Good Bye, Boris! (and the Queen)

‘This is it, folks’ – Boris Johnson ‘hands over baton in unexpected relay race’

変な人だったけど(だから!)結構好きだったBoris Johnsonがあっけなく(潔く!?orもう飽きちゃったから?)10th of Downing Streetから去っていった。問題・課題を山のように積み上げたまま。

Placeholder image for youtube video: -ym_x2cXVB8
Boris Johnson’s final farewell speech in full as he leaves Downing Street

6 SEPTEMBER 2022 • 8:24AM

Boris Johnson has left Downing Street for the final time as Prime Minister as he told the nation “the baton will be handed over” to Liz Truss after the Tory leadership “unexpectedly turned out to be a relay race”. 

Speaking in Downing Street, Mr Johnson bemoaned the manner in which he has been forced out of No 10 as he accused Tory MPs who ousted him of having “changed the rules halfway through”. 

He said: “This is it folks. Thank you everybody for coming out so early this morning. In only a couple of hours I will be in Balmoral to see Her Majesty the Queen and the torch will finally be passed to a new Conservative leader, the baton will be handed over in what has unexpectedly turned out to be a relay race, they changed the rules half way through but never mind that now.”

Mr Johnson pledged his “fervent support” for Ms Truss’s new government and urged the Conservative Party to unite behind her. 

He said that if his dog, Dilyn, and Larry, the No 10 cat, can “put behind them their occasional difficulties then so can the Conservative Party”. 

Borisが、女王の死去で「生き返った?」

Queen Elizabeth dies: Boris Johnson makes Parliament laugh with speech remembering Her Majesty

2022/09/09 Queen Elizabeth dies: Boris Johnson makes Parliament laugh remembering Her Majesty | Boris Johnson joined parliament to pay tribute to Queen Elizabeth II.
King Charles maintains a clear sense of duty and service even as he mourns the death of his mother Queen Elizabeth, British Prime Minister Liz Truss said on Friday, having spoken to the nation’s new monarch on Thursday evening.

なんだか、あまり魅力的に見えないおばさんが首相になった。

Liz Truss and Hugh O’Leary, her husband, after the announcement of her victory in the Tory leadership race CREDIT: Stefan Rousseau/Shutterstock

TODAY’S WORLDVIEW

Liz Truss, an unpopular leader for a troubled Britain

Analysis by Ishaan Tharoor  

September 6, 2022 at 12:01 a.m. EDT

On Tuesday, Liz Truss heads to a Scottish castle to call on Queen Elizabeth II and “kiss” the royal hand. The current British foreign secretary will thus become her country’s next prime minister. With Truss’s appointment, the queen will have presided over this traditional rite 15 times in her many decades as sovereign. It’s possible, no matter reports of her ailing health, that she may do it all over again soon.

Truss comes to power not via general election but after winning the majority of votes in a Conservative Party leadership election decided by fewer than 200,000 dues-paying Tory activists. Her main rival, former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, was more popular among sitting Conservative lawmakers in Parliament. Broader public opinion polls show the opposition Labour Party with its strongest lead in a decade. A majority of Britons, meanwhile, believe Truss will make a “poor” or “terrible” prime minister, and only a quarter consider her an improvement from Boris Johnson, her controversial and polarizing predecessor.

Truss will struggle to muster Johnson’s irrepressible — or delusional, critics would contend — optimism. Darkened skies already hang low over her nascent premiership. “In addition to the war in Ukraine and the fallout of Brexit, the new prime minister will inherit a vast range of economic and political problems,” my colleagues explained. “The Bank of England predicts Britain will suffer through protracted recession, beginning as early as October. Inflation already stands at 10 percent, with economists warning that 15 percent is possible.”

There’s an impending cascade of woes: A mammoth cost-of-living crisis is driving a historic drop in living standards. According to some estimates, two-thirds of British households may face “fuel poverty” by the end of the year, struggling to pay for the surging costs of heating their homes. Across various sectors of the economy, industrial action is picking up, with strikes shutting down train services, garbage collection and the operation of ports.

The country that Truss will now lead is unquestionably diminished. Most analyses of the impact of Brexit find that Britain’s departure from the European Union has dented its economy, added to its supply chain headaches and hurt its trading prospects. An analysis published last month by Saxo Bank warned investors that Britain is “more and more looking like an emerging market country” and won’t have the ability to manage “an easy escape” from a deep recession.

Truss campaigned for her party’s leadership on a platform pandering to the Tory’s hard core. She sees a path out of Britain’s problems by slashing taxes and boosting fracking and nuclear energy. “We will break with the same old tax and spend approach by focusing on growth and investment,” she wrote for the Telegraph. While likely welcomed by many Tories who internally elected her, such rhetoric is less convincing to the general public that has seen the Conservatives in power for 12 years.

“Truss’s Britain will be governed by policies lifted from cliched Daily Mail headlines,” wrote leftist commentator Owen Jones in the Guardian. “All the bêtes noires of saloon-bar reactionaries from the past 20 years will be slaughtered, and the resulting anguish from those effete metropolitan lefties obsessed with mere trivialities such as avoiding mass impoverishment and the destruction of the planet will give the Tory faithful their kicks.”

“Economists … have been skeptical about her confidence that all it will take is a few tax cuts to put a tiger back in the national tank,” noted Sam Leith in the right-leaning Spectator that wondered whether she would be a “Tory Jeremy Corbyn,” a nod to the former left-wing Labour leader whose radical politics swept him to the top role in his party but ultimately hurt Labour on the national stage.

あれ?いくら冴えないおばさんでも、就任わずか44日で辞任するとは思わなかった!この記事のタイトルが「Welcomeback Boris」になったりして?

Liz Truss: The human hand grenade who tragically blew herself up

She spent a lifetime defying the doubters. But the very personality that had powered her ascent ultimately led to her downfall

ByHarry de Quetteville   20 October 2022 • 6:40pm

 Liz Truss on Thursday became Britain’s shortest serving prime minister, lasting just 44 days in office CREDIT: TOBY MELVILLE

And like that she was gone. A politician known above all as a survivor, a bundle of contradictions elastic enough to survive and thrive under three very different prime ministers, came dramatically unstuck when the top job was finally hers.

短命で気の毒だったので、新聞記事を記念に

Borisのあと9/8女王が96歳で死去された。70年も女王として君臨(蟄居?)し、多くの困難と苦しみ、葛藤があっただろう。でも、最後まで女王としての地位を守り続けたのだから「偉い」ともいえよう。

2022/09/09

BBC announces the death of Queen Elizabeth II
2022/09/09 The news anchor Huw Edwards said Buckingham Palace had released a statement confirming that the Queen had died peacefully at Balmoral Castle on Thursday afternoon.

2022/09/10 King Charles III has made his first address to the UK as sovereign, following the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II.

In a televised address, the King paid tribute to his “darling mama” saying “may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest”, and renewed his mother’s lifelong promise of service.

国葬でかわいらしかったのはシャーロットちゃん。これでも王位継承第3位

With maturity, grace and just the right type of mourning ensemble, seven-year-old Charlotte is proving she’s every inch a royal princess The Telegraph

皇后雅子さんも元気を取り戻したようで美しかった。

国葬はロンドン中心部のウェストミンスター寺院で営まれた。皇后さまは前から6列目の通路側の席に、その隣に天皇陛下が着席した。天皇陛下の隣(通路側から3番目)はマレーシアのアブドラ国王と見られ、2人が会話する様子が英メディアの配信写真で確認された。一方、英メディアは、バイデン米大統領と妻ジル氏の座席が前から14列目だったことに着目している。インディペンデント紙は「バイデン夫妻、国葬でポーランド大統領の背後、14列目への着席を余儀なくされる」との見出しで報じた。

9/25 宮内庁長官「両陛下のご訪問本当に良かった」

西村宮内庁長官は両陛下帰国後の9月22日の記者会見で次のように述べました。 「両陛下が代表する国民の弔意は、英国王室そして英国民に十二分に伝わったと思います。また今回の国葬には世界中から多くの国王、大統領と元首クラスが参列しましたけれども、両陛下はこうした多くの参列者と交流を深められたことにより、国際社会における日本の皇室の存在感をお示しになったものと考えています。今回、両陛下にご訪問いただいて、本当に良かったと率直に感じているところであります」

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