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Politics Theory Other

Excerpt - Will Davies on whether Boris Johnson's days as PM are numbered

Politics Theory Other

Politics Theory Other

News

4.8551 Ratings

🗓️ 13 December 2021

⏱️ 3 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Boris Johnson's grip on power seems more precarious than at any other point during his time in office. PTO spoke to Will Davies about whether we're at the beginning of the end of the Johnson era, and why Will compares Boris Johnson to a financial asset - and his allies and supporters to investors.

Transcript

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0:00.0

we can also, I think, apply this to politicians and to leaders such as Johnson is that they are

0:06.8

on a kind of quest to be credible. Now, it's an odd thing to say about Johnson, given that he is

0:14.6

famously a liar and most of what he says should not be treated too seriously. But crucial to how financial markets work

0:22.6

is that one of the reasons people invest their belief, their credit in a given stock,

0:29.3

in a given bond, or basically in these pieces of paper, these legal instruments that were of

0:35.3

no sort of intrinsic value beyond what people expect them to

0:41.0

pay out over the time is that as long as enough people all sustain a certain kind of belief that

0:48.2

whatever government bonds are going to hold their value and over time if enough people people believe that, they will hold their value over time.

0:57.1

If people can see that a given stock is accumulating credibility, accumulating popularity,

1:04.8

it becomes rational for other people to buy into them.

1:09.7

And effectively, Johnson has been hovering around the Conservative Party now for, you know, if you, he was in the spectator before then, but he's been on the political scene now for kind of 15 years or so. And obviously with a period as Mayor of London, and he's been kind of hovering over the shoulder of successive

1:28.2

conservative leaders including Theresa May including David Cameron but he's been this sort of

1:33.0

this this possible vehicle that most people would say we should not get into that vehicle

1:38.5

it is clearly dangerous but at a certain point if enough people will all agree that this is something that they're going to back,

1:46.3

by the logic of the logic of financial assets to kind of, this is the sort of Michel Faire move,

1:52.1

is to sort of see this kind of analogy between sort of literal financial assets and these other areas of

1:56.5

neoliberal life where things kind of attain credibility through kind of as through sort of

2:02.8

crowd sentiment that what Johnson always had was recognition with the public and amazing relationships

2:10.8

with certain corners of the press. But, you know, there is the possibility of a sort of bubble of

2:16.3

political investment starting with certain corners of political investment, starting with

2:19.2

certain corners of the press, but then ultimately all these different corners of the Conservative

2:23.2

party, none of whom may, you know, particularly like him, none of whom may have any particular

...

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