Welcome to Boris Johnson’s theatre of the absurd. But no one should laugh

Conservative Party members have duly anointed Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson as their leader and thus prime minister of the United Kingdom. Johnson immediately promised an end to the Brexit circus games in which British politicians have played the clowns for three years, making the UK a laughing stock.

Within minutes of gaining Queen Elizabeth’s blessing and before entering 10 Downing Street, Johnson promised a magical revolution, in which Britain will be transformed by increased spending on education, health and social care, establishing free ports, putting 20,000 more police on the streets, and by leaving the European Union within 99 days.

Johnson claimed that his favourite movie scene was “the multiple retribution killings at the end of The Godfather”. After six hours of Johnson in power, 18 of Theresa May’s cabinet ministers had quit or been fired.

Johnson replaced them with right-wing Brexiteers and loyalists, who will do his bidding and take Britain out of the EU to the promised land at the end of the rainbow, a free Britain with a free trade polity.

Is it the promise of magic or the theatre of the absurd? Being both British and Irish, I do not know whether to laugh or to cry. Johnson’s games herald danger far beyond the small misty island that still thinks it is the centre of the earth.

The earth and human civilisation are at dangerous tipping points: climate change, environmental degradation, lawless global governance, greedy politicians, growing inequality, water shortages and floods, the shadow of nuclear destruction, endless small wars creating widespread misery and refugees.

Meanwhile, the tectonic plates of global governance are shifting with the rise of China, India and large parts of what used to be the developing world, even as the West declines economically and politically, and the old ways of doing business come under challenge.

President Donald Trump boasts that, thanks to his uniquely brilliant leadership, the United States has the greatest growth, employment and stock market it has ever known, and remains the greatest power on Earth, with the most powerful military.

So why, when everything is so economically wonderful, is Trump so determinedly destructive? He has failed to turn “Make America Great Again” into a system of government, as he fulminates against friends, frenemies and foes alike.

With his Trump-first policies, he does not care if he blows up the post-war world order, based on a common set of rules and global institutions, with US leadership of multilateral alliances.

That is why the terminal circus of British democracy matters far beyond Britain.

The no-deal Brexit, which Johnson flaunts, would cost up to £90 billion (US$112 billion), and bring recession, rising unemployment, a plummeting pound, and probably the end of the United Kingdom, and with it its pretences to be even a middling power.

There are good reasons – superficial, cynical and deadly serious – to worry about Johnson. He is a character, a blighter, with a shock of blond hair and a wayward way with facts, reminiscent of Trump, who has backed him as prime minister.

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Johnson hopes for a trade deal with the US to repair the damage of lost opportunities in Europe, but this is dangerous play.

Cynical Johnson supporters joke that he would be happy to be governor of the 51st American state; but he may end up as its puppy poodle, given Trump’s savage xenophobic mood.

It is Britain’s funeral if it turns its back on centuries of a policy of engagement with Europe.

Theresa May’s Lancaster House speech setting out her vision for a glorious post-Brexit age with Britain as a global power, echoed by Johnson’s dream of free-trade Britain, is a deluded imperial vision at least 100 years out of date.

The rest of the world does not want a Britain with global ambitions, and Britain no longer has the gunboats to enforce its will – as Iran’s piracy against a British-flagged tanker ignoring the plaintive objections of a British warship demonstrated.

Iran will be Johnson’s first test: will he go along with Trump’s hard line? Or work with Europe and China in trying to save the nuclear deal that Trump blew up? Being in the EU adds power to Britain’s voice; and being outside risks its markets, its friendships and betrays its history.

There is also a price for the world to pay for London’s desperate search for the rainbow of “sovereignty”.

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Britain is risking its most important contribution to the post-war world – its leadership in setting up an international rules-based order, with the creation of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund and other institutions.

That system is now endangered. Its own arthritic failure to respond to changing times, or to accommodate the challenge from rising China and India, and Trump’s disregard for any norms of good global behaviour are all grave threats.

Britain allied to its French, German and other European friends could make a difference in trying to work with China and India to repair an imperilled global system.

How long will Johnson’s absurd theatre play run? It depends largely on whether any sacked member of May’s cabinet has the guts to point out that the man who told his sister he wanted to be “king of the world” has threadbare clothes, and for how long he may be able to bamboozle the British people.

But the rest of the world should not be laughing.

Kevin Rafferty has reported on the world for more than 50 years, including editing daily newspapers in more than 30 cities on six continents