Boris Johnson, "red Tory"?

Ou um "One Nation Conservative", à Disraeli.

Boris Johnson is not Churchill but de Gaulle, por John McTernan (Financial Times):

In 1968, Richard Nixon had a “southern strategy” — he targeted the southern states of the US, and by swapping electorates with the Democrats ensured that the Republicans won five of the next six presidential elections. Boris Johnson, the UK’s new prime minister, has a similarly ambitious northern strategy — not just a reboot of George Osborne’s Northern Powerhouse, but a plan to win over Labour voters for a generation. (...)

The most foolish of the Labour party’s attacks on Mr Johnson has been that he is a rabid rightwinger. The problem is that the new prime minister is not the narrow nationalist depicted by the Corbynites, he is a globalist. Nor is he a small-state Thatcherite Tory. Expect spending on Crossrail 2 as well as HS3. A new Mersey bridge as well as London’s east river crossing. The state, as the prime minister’s senior adviser Dominic Cummings has made clear, needs to be reformed, not reduced in size.

Dirigisme is back. In addition to transport infrastructure, expect a revival of development corporations. These could be the emblem of Johnsonism — creations of Margaret Thatcher’s environment secretary Michael Heseltine, using powers established by a Labour prime minister, Clement Attlee. They will be vehicles for the transformation of “left behind” England. For the battle is not merely over the north, it is about the former coalfields too. Leading members of the Brexit party have always seen a huge potential in the coalfield community seats — particularly those held by metropolitan Labour MPs. In this analysis, Ed Balls losing his Morley and Outwood seat by 421 votes in 2015 was a harbinger rather than an outlier. The prime minister sees this opportunity too, and is likely to commit to a massive council housebuilding programme, delivered through new town corporations — more direct control.