Boris has a new dress.
I'm experiencing right here in Britain a nervous period of change in the Prime Minister's office and a massive turnover in the British government team. And that's even with a tattered book about Winston Churchill written by Alexander Boris Johnson. He yesterday became the 14th prime minister under Queen Elizabeth II. He steps in after the resignation of Prime Minister Theresa May, who is being described as having failed to manage the process of Britain's departure from the European Union to the satisfaction of the British people. In his opening speech, Johnson highlighted several of the government's priorities, which include a non-negotiable Brexit date of October 31, 2019, accompanied by a better deal than the one currently under negotiation. A vague warning addressed to somewhere in Europe, couched in the traditional platitude that it would be a mistake to underestimate Britain and the British, is more marketing cotton wool than a message with substance. The new Prime Minister is widely perceived in his own country as a rather lazy and self-absorbed man with an unresolved personal life who is just opportunistically using the course of things to his advantage. This is despite the fact that he was Mayor of London for two terms, managed the uneasy atmosphere surrounding the 2012 Summer Olympics and, according to his own proclamations, reduced youth crime. However, this statistically unsubstantiated achievement was later proven to be false, as was the alleged increase in the number of London police officers. Together with the manipulation of air pollution data before the Summer Olympics and the inappropriate response to the 2011 riots, this completes the picture of Boris Johnson as a contradictory figure, to say the least. The fifty-five-year-old son of wealthy British parents, with historical Turkish, Russian, Lithuanian, German and French traces in his genes, has both British and American citizenship and is certainly an unmissable figure. However negatively he is presented, and there are even voices that he is a puppet in the hands of much more powerful players, it is important to remember that he is the leader of the strongest British political formation and represents the majority view in society, confirmed by the referendum, that Britain needs economic and political independence. Despite the holiday lethargy, compounded by near 40-degree heat across Europe, it is not hard to imagine the power bloc led by the Johnson-Trump tandem changing the established notions of meaningful and prosperous cooperation between European countries and peoples. Especially in the long term, it is necessary to see even this unpopular aspect as a possible reality. Whether B. Johnson is a loquacious, spoilt slacker, a naked king with ermine over his shoulders, or a statesmanlike strategist, we will not know until October this year at the latest. Until then, according to one British newspaper headline, "Good luck, dude."