The Politics of Boaty McBoatface

The soul-searching, the cries of tyranny, are already underway in the British press, albeit with a healthy dollop of mock outrage mixed in. (After all, the country has a very real, very high-stakes vote on whether to stay in the European Union coming up in June.) Johnson should “accept the will of the electorate and bow to the name Boaty McBoatface,” The Times declares. “Present the people with an idol, then smash it before their eyes,” muses Stuart Heritage at The Guardian. “Soon they will learn that resistance is futile, and the state’s power is absolute.” Anticipating the government’s resistance to Boaty McBoatface back in March, the journalist Ross Clark observed, “Our leaders, of course, love democracy—until it comes up with an answer different to the one they were expecting.”