BORIS JOHNSON: EU ‘hysteria’ is like ‘contagious mourning’ after the death of Princess Diana...

Business Insider
July 4, 2016

Boris Johnson has written publicly about Brexit — Britain’s exit from the European Union — for the first time since ruling himself out of the race to become Britain’s next Prime Minister last week.

Writing in his weekly Telegraph column, the former London Mayor says many young people in Britain — “the sort who might fast to raise money for a Third World leprosy project” — have been gripped by a kind of mass hysteria not seen since the death of Princess Diana in 1997.

Johnson points to the demonstrations across London over the weekend in support of the EU as evidence of this hysteria and argues that the demonstrations are based more on emotions than a rational assessment of the benefits of the EU.

He writes (emphasis ours):

“There is, among a section of the population, a kind of hysteria, a contagious mourning of the kind that I remember in 1997 after the death of the Princess of Wales. It is not about the EU, of course; or not solely. A great many of these protesters – like dear old [Sir Bob] Geldof – are in a state of some confusion about the EU and what it does.”

“It is not, as he says, a “free trade area”; if only it were. It is a vast and convoluted exercise in trying to create a federal union – a new political construction based in Brussels. But, as I say, I don’t believe that it is psychologically credible to imagine young people chanting hysterically in favour of Brussels bureaucrats. The whole protest is not about the EU project, per se; it is about them – their own fears and anxieties that are now being projected on to Brexit.”

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