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Boris Johnson’s approach ‘won’t work for the Union’ warns Conservative Home editor

20 Feb 2021 2 minute read
Boris Johnson. Picture by British Embassy Belgrade (CC BY 2.0).

The editor of the influential Conservative Home news website has warned that Boris Johnson’s approach to politics isn’t working as a means of keeping the UK together.

The comments by Editor Paul Goodman, who was a Conservative MP until 2010, came after the head of the Union Unit, tasked with saving the UK, quit his post.

Oliver Lewis, an ally of Boris Johnson’s former advisor Dominic Cummings, quit Downing Street yesterday.

Paul Goodman warned that it was “late in the day” to save the Union now that the SNP was heading towards a majority at Holyrood, and that a chaotic No. 10 Downing Street wasn’t helping.

But telling Boris Johnson to “get a grip” of 10 Downing Street would not do the trick because “calm, order, competence and saying the same thing to different people” were “simply not his bag”.

“Johnson’s approach to politics – indeed, to life – is a bit like Wittgenstein’s to philosophy: ‘you have to descend into primaeval chaos and feel at home there.’ It works for him. It won’t for the Union,” Paul Goodman said.

“What’s at stake is about much more than who did what in which previous leadership election – namely, Britain’s relationship with Europe, the future of Northern Ireland, and the campaign against Scottish independence.

“For all the Sturgeon-Salmond row, the SNP may win a majority at Holyrood this spring.  The polls are poor, there is no united pro-Union opposition, it’s late in the day – and the Government still seems to be feeling its way.”


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