The biggest lie of Brexit was promising that the UK contribution to the EU of 430 million euros per week would be dedicated to public health. The figure was false, because it did not exceed 300 million and it does not have that destination, to the annoyance of the voters. You know: promises only commit those who believe them. Populists build myths with lies that are useful to them in the short term. But these thugs can come to power, as two of the most established and serious democracies on the planet have shown.
Two liars and provocateurs like Trump and Johnson have achieved it in the United States and the United Kingdom; The good news is that they don’t seem to last. Trump rudely insulted every god from the US presidency and defined the European Union as an enemy of his country. He announced months before the 2020 elections that if he lost it could only be due to fraud whose result he was not willing to accept. And he even encouraged the assault on the Capitol a year ago. Earlier, he had supported Brexit calling the UK’s exit from the EU fabulous and smart.
One of the main prophets of Brexit was Boris Johnson, with whom a server coincided in Brussels at the beginning of the 90s. His arrivals at the press room of the Commission when he was in the Breydel building, while they were restoring the Berlaymont, were funny; He was a very funny rascal. Sonia Purnell, who shared the Daily Telegraph correspondent with Boris at the time, has described him as a self-promoting maniac, ambitious and ruthless; the archetype of the eccentric upper-class Englishman. He is a cultured guy, although it may not seem like it at first glance. A student of Eton, of the European School in Brussels where he was when his father was a Commission official, and graduated from Oxford.
He joined Nigel Farage in the crusade against the European Union in the referendum recklessly called by Cameron and had the dubious honor of being Prime Minister of the United Kingdom when the separation took place on February 1, 2020; the biggest failure of the EU in its 70 years of validity, which will be fulfilled on July 23. It is a lukewarm consolation that Johnson can now drop by the parties at 10 Downing Street during confinement or in the days of mourning the death of the queen’s husband. Every hooligan has his Saint Martin. The man apologizes and waits for the storm to pass. But apologies, like promises, only commit those who believe them.
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