In today’s edition, we land again on planet BoJo and pay tribute to Mario Draghi, one of the most brilliant personalities in Europe.

Also, we come back with a special edition for you: the backstage of the most delicate negotiation of the year. Enjoy!

Boris Johnson: UK’s Cincinnatus

‘It is very sad to leave Parliament, at least for now’. To understand Boris Johnson, one must start by the end.

The character has many flaws, but he is anything but clueless: BoJo sensed that the House Committee on Privileges had a humiliation in store for him, a suspension as a Member of Parliament of 10 days or more. It would have been an unacceptable slap in the face to his invincible record, a chalice too bitter for his ego to swallow.

It is the common opinion of all Johnson’s loyalists, and – for what it is worth – also shared by your storyteller, that the howls of victory, the songs of liberation raised to the skies these days by BoJo’s many enemies, are premature.

It is clear: stepping down from Parliament is the lowest point in a career. An exit, especially in these terms, is never painless. But one must have studied Boris’ character in depth, read his resignation letter carefully, and understand that the last word in this story has yet to be written.

In his letter of resignation as an MP, Boris declares himself the victim of a ‘witch hunt’; he claims that the committee’s aim from the very beginning was to find him guilty. But he admits one mistake from his perspective: he was too ‘naive and trusting’. He should not have thought these proceedings could be even remotely helpful or fair. But I was determined to believe in the system, in justice and to claim what I knew to be the truth’. Woe betides, however, to think that this is (only) a personal matter: the fate of one applies to the future of all, Boris seems to suggest. Indeed, he argues that the ultimate goal is another. Which one? ‘Getting revenge for Brexit and ultimately overturning the result of the 2016 referendum. My removal is the necessary first step, and I believe there has been a concerted attempt to bring it about.’

What is Johnson doing? He is shifting the horizon from today to the months to come, catapulting himself into a battle he embraced with great cynicism many years ago when he realised that Brexit had the potential to turn into a once-in-a-lifetime stepping stone for his career. He did not miscalculate.

Sonia Purnell, a journalist who knows Boris to the point of having dedicated a biography to him, has only one certainty: ‘He will not go off into the sunset. He will forever be a thorn in Sunak’s side. To him, perhaps even more than to the Commission of Privileges, BoJo addressed the heaviest attacks in his farewell to the Commons.

Johnson is still very popular among Conservative Party voters. And a substantial portion of them believes that the defenestrated king deserves to return to his rightful throne. Of course, the Conservative Campaign Headquarters will unlikely agree to find Boris a place on the ‘list’. All the more so given his relations with Sunak, but rest assured: BoJo will not step aside. He will struggle; he will fight because it is in his nature. After all, that is all he knows how to do.

On the day of his resignation as PM, greeting people and journalists crowded in front of 10 Downing Street, BoJo uttered a few words: ‘Like Cincinnatus, I am returning to my plough’.

Remember: Boris loves the classics. Cincinnatus, the peasant dictator, retired to private life, only to be begged by the senators to return to his post while he was busy working the land. This is the scenario Boris imagines for himself, the goal he will start working towards from today—Johnson, like Cincinnatus. Or like Winston Churchill, to quote another of his (and of your storyteller) idol, who served as Prime Minister during the Second World War, won it, saved the free world, but lost the ’45 elections and decided to retire from active politics for five long years. Until the call of the forest was too strong to ignore, until, in 1951, he returned, triumphed, and wrote his name (again) in history.

Mario Draghi, the Italian (and European) excellence

Find – if you can – someone capable of condensing into the space of a few minutes a lesson in politics and leadership of similar calibre to the one given by the former Italian Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, on the 6th floor of the Mit Samberg Conference Centre in Cambridge, where he was awarded the prestigious ‘Miriam Pozen Prize’ in recognition of his achievements in the field of international financial policy.

Bob Pozen, son of Miriam to whom the prize is named, makes it clear with a joke that Draghi has asked to speak on a few ‘very narrow topics: war, inflation, Europe’. But the audience probably needs to grasp the absence of Italy among the discussion topics, confirming the golden rule that Super Mario has given himself since the end of his government. Until it becomes necessary, no interference, no comment: an incredibly difficult exercise when others insistently try to charge you with the cost of their inadequacy.

But from the podium, it is not difficult to discern a continuity between the Draghi as Prime Minister and the Draghi of today. He is not afraid to describe Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine not as ‘an act of unpredictable madness’ but as ‘a premeditated step by Vladimir Putin, a deliberate strike against Europe’.

Draghi is clear, and this passage deserves to be quoted in full: ‘The existential values of the European Union are peace, freedom and respect for democratic sovereignty’, which is ‘why there is no alternative for the United States, Europe and their allies but to ensure that Ukraine wins this war. Accepting a Russian victory or a muddled draw would fatally weaken other neighbouring states and send a message to the autocrats that the EU is ready to compromise on what it stands for. It would also signal to our eastern partners that our commitment to their freedom and independence – a pillar of our foreign policy – is not so unwavering. In short, it would be an existential blow to the European Union and undermine the Western alliance. But what does winning this war mean? Winning this war for Europe and the world means having a stable peace; today, this prospect seems complicated. The invasion of Russia is part of President Putin’s disappointing long-term strategy: to recover the Soviet Union’s past influence and the existence of its government is now intimately tied to its success. It would take an internal political change in Moscow for Russia to abandon its goals, but there is no sign that such a change will occur’.

Draghi’s analysis focuses on the geopolitical consequences of a prolonged conflict on Europe’s eastern border, for which it is necessary to prepare: “First: the EU must be prepared to strengthen its defence capabilities. (…) Second: we must be ready to start a journey with Ukraine leading to its membership in NATO. The alternative is to send even more weapons and to build an agreement between Ukraine and all its allies that contains elements of mutual defence, referring back to the treaty that binds the US and South Korea. But such an agreement would be difficult to reach and hard to implement. It would not have the same power vis-à-vis Russia, and, as Henry Kissinger noted, it would not tie Ukraine’s national strategy to a global strategy.

Moreover, I think the historical and political context differs from Korea’s. But if this proves to be the most likely course of events, the resulting uncertainty and instability could be significant. Third, we must prepare for a prolonged period in which the global economy will behave very differently than in the past. For example, ‘I expect governments to run higher deficits forever’ because the coming global challenges ‘will require a substantial public investment that cannot be financed by tax increases alone’.

Perhaps Bob Pozen is right when he sums up the reasons for awarding the prize by saying that ‘Doctor Mario Draghi is unique’. This message has only partly gotten through in Italy and with incredible difficulty.

Fingers in the eyes of pro-Putin and the like. We will – quite happily – get over it.

Diplofocus: Backstage of a negotiation. Biden, McCarthy and the ‘chicken game’: inside the negotiation that saved the US (and the world) from default

In an era marked by opposition taken to the extreme between Democrats and Republicans, the American President, Joe Biden, has repeatedly insisted on the importance of dialogue with his opponents. But what happens if, a few days after what Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen goes so far as to describe as an ‘unprecedented economic and financial storm’, you are forced to deal with someone from whom you could not be further apart on a personal and ideological level?

First answer: it happens that you wonder what it would have been like if on the other side of the table was not Kevin McCarthy but the senior leader of the Senate Republicans, Mitch McConnell. So many battles, so many heated tugs-of-war but, in the end, the habit of shaking hands, of sealing the deal.

This time, the truth is that Joe Biden does not trust Kevin McCarthy.

He holds him hostage to the radical Republicans who bargained for his election as House leader just a few months ago. He believes that the 15 rounds it took him to stand for speaker represent a condemnation that to come to power, he surrendered the power of the office. After all, he reflects, there must be a reason why such a spectacle in star-studded politics has not been seen for 164 years.

With ten days to go before the possible default, what is being staged is what the Washington Post calls a ‘dangerous game of chicken’. But what does this game consist of? Two drivers in a car drive straight at each other. If one of them does not swerve before impact, both may die in the crash, but if one gives in to fear and the other does not, the one who bent will be called a ‘chicken’ by the other, a coward. Yet, to understand how the world’s greatest superpower found itself risking its neck in a psychological tug-of-war between two leading politicians, one must go back almost three months, ideally inside the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Orlando, more than 1300 km away from the corridors of the Capitol.

It is at a conference that brings together nearly 200 Republicans that the GOP begins to question: what is the bargaining chip to be played in agreeing to raise the debt ceiling? Some propose rethinking iconic programmes like Medicare, those who call for cutting subsidies of various kinds, and those who aim to undermine the Democratic agenda by targeting government programmes against climate change. Dictating the line are above all the exponents of the Freedom Caucus, the GOP’s most extremist group. And in those hours, there are already those who experience a feeling of déjà-vu. The mind goes back to 2011, to the tug-of-war between Obama and the Tea Party members, to when the US came closest to default.

In early April, McCarthy presented his plan: OK to raise the debt ceiling until next year, but at the same time, more than $3 trillion in cuts in federal spending over the next decade. Despite Biden’s threat to veto it, the House approves, and Congressional Democrats riot, claiming that the Republican Party had never made similar demands during the Trump presidency, not even when the GOP had repeatedly raised the debt ceiling to advance its policies.

Joe Biden is in Japan for the G7 when the possibility of a compromise between Democrats and Republicans begins to emerge. And the reaction of the GOP rebels is not long in coming. It was on 19 May when the radicals of the Freedom Caucus threatened to revolt, officially demanding that there be ‘no further discussions’ between Biden and McCarthy. But even the president has his own beef. Among the Democrats, it is the liberal parliamentarians who are raising the tone, denouncing the risk of excessive concessions to their Republican rivals. People with a large following, like Bernie Sanders in the Senate and Pramila Jayapal in the House, ask Biden to activate the nuclear option. They want him to invoke the 14th Amendment, expressly its Article 4, which states that the debt incurred by the US government ‘shall not be questioned’, effectively declaring the debt ceiling unconstitutional. The prospect tantalised the White House legal team, if only as a negotiating weapon to be played against McCarthy and his ilk. But nipping the idea in the bud is Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen herself, explaining that such a move could jeopardise the bond auctions run by her department. No dice.

When the break appears inevitable, McCarthy orders his people back to the table. The Speaker phones Joe Biden again. At that moment, the president is on Air Force One, returning from the Asian summit with the other greats of the planet. According to GOP parliamentarians, resetting relations between the parties is a decisive call. Still, the word on the tensions between the two leaders of Irish origin has yet to be spoken.

The Republicans remain some $3.5 trillion short of the requested cuts they were aiming for, they must settle for less than half, but McCarthy has the luxury of declaring in front of reporters that ‘the Democrats have achieved nothing’. His internal opponents think otherwise: this is Biden’s victory, they assure. And the President? Perhaps the most honest summary is his own: ‘Nobody got everything they wanted, but we avoided a crisis and an economic collapse’. For now. Until the next negotiation. We will talk again after the presidential elections in January 2025. Only one thing they agree on: they both hope to be the ones to lead the negotiations again.