Boris Johnson landed in Washington, DC on Thursday evening just ahead of Hurricane Florence, and leaving far behind the attentions of the British media, which over the last week have shown more interest in Johnson’s amicable divorce than his less than amicable campaign to replace Theresa May.
In town to accept the Irving Kristol Award at the American Enterprise Institute’s annual black-tie dinner, Johnson gave a self-deprecating, self-asserting explanation of why a US-UK free trade agreement was an ‘opportunity’ for the United States. This implies that Theresa May is pursuing the wrong Brexit strategy, and that he, like Churchill after the wilderness years, is the man of the hour, the only Conservative politician capable of keeping Labour out, steering a G7 state out of the EU’s regulatory net and into global trade, and building a closer relationship with the US in an unstable global environment.
Churchill’s wilderness years were actual years, while Johnson’s have been a matter of wilderness weeks.
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