from the times, by Jermemy Clarkeson on Brexit.

You young people were jolly naughty on June 8. Go to your rooms with no vote Jeremy Clarkson Share Save So that’s two elections on the trot that have been messed up by Britain’s young people. They couldn’t be bothered to vote in the European Union referendum and we ended up with Brexit. And then, having realised the error of their ways, they decided they would vote for that arse Jeremy Corbyn in the general election, so now we’ve ended up with a hung parliament. Which won’t be able to deal with the mess their bone-idleness created in the first place. Frankly, I’d smack their bottoms and send them all to their rooms for the day, and then I’d raise the voting age to 46. Actually, I’d go further. I’d make people sit an IQ test before being allowed to cast a vote, because I’m sorry but anyone who plumped for Corbyn is so daft they really need to be on medication. Britain’s national debt is more than£1.7 trillion and it’s growing at the rate of almost £1bn a week. Which is about £100,000 a minute. And the weird-beard Islingtonite thinks that this can be tackled by making Starbucks pay a bit more tax. He’s deluded and should be in prison. The problem is he has a soft voice and kind eyes and he sounds genuine when he says that if Sir Elton John and Lord Bamford would only pay a little bit more to the government each week, it would end all poverty, hunger, crime, terrorism and war. I’m sitting there screaming: “The man collects manhole covers. He’s a lunatic.” But young and stupid people are turning to their fat friends and saying: “Well, that makes sense.” In a northern accent. We see this problem not just in Britain but all round the world. In America the people elected a man who has nylon hair because he said he’d build a wall along the border with Mexico. In France they elected a man who married his teacher because he has a nice face. In Russia they fawn over a president — who has at some point in his life at the KGB pushed another man’s eyes into the back of his head — because he wants to reinstate the Soviet Union. And so it goes on. In Canada they were offered a choice between a normal politician and a two-year-old. And they decided to give the toddler a chance because he has a huge tattoo of a weird raven on his left arm. It’s not hard to see what’s going on. People are bored with politicians and politics and they want something new. Anything. Just so long as it doesn’t sound like Tony Blair or David Cameron or any of the others. The Tories must choose a leader who’s odd and funny and different. Only one name springs out At one point in the run-up to the election Theresa May took her campaign to Plymouth, or it may have been Portsmouth — somewhere with a lot of ships, anyway. There she was quizzed on camera by someone from the local newspaper, and she answered all his questions with the conviction and sincerity of a regional radio DJ. You could see she didn’t mean a single word she was saying. She therefore said a lot of words without saying anything at all. And people are bored with that. Remember Ed Miliband? The one who lost an election after he failed to eat a bacon sandwich? He’d plainly been told by his spin doctors that the news crew that had been sent to interview him would use only one soundbite and that no matter how tricky or varied the questions might be, he should just say the same thing over and over again. So he did. And then, when the whole unedited interview ended up on YouTube, we could see him sitting there, repeating himself like a Dalek. Blair was an actor, so he made a much better fist of looking as if he knew what he was talking about. But he wasn’t a very good actor, which is why we all knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We could see it in his eyes. But still the politicians keep on believing that a smile, a soundbite and a nice suit are all that’s needed to keep them in a job. Well, they aren’t. Not any more. There’s talk, as I write, that May won’t be able to keep her job, but, seriously, when you look at the replacements whose names are being bandied about: Philip Hammond, David Davis, the other one? They’re like milk bottles. It’s impossible to say which you prefer. Which is why we are drawn to the weirdos, the odd ones out. There’s a theory in America that presidential elections are always won by the candidate you’d most like to have over for a barbecue on a Sunday afternoon. That’s why John F Kennedy beat Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter, and it’s why Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton. I think there’s a kernel of truth in that in Britain too. It’s probably why we have a hung parliament, because who would you prefer to have over for Sunday lunch, a woman who goes on walking holidays or a man who collects manhole covers? The answer is: “Er . . .” This is what the Conservative Party must understand in the coming months. If it gets rid of May — and it should, really, because she’s a dead duck — it must remember that in Britain there are millions and millions of people who are stupid or young or both. And who thus won’t really grasp the complexities of Brexit and austerity and so on. That doesn’t matter. Any Conservative is going to make a better job of pulling us out of Europe and balancing the books than Corbyn would. That’s the main goal. To keep him at bay. So the Tories must choose someone who’s odd and funny and different from all the others. Someone who the voters would like to have over for a few beers on a sunny Sunday afternoon. The only problem with this idea is that there’s only one name from all of the 300 or so contenders that springs to mind. It’s Boris Johnson. Which means we’ve had it.