Boris Johnson and Tony Abbott: the double act you knew you never needed | Zoe Williams

A a few housekeeping notes before we head to the meeting of the minds of titans that are Boris Johnson and Tony Abbott at the Canada Strong and Free Network. The CSFN is a sort of Canadian PopCon, where the right will encourage each other while cursing the woke. Except, unlike so many far-right chat rooms, it has nearly 20 years under its belt. There are probably people who remember a time before wokeness, when political correctness went crazy. We'll hear a lot of words that sometimes seem to describe the throughline between early 2000s conservatism and what we see today, but if you tried to draw that line, it would look like a cloud of hair and flies. Pigsty head.

The disgraced former British prime minister no longer looks like a man whose hair the Spads deliberately ruffled before going on stage, for charm's sake. His disorder seems much more authentic and grounded, like that of a man who has already been deported but doesn't know it yet because he hasn't returned home, and contrasts with the very neat Tony Abbott, who has also a cleaner and less contradictory mind. .

Abbott tolerates no contradiction because he does not allow any information he does not like. If he were your father, you would be mad, and if he were the leader of a nation in a critical time, you would be beside yourself and anxious.

In Johnson's ideal world, he would show up, say something cheeky and nasty about his own party (that his anti-smoking policy is bad), talk about Churchill (how can Churchill's party think to ban cigars?), would give off a feeling of helplessness. atmosphere behind the bike shed (smoking, yeah?), receive lots of nice applause and head off in the direction of a fake meeting.

In the world we lived in, he had to engage in a much longer discussion. One might go so far as to say that he and Abbott were responsible for laying the intellectual foundations for the right-wing members of the Five Eyes (UK, US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand; some once called it the Commonwealth white), but I'm sure no one in this room). They were chaired by John O'Sullivan, who had once advised Margaret Thatcher. He kept scaring himself with random references to waking up, like a man waking up screaming from a horrible dream. Sorry, how rude. I didn't want to let on for a second that he was awake. Our two speakers tonight are transformational politicians, he began. The men who made time. Isn't it the truth, the UK is drowning in sewage and Australia is on fire regularly.

With all those straight, white eyes on them, they were forced to talk about real issues, that were real, rather than Peppa Pig World or whatever. Johnson and Abbott discussed Ukraine, where they could agree, but clearly distanced themselves from other, much more vocal right-wing elements (Donald Trump, for example). They spoke of Israel, where they agreed both among themselves and with the rest of their tribe, but it cost them at the cost of describing black as white. And they talked about net zero emissions, which they couldn't agree on.

We all know where Johnson stands on Ukraine, so there weren't many surprises, although it was ticklish to hear him describe Putin's misconceptions about the invaded nation: He believed his own Wikipedia and Nostradamus nonsense when he declared that Ukraine was not a real nation. . We could hear the narcissistic projection there. That's exactly what Johnson would do, concoct a wiki idea and invade a country based on it, except could he actually be an asshole? We probably don't express our gratitude for this man's sheer laziness often enough. Of course, there were difficult moments, but imagine if he had had exactly his own self-interest and callousness, but Putin's energy. Abbott agreed, both men making what I truly hope is a mistake: that it is possible to build a big tent of conservatism between those who think NATO brings stability and peace (Johnson) and those who think NATO nations are succeeding, because they are assholes (I paraphrase Trump). They either indulge in wishful thinking or are happy to let stability and peace go when the time comes.

Meanwhile, on Gaza, Johnson made this truly remarkable argument: Just keep in mind that if you prolong the number of Jewish deaths in Gaza, [7 October], and imagine if this had happened in the UK, it would have been thousands and thousands. Well over 10,000 people. This, apparently, is the authorization of infinite slaughter, of infinite war: a hypothetical number of imaginary Britons, to justify the documented deaths of three times that number of real Palestinians. This is what is needed now to keep the right on the same page. An argument as disjointed as that.

Climate change is real, according to Boris Johnson, but capitalism first, my friends; and not real, according to Tony Abbott, who was by far the most acclaimed. You could see Johnson dealing cold water from the less popular position, almost in real time. Will he finally change sides, if the price is right? We couldn't say, but you wouldn't want him to be head of the IPCC.

On the positive side, the new international right appears almost left-wing in its divisions. It's just a little troubling, what recent experience tells us: the way they get back together is always getting worse.