A letter to Boris Johnson
Dear Boris, Last week you created a media storm with your speech at the Centre for Policy Studies in London. As a self-publicist, you make Katie Price look like a case of social phobia, and maybe you are pleased with the column inches you attracted. But perhaps you are also made nervous by the many commentators who have suggested that you have damaged your chances of greater political glory by letting the avuncular mask slip and revealing what lies behind it. As a eulogy for Margaret Thatcher, your speech was most effective, though it came across as a transparent bid to take on her mantle. But it also revealed a blind spot in your understanding of your fellow human beings. This is evidence in the two themes that run through the speech: (1) people are motivated solely by competition with others; (2) those who win competitions are morally superior and more deserving than those who lose. Let’s look at the evidence in the speech. The first comment that gave me pa...