The Return of Optimism?

One never knows; but it seems to me that Boris Johnson has the seed of greatness in him.

It puts me in mind of the nineteen-eighties. Since the retirements of the last great leaders from the Second War—Churchill, DeGaulle, Tito—we seemed to be dealing only with mediocrities, and there was a general sense of decline in the West. Then Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and Pope John Paul II arose at about the same time. Each was transformational. They ended the Keynesian economic ideology, they ended the Cold War, they ended the constant disruptive strikes. More importantly, they changed the public tone: from one of “malaise,” as Jimmy Carter termed it, and the assumption of inevitable decline, to one of strength and optimism.

It looks as if we now again have two such leaders, in Trump and Johnson. Even if you hate Trump, he looks transformational. He has re-introduced a relentless optimism about America.

Johnson seems able to do the same in Britain. He has the right tone, and the right manner. His electoral win already looks transformational in electoral terms; and Brexit will be transformational again. The sense is of entering a new age.