Thread by @docrussjackson

In 2013, at the annual Margaret Thatcher Lecture, Boris Johnson said inequality is essential to fostering "the spirit of envy" & hailed greed as a "valuable spur to economic activity".

The damaged, lying, opportunistic hypocrite also demonised Romanians.

theguardian.com/politics/2013/…

Johnson warned that the accession of Romania to the EU meant that London could do nothing to stop the "entire population of Transylvania" from "pitching their tents in Marble Arch".

Romania's foreign minister expressed his outrage at "xenophobic, populist" politicians in the UK.

The deregulatory free-market ideology that he & his catastrophic & cruel Government subscribe to seem to relish deepening inequality, & in his speech he warned that the growing competition Britain faced in a globalised economy meant that inequality would deepen.

He said: "No one can ignore the harshness of that competition, or the inequality that it inevitably accentuates, & I am afraid that violent economic centrifuge is operating on human beings who are already very far from equal in raw ability, if not spiritual worth."

It's refreshing to hear @Conservatives state that competition inevitably accentuates inequality. It's what they all believe & accept, so it's interesting to hear him talk about "levelling up" - as though the harshness of free-market capitalism could always have been minimised.

Johnson called for the rich to be hailed for their contribution to paying for public services. "an awful lot of schools and roads and hospitals that are being paid for by the super-rich. So why, I asked innocently, are they so despicable in the eyes of all decent British people?"

"It seems to me that though it would be wrong to persecute the rich... & futile to stamp out inequality".

On Europe, he said it was "time we sorted out the working time directive & time we generally persuaded the Eurocrats to stop trying to tell us what to do".

Johnson said Thatcher would recognise "that England has been so far short-changed by devolution" & give the cities "more powers to raise locally the taxes they spend locally [and] give the politicians an incentive to go for policies that promote growth".

Johnson added: "We may not have many gunboats any more, but we hardly need them, because we are already fulfilling our destiny as the soft power capital of the world".

This was, of course, before Johnson came to power & annihilated Britain's global reputation & soft power.

Fewer than 3 in 10 of the electorate voted for Boris Johnson's Tories in 2019.

Would you buy a cat food if 7 out of 10 cats thought it was shit?

Johnson has already been a catastrophe for Britain, & tragically, he's not done yet.

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1372489098502549505