The Daily Mail described May’s appointment of Brexiteers to key positions as “clever and encouraging”, especially Johnson’s first Cabinet job as a “bold yet shrewd choice”.
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Since being appointed mayor of London in 2008, the former journalist has quickly made a name for himself as a controversial figure on the UK’s political stage, more often than not to mocking from the press as well as fellow politicians both home and overseas. Later, he took a more diplomatic, if still dim tone: “Boris Johnson is a shrewd party politician who knew how to use the Euroskeptic mood for himself”.
“(He has) his back against the wall to defend his country but also with his back against the wall the relationship with Europe should be clear”, Mr Ayrault said.
On social media, French writers let rip too, with one tweeting “a clown as the new foreign minister – comedy or Shakespearean tragedy?” while another proposed that Johnson “recruit Mr Bean as an adviser”.
He has apologized before and seems likely to do so again – he said after his surprise appointment that “the United States of America will be in the front of the queue” for his next apology, apparently because of his comments about President Barack Obama’s ancestry.
Others took a more conciliatory view with the belief that Johnson as foreign secretary would be more temperate than his previous incarnations as Johnson the journalist, Johnson the legislator or Johnson the mayor of London.
But Johnson’s charm operation earned a mixed reception from a party guestlist stuffed with business chiefs, diplomats, actors and writers who closely followed his campaign for Britain to quit the European Union in the June 23rd referendum.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault branded his British counterpart “a liar” in an interview Thursday with the popular Europe-1 radio network. An instant online classic was State Department spokesman Mark Toner’s reaction Wednesday, in which he digested the information even while formulating a carefully worded response about the special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom transcending personalities. He says Obama is confident the USA will keep working to strengthen relations “irrespective of specific personalities”.
Before last month’s referendum on European Union membership, Johnson compared the bloc’s aims with those of Adolf Hitler.
As the Tories prepares to trigger Article 50, political commentators expect much coverage to be placed on the actions of Brexit secretary David Davis (third favourite at 3/1). The treachery left Johnson out of the Conservative leadership race. May appointed him Foreign Secretary and while he will not be leading the Brexit agenda, he will most certainly have to be involved in the process.
Juergen Hardt said in a statement Thursday that, for example, “free access to the common market means, among other things, accepting other fundamental freedoms such as the freedom of movement” between European countries. And I say this respectfully to our Chinese hosts, who have excelled so magnificently at Ping-pong.
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The Chancellor who was successively Minister of Defence and Minister for Foreign Affairs will also have to set new budget goals after his predecessor George Osborne abandoned his aim to run a budget surplus by 2020.
