Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Why Tories are hooked on Boris Johnson

Modern politicians are like drug dealers intent on keeping their clients’ hooked. They sell fixes to their core voters: upping the strength and deepening the addiction. The punters know at some level they are being played. But a temporary high is better than no high, and infinitely preferable to the sweats and shakes the cold turkey of reality brings.

Boris Johnson is the British right’s pusher. He feeds its addiction, taking Conservatives from drug to drug. Higher and higher they go. Further and further from the straight world of the normies with their tedious facts and nagging doubts. 

Thomas De Quincey said in his Confessions of an English Opium Eater:

‘Happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat-pocket; portable ecstasies might be had corked up in a pint-bottle; and peace of mind could be sent down by the mail.’

The first thing I notice when I interview Conservative members is how happy they are and how cheaply their pleasure has been bought.

The detoxed and the never-toxed stare at them, like passers-by wondering how a junkie allowed himself to lose his wits so completely.

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