The left’s top priority: know thine enemy | Suzanne Moore
Boris Johnson is a chameleon, constantly changing. Shouting about austerity and neoliberalism is no way to defeat him
I come not to bury Johnson but to praise him. For all the thousands of words I have written criticising this ruthless, amoral being, it is stupid not to recognise what he has achieved. This is the bit where you call me a Tory, but I am not. I just happen to think moping is not a strategy for opposition. Saying nasty things about the prime minister is easy; effectively combating him requires analysis and agility – qualities clearly lacking in the dregs of the Corbyn project.
We don’t need self-serving arguments about authenticity. Wake up! Leadership now is not simply a matter of authenticity, but often its opposite: what the University College London professor Ken Spours, in a paper for the thinktank Compass, calls shapeshifting. Johnson is a chameleon, and modern conservatism is opportunism presented as modernisation: it has an ability to meld wildly different views, and adapt.