great prime minister in the history books and wanting to be the next Churchill. He took a gamble with Brexit (let's be honest, he only supported it as he knew it would pave the way for him to be PM) and now he is gambling during Covid. He is simultaneously trying to be the PM who isn't a tyrant but also not the PM who lets people die. He has ended up with both a big death count and a big economic price tag to go with it.

He is so obsessed with future history that he has forgotten about the present and instead of being Churchill he is now Chamberlain.

I’m not sure Boris even has a strategy as such. I completely agree what Whitty and company are the human shield, as is Matt Hancock for that matter. The policy is simply “follow the science”, which is a Johnsonian way of saying “I don’t have a clue what I’m doing and I know I can’t get away with bull****ing or joking my way through this like I have done with everything else throughout my life (like Stanley taught me to), so instead I’m going to pass the buck to whoever I can, in this case Whitty, and let them take the rap”. Or something along those lines anyway.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 21 Dec 2020 ==

Again he is very much intelligent. Brexit was cleverly done and was all about his self interest not the national interest. I suspect the whole fiasco with the negotiations is a clever charade to justify no deal, which may be what he wants all along as certain influential individuals are set to make big money from a no deal.

Covid is obviously something he didn't plan for or even wants hence the muddled approach. Boris is at his strongest when he has had years to plan for something i.e. becoming prime minister. This whole thing doesn't suit his strengths.

He is trying to be all things to all people. He has tried (and failed) to find a middle ground between saving lives and saving the economy and he has failed to do both. However he'd have been smart enough to ensure somebody else gets the blame.

He's cultivated an image of being an idiot for years. This will ultimately suit him as people will refuse to accept him being the one making the decisions and will thus think a clever person such as a scientist must be really the one in charge...

At one point, despite my heart telling me otherwise, I thought Boris somehow must be clever to get away with what he does, and beneath the floppy hair there’s a shrewd mind at work. How completely wrong I was, the last year has shown this not to be the case, he’s just a vacuous twit.

My first ever experience of Boris was a Spectator article in the early 2000s where he was slagging off the 165 driver involved in the Ladbroke Grove accident. I should have trusted my instincts and remembered that, he’s not changed at all, still an arrogant idiot who can’t grasp basic facts, even if he can spell Pinocchio.

 

[HSTEd]

Boris is, like every modern politician, paralysed by indecision.

They keep trying to focus group their way out of making choices because they are terrified of making the wrong choice.

Which means we do even worse than if we had made a suboptimal choice

 

[DustyBin]

Boris gives the impression of being a bumbling idiot. Brexit was cleverly engineered to get him in power and he will have engineered the Covid response so that other people get the blame instead of him.

On here people are primarily blaming the scientists and you yourself seem to be implying that they are running the show, with Boris as their puppet. On social media, everybody is blaming other members of the public for not following the rules.

Either way there is at least one group getting as much blame, if not more blame than Boris.

Don't get me wrong, I very much blame Boris as he's the PM and the buck stops with him. I'm just not convinced his bufoonery is all an act though, he's got very little real life experience and certainly no scientific knowledge and strikes me as somebody who could be manipulated by the likes of Whitty and Valance.

There's certainly a strategy of divide and conquer in play I agree with you there, but that may be a legacy of Cummings rather then something Boris dreamt up himself.

 

[UP13]

If he is being manipulated, then it will be by political actors not scientists. If the science doesn't suit the politics, then the scientists get replaced.

Again people on here seem to think Valance and Whitty are the evil masterminds who have manipulated poor old Boris and have become dictators and can now satisfy their need to control our lives for the sake of it. The government must be loving this as there is somebody else to take the blame.

Don't fall into the trap of not taking Boris seriously. He's gone from the lovable fool who hosted HIGNFY to being the no deal Brexit Prime Minister. It's the same that nobody took Trump seriously in 2016, and while he is an idiot, he is smarter than people give him credit and he knew exactly which part of the population he needed to target and exactly what he needed to say to get their votes. I think it will be a mistake to forget that after 4 years even more people voted for him...

 

[bb21]

It is daft to suggest Valance and Whitty are the puppet masters.

 

[UP13]

It is daft to suggest Valance and Whitty are the puppet masters.

When Covid is all over and the true economic damage is seen in the cold light of day then they'll be both thrown under the bus.

It says a lot that people trust politicians more than scientists or rather people mistrust scientists more than politicians.

It is like in 2016 - we were told to mistrust experts and trust leave politicians...

 

[The_Train]

It is my belief that Boris is hiding behind the scientists because dealing with a worldwide pandemic wasn't in his masterplan which is basically to get a Brexit through which ensures him and his Eton chumps gain whilst the rest of the country goes to absolute s***. His insistence on getting it done is only fuelling my opinion - he basically doesn't want any opportunities for people to realise what he is doing and put a stop to it before he has got it signed off. He doesn't want to be remembered as a great PM, it is all about self-preservation and once that is achieved he will walk away within months - leaving the average person to try and pick up the pieces whilst he counts his gold!

 

[Spamcan81]

IMO Johnson is a narcissist, evidence being an inflated sense of his own importance, a deep need for excessive attention and admiration, troubled relationships and a lack of empathy for others.

 

[bramling]

Don't get me wrong, I very much blame Boris as he's the PM and the buck stops with him. I'm just not convinced his bufoonery is all an act though, he's got very little real life experience and certainly no scientific knowledge and strikes me as somebody who could be manipulated by the likes of Whitty and Valance.

There's certainly a strategy of divide and conquer in play I agree with you there, but that may be a legacy of Cummings rather then something Boris dreamt up himself.

I agree with all of the above. There’s a nasty streak there, though.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 21 Dec 2020 ==

It is daft to suggest Valance and Whitty are the puppet masters.

I don’t think they’re the puppet masters, if anything they’ve been dumped with having the whole weight of this on their shoulders, but at the same time with the bizarre situation of still having to work through Boris with all his flaws.

 

[nlogax]

As much as I want to believe Johnson has a strategy for this situation, it’s obvious to me he’s utterly out of his depth and flailing all the while.

 

[bramling]

As much as I want to believe Johnson has a strategy for this situation, it’s obvious to me he’s utterly out of his depth and flailing all the while.

Course he is. He seemed pretty nervous on tonight’s press conference.

 

[nlogax]

Course he is. He seemed pretty nervous on tonight’s press conference.

Yes, he was rather. Made for even more awkward viewing than normal.

 

[bramling]

Yes, he was rather. Made for even more awkward viewing than normal.

Easy to see why. The whole sage is spiralling, there’s Brexit going on in the background, people are clearly losing patience and ignoring his restrictions and his usual bumbling persona isn’t changing that, and goodness knows what economic issues this is storing up. And I bet behind the scenes he’s being pulled in several different directions, with a cabinet who are all utterly useless, Sunak sitting quietly positioning himself to take over, and the thought of all the inquiries once this is all over.

Especially as this current crisis with the borders seems to be at least partly self-inflicted.

 

[Mugby]

Boris has a track record of dumping people who aren't singing from the same hymn sheet as himself, personally I'd love to see him dump Whitty, Vallance and Van Tam and several of the others on SAGE but perhaps the time isn't right just yet - and, of course, it would look rather bad if he cleared the lot out in one fell swoop. However, it was Whitty and Vallance who bounced him into the second lockdown with their preposterous 'scenario' of 4,000 deaths per day and it seems pretty clear they will be pressing for a third lockdown in January.

This, though, puts Boris in a difficult position because there is a steadily growing number of prominent Conservative MPs who have made it clear they are no longer prepared to back any further restrictive measures when they are put to the vote in parliament.

The point will be reached when Boris will be seen to have lost the support of his own party and in that event, I imagine he would taken aside and asked to do the decent thing.

 

[bramling]

Boris has a track record of dumping people who aren't singing from the same hymn sheet as himself, personally I'd love to see him dump Whitty, Vallance and Van Tam and several of the others on SAGE but perhaps the time isn't right just yet - and, of course, it would look rather bad if he cleared the lot out in one fell swoop. However, it was Whitty and Vallance who bounced him into the second lockdown with their preposterous 'scenario' of 4,000 deaths per day and it seems pretty clear they will be pressing for a third lockdown in January.

This, though, puts Boris in a difficult position because there is a steadily growing number of prominent Conservative MPs who have made it clear they are no longer prepared to back any further restrictive measures when they are put to the vote in parliament.

The point will be reached when Boris will be seen to have lost the support of his own party and in that event, I imagine he would taken aside and asked to do the decent thing.

Van Tam and Harries seem to have already been dumped, they seldom if ever appear now. Of course we know why Van Tam was removed from Johnson‘s Christmas card list (perhaps he’s been reinstated in the last month or so?!), and ISTR reading that Harries also criticised Cummings?

I can’t see the other two being dumped though, Boris would be completely sunk without them, as the whole policy has been “follow the scientists”. As you say, this is going to put Boris under increasing pressure as unrest within the Conservative party continues to grow. He’s already under such pressure, it’s written all over his pained face now, and it’s only going to grow, especially after the current omnishames.

I wonder if Hancock might get dumped instead and be made the fall-guy? Out of all the scientists Van Tam seems to be the one who can actually score some buy-in from the population, as he seems to have a way with words the others simply don’t have.

 

[Bantamzen]

Easy to see why. The whole sage is spiralling, there’s Brexit going on in the background, people are clearly losing patience and ignoring his restrictions and his same bumbling persona isn’t changing that, and goodness knows what economic issues this is storing up. And I bet behind the scenes he’s being pulled in several different directions, with a cabinet who are all utterly useless, Sunak sitting quietly positioning himself to take over, and the thought of all the inquiries once this is all over.

Especially as this current crisis with the borders seems to be at least partly self-inflicted.

Let’s hope he’s gone by then. Trouble is, as some on here have intimated, who on earth replaces him?

Sunak has been conspicuously quiet recently. It seems like even he’s given up now.

We could really use Sunak stepping up to the plate soon & telling us, and more importantly local politicians what the real cost has been so far. Yesterday Bradford's local paper reported on an estimated 12K jobs in the city that were in immediate threat, but most councillors and MPs were still musing over how much more money the Treasury should throw at the problem. What is needed in the new year is a cold, hard dose of reality, and telling these clowns that the money tree can't be shaken forever. A very real economic crisis looms in the shadows of 2021.

 

[C J Snarzell]

If this all goes pear shaped (and it is looking that way) - Whitty, Valance, Van Tam, Powis and any other Scientific advisor will be used as Scapegoats.

Boris Johnson will probably do what Tony Blair did to Dr David Kelly in 2003, hence one of them could turn up brown bread in a field or remote layby.

Another thing I've come to realise - Johnson will probably have to move abroad post Downing Street - he's p****d off so many people, his life would be in danger.

CJ

 

[Domh245]

Boris has a track record of dumping people who aren't singing from the same hymn sheet as himself, personally I'd love to see him dump Whitty, Vallance and Van Tam and several of the others on SAGE but perhaps the time isn't right just yet - and, of course, it would look rather bad if he cleared the lot out in one fell swoop. However, it was Whitty and Vallance who bounced him into the second lockdown with their preposterous 'scenario' of 4,000 deaths per day and it seems pretty clear they will be pressing for a third lockdown in January.

The problem is that the scientific consensus, for better or worse, all leans in the same direction. Getting rid of Whitty, Vallance and Van Tam either means replacing them with more of the same, or (as with the cabinet) replacing them with yes-men with no relevant background, neither of which appeals, or fixes any particular problem

Boris needs to grow some, and begin to challenge and question the advice if he wants to counter it, or massively improve his management f the public's expectations

 

[Vespa]

If this all goes pear shaped (and it is looking that way) - Whitty, Valance, Van Tam, Powis and any other Scientific advisor will be used as Scapegoats.

Boris Johnson will probably do what Tony Blair did to Dr David Kelly in 2003, hence one of them could turn up brown bread in a field or remote layby.

Another thing I've come to realise - Johnson will probably have to move abroad post Downing Street - he's p****d off so many people, his life would be in danger.

CJ

That's a bit extreme, tin foil hat conspiracy theory.

 

[notlob.divad]

Rather than leave my own opinion here which would have far too much obscene language to pass the moderators, I will let John Oliver do the talking for me. This was recorded in July 2019, so way before Covid-19 was even discovered as a thing. Even if you don't agree with Oliver's style it does provide some useful insight into Johnson, and the image he likes to portray.

 

[bramling]

If this all goes pear shaped (and it is looking that way) - Whitty, Valance, Van Tam, Powis and any other Scientific advisor will be used as Scapegoats.

Boris Johnson will probably do what Tony Blair did to Dr David Kelly in 2003, hence one of them could turn up brown bread in a field or remote layby.

Another thing I've come to realise - Johnson will probably have to move abroad post Downing Street - he's p****d off so many people, his life would be in danger.

CJ

Not a problem, he could go to Greece with Stanley!

 

[Yew]

It does seem that rather than being shrewd, with buffoonish persona to disarm his opponents, he is actually just a buffon.

 

[timothyw9]

He has a strategy?!

 

[HSTEd]

It is daft to suggest Valance and Whitty are the puppet masters.

Why?

Whenever anyone questions their preferred strategy they are the ones that arrange for the production of suitably terrifying material to ensure the politicians obey them.

 

[bb21]

Politicians are not school kids.