THERE’S A STORY GOING AROUND. For some it’s told with lip-smacking anticipation and relish. For others it’s the horror show they had long anticipated and claimed to be fighting against. It goes like this: Boris Johnson, just like Donald Trump before him, wanted to start a revolution; there were forces welling up which called for one; it could feasibly have been done (and was desperately needed). However, both blond beasts failed to meet their rendezvous with destiny. They sat on the throne and did nothing.
This fable is entirely wrong and in telling it the only objectives served are in mythmaking and evasion. It is, in short, a glittering legend of the civil service.
In Donald Trump’s America, the challenge to whatever it was he and his voters represented was the administrative state that his presidency failed to tame. This “liberal regime” saturated officialdom, and its complaints, not least about
