Political commentator Mandy Boylett shared her perspective on the matter.
Sputnik: Will Boris Johnson win the Conservative Party’s leadership contest?
Mandy Boylett: I think Boris Johnson will definitely become the Prime Minister of the UK, and I think that out of the options that we’ve got, Boris is the best one available.
I’m just hoping that he’s able to do what he says he will do, which is to get us out of the EU on the 31 October.
I suspect with the parliamentary arithmetic being the way it is; unless he’s got to prorogue parliament, which I doubt, I think he may have to have a general election, and if he does that he really needs to have some sort of coalition with the Brexit Party to get Nigel Farage on board, so that we can actually trust that Brexit is going to happen.
There have been lots of lies told by the Conservative Party; Theresa May said “Brexit means Brexit” and “ no deal is better than a bad deal”, but in the end she didn’t deliver anything, and she just made a mess of it.
While Boris is saying all the right things, and Boris is a clever guy and he did actually campaign for leave, so I’m optimistic, but I would trust him more if he had Nigel Farage on board as well.
Sputnik: What do you make of the accusations of tactical voting having taken place amongst Tory MPs, to ensure that Michael Gove would not face off against Boris Johnson in the postal ballot?
Mandy Boylett: Boris would have undoubtedly beaten Michael Gove.
Michael Gove is a very clever guy, and I think he did well in education, but I think he’s a snake the way he stabbed Boris in the back; if it hadn’t been for Michael Gove, we’ve have had Boris Johnson as Prime Minister instead of Theresa May, and we would have been in a very different position now I believe, so I don’t think Michael Gove is a popular guy.
Whether some Tories voted tactically to get Michael Gove; I suspect it’s more because they don’t like him, and they’d want him to be humiliated next to Boris, then they were thinking that he’d be a threat to Boris, so these are just rumours;
I have no idea what the Tory MPs did, it seems a bit childish playing games like that really, if that’s what they’ve done.
Sputnik: Would a no-deal Brexit be as damaging as many claim?
Mandy Boylett: It would be better really if we’d got a deal, but I don’t see that we are going to get one by the 31st of October, and I certainly don’t want Theresa May’s rehashed deal, because that’s appalling anyway, I’d rather have no deal than Theresa May’s deal.
I don’t think there’s anything to worry about; if we go to WTO rules, they allow us to trade without tariffs until there is a free trade agreement, so the UK doesn’t want tariffs, does the EU really want to impose tariffs and hurt their industries?
The EU is in a state of flux at the moment; Jean Claude Juncker is not going to be in the job much longer, and I think there is going to be a will to just make it go away, and make it easier, because it’s been going on for so long.
Everybody’s going on saying that we’ve got to stop a no deal Brexit, we have to do this, we have to do that, but the default position is a no deal Brexit, and in the absence of Boris agreeing to a second referendum, which I’m sure he won’t do, then we would leave at the end of October because I can’t see that, certainly the French and probably the Irish, aren’t actually minded to give another extension to Brexit.
I know that Macron said, and Mark Rutte, the Dutch President said they don’t want to give another extension, and that they don’t want a no-deal Brexit, but that they just don’t want this going on and on, so I think that the most likely thing now is a no deal Brexit, but we’ll see.
Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of Mandy Boylett and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.
