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18 December 2019

How Berlusconi became a model for Britain

The new age of machismo. 

By Samuel Earle

On 19 November 2019, during the general election campaign, Boris Johnson appeared at a boxing ring in Wythenshawe, Manchester, to throw some punches for the cameras. Johnson’s boxing gloves were emblazoned with the Conservative campaign slogan “Get Brexit Done”, but the real message was in the medium: Johnson wants Britain to think he is a fighter, a man of action ready to rescue the nation from indecision.

He subsequently told an interviewer that in post- Brexit Britain, “You will hear one by one the pinging of the guy ropes as the Gulliver stands up again.”

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