“Crisis? What crisis? ”When the famous phrase was put into Prime Minister James Callaghan’s mouth by a tabloid in 1979, it was only days before his Labor Party knocked him out of office (and cleared the way for then opposition leader Margaret Thatcher) . The long “Winter of Discontent”, a winter with frozen wages, high inflation and mass strikes, had found its ultimate victim in the crisis-denying head of government. Is history repeating itself under conservative auspices – and is it putting the long-term optimist Boris Johnson into trouble?
For Martin, who doesn’t want to read his first name in the newspaper, it almost feels like this: “A lot is like it was back then, only without strikes.” In the legendary “Winter of Discontent”, Martin turned 17 and went to the Royal Navy. He is now almost 60 and is observing the current crisis from a new, even special perspective: Martin is a truck driver and thus belongs to that shrunken tribe that is blamed for the misery. Because Johnson’s problems are mostly rooted in a lack of drivers.
For weeks the nation has been groaning under supply bottlenecks. In the meantime, hundreds of gas stations have had to close; In the south of the kingdom, drivers still struggle to find a petrol pump. Acute labor shortages cause crops to rot and cattle yards to emergency slaughter. The newspapers discover new unpleasantnesses every day, but when Johnson was asked on the sidelines of the Tory party conference whether the country was in crisis, he replied with a succinct “No.” In his cheerful closing speech, Johnson touched on the current situation in just one sentence : The change, for which the British would have voted in the referendum and in the elections, takes time, “and sometimes it will be difficult”.
Trouble getting bacon, tomatoes and bread
Johnson would never compare himself to Callaghan, who has barely left a mark on history. If he had to take action, it would be to Tony Blair, the Labor Prime Minister with the longest term in office. When Blair encountered angry drivers who couldn’t refuel their cars (and supermarkets were rationing groceries) in 2000, he called the army. He crashed in surveys only to be confirmed in office a few months later by a large majority. Today the episode is almost forgotten.
At the party congress, Johnson presented himself as a courageous reformer who tackles what previous governments lacked the courage to do. He wants to “unleash the British spirit” and use the new “Brexit freedoms” for it. The applause was huge, but Johnson’s fate will not be decided in the conference room, but on the streets of the country. But what does it look like there? Anyone who travels through the country experiences both: crisis and normalcy, worry and optimism. One encounters anger about Brexit and anger against those who make the welcome exit from the EU amateurish. You find hatred of Johnson, but just as much sympathy.
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