As regards Johnson, he is our prime minister and he was one of two candidates put forward by Conservative MPs, all of whom are elected. Likewise if people aren’t happy with Johnson they are ultimately guaranteed an opportunity to vote him out of power, even if not straight away.
So how is a tiny minority of cash contributing Conservative Party members, voting for one of two candidates selected by a minority of MPs in Parliament in any way more democratic than how the EU works? Answers on a postcard please....
At the end of the day Johnson feels a lot more relevant to me than Juncker or Tusk, both politically and geographically. At the basest possible level Johnson is a lot more accessible, and presides over just one country, serving a population to match rather than that of the whole EU. I seem to remember even our government weren’t happy with Juncker’s appointment at the time.
To you maybe, but for a lot of people Johnson is no more relevant politically, especially as to date he seems to have dodged any kind of responsibility or work ever since he's been in office, preferring to go on a Trump-style publicity tour which is clearly no more than a prelude to an election campaign. I've never know a PM do less in their opening months as the current "leader" of this country, but if guff and hot air is your thing then that is of course your prerogative.
As for geographical distance, I'm afraid what a lot of hard core Brexiteers seem to have lost sight of is that the world as we knew it is long gone. The world over alliances & unions across borders are what drive both politics & economics, not isolationism. For the best part of four years since Cameron announced the referendum, those hard core leavers have been dreaming of a United Kingdom standing completely on it's own, with no outside influences. It is to say the least laughably naïve, especially when no deal loomed into view the & very same isolationists embraced a global institution's tariff system, a body to which we have as members of the public zero say in. Challenge them on that, and all they come back with is "But Brexit means Brexit!". Its a recurring theme, Brexit has to happen no matter what, and any means no matter how damaging to get there, and shout down any opposition. And the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? Well they'll tell us is we'll regain our sovereignty, but we never actually lost that, so how we regain what we never lost?
The truth is I'm afraid that from starting as an aspiration to re-position ourselves politically & economically, Brexit has descended into nothing more than a vanity project with little more than the promise of a different passport cover, and a paper exercise in moving bureaucratic cogs & wheels from Whitehall and Brussels, to Whitehall only. They'll be no great shift in power, no greater say for Joe Public, no pops, bells, whistles, rainbows or unicorns. All we will get is the daunting task of either rebuilding our relationship with the EU during a transitional period to the end of 2020 in the case of a deal, with the hope of piggy backing onto trade deals with more than 70 other countries. Or the even more daunting task of rebuilding the bridges with the EU burnt to the ground by the hard core Brexiteers, trying to get anything like a similar deal that we might have got with them, tackling over 70 new trade deals with countries and economic alliances around the globe, all whilst the economy almost certainly shrinks in the case of a no deal scenario.
It should be a no-brainer, if a deal cannot be reached & agreed by the end of next month, put a hold on Brexit, take it back to the country with a more detailed & informed referendum to decide the exact route, then get the best out of that. Sadly some of the population seem to have left their brains at home, and are simply dancing to the tunes piped out by the likes of Johnson, Cummings & Farage straight towards the river....
