Vinicius Rodrigues Vieira*
The rise and fall of the now resigning British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, at first glance suggests that the elite’s use of right-wing populism has had a relatively short shelf life. The Conservative Party seems bored with the satire and jokes of its former leader, who came to power with the Brexit wave, the process of leaving the UK from the European Union.
Johnson cream de la cream elite of a collapsing power that mobilizes the population’s most primitive instincts to stay in power at all costs. The Oxford graduate – which would be the perfect place if it weren’t for the stench of colonialism that wafts from the breath of many of his students – has built a career in conservative, journalism as a staunch opponent of EU power.
In politics, he was in Parliament in 2001 and served two terms as Lord Mayor of London from 2008 to 2016, and was the main conservative face for advocating Brexit, a project of the British elite’s longing for imperial glory. and fears the growing dominance of Brussels, and by extension Berlin and Paris, in UK internal affairs.
He left the dirty work of getting Brexit done in the hands of his party mate Thereza May, who served as prime minister between 2016 and 2019 and has an equivalent post of foreign minister in her cabinet. When he came to power, he dissolved Parliament and forcibly defeated the Labor opposition led by then-leftist Jeremy Corbin.
After three years in power, he left Downing Street delivering Brexit, but without promises that were sold as illusions to British voters. However, it was dropped not because of a lack of words in the field, but because of a series of scandals involving the party bid and participation in at least three of them (allegedly). party door) in the period of social distancing during the pandemic period, which he initially denied and then almost took his own life.
Johnson’s trajectory initially suggests that right-wing populism, which has mobilized voters around xenophobic agendas and the promise to rebuild a supposedly glorious past to restore the nation’s greatness, is like a lie: it has short legs. However, to generalize such an outcome requires ignoring two features of the British context that are not reproduced in the other three cases that represent the most relevant political wave of this century: Brazil under Jair Bolsonaro; USA, under Donald Trump (2017-2021); and India has been in power since 2014 under Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi.
First, the British parliamentary system allows an increasingly unpopular and unskilled leader like Johnson to be replaced overnight as long as he loses support from the party and/or the legislature’s majority. Since the Conservatives hold an absolute majority of the seats in the House of Commons – responsible for appointing the head of government – Johnson tends to be replaced without the need for a new election. Queen II, who is the head of state of your party. It is sufficient to appoint a new prime minister to be appointed by Elizabeth.
Doing this in presidential systems where the role of the Head of State and Government is concentrated on a single person requires a traumatic process called impeachment. In India, Modi is not falling because his BJP – the Hindu Nationalist Party – holds the majority of seats in parliament, largely thanks to the charisma of the prime minister and a key player absent in the UK but located in Brazil. The reactionary revolution continues.
Like Modi in India, Bolsonaro in Brazil, and Trump in the US, it is an expression of the growing dominance of a particular religious faction in politics. American and Brazilian evangelicals and their affiliation with white supremacist elements are in this sense equivalent to Hindu nationalists. Despite widespread xenophobia and racism in the UK, which is a very secularized society, there is no such thing in the British context.
With Brexit officially resolved, but leaving a trail of economic devastation, a right-wing populist staying in power no longer makes sense, even for the elites who support it. But in the context of reactionary mobilization based on religious interpretations that disrespect minorities, such a political movement seems to find fertile ground for it to take root.
In any case, Bolsonaro, Johnson, Modi and Trump are more than foreigners, they are representatives of their own country’s elite. In the absence of parliamentarism, we can deny the current president, who is responsible for an economic downturn worse than in England, the right to a second election at the polls in October.
However, unlike the UK, Brazil has another challenge to face before the end of the year: preserving democracy. Think about it, not all elites are the same. If the British are still spreading colonialism on their breath, ours is not far behind, with the aggravating factor of being deaf and blind to the blowing movements of the captain they thought they could control their primal instincts.
As a result, the limits of right-wing populism are the limits to which elites and society in general tolerate the degeneration of democracy. In this respect, the British are less tolerant than the Americans, Brazilians, and Indians whose public spaces are seized by priests, who, by mixing politics and religion, open the door to the tyranny of the majority.
*Vinicius Rodrigues Vieira He holds a PhD in international relations from Oxford. She teaches MBA courses at Faap and FGV.
source: Noticias
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