Ferdinando Giugliano, Columnist

Boris Johnson's Lesson For Populists Everywhere

Promising to get the EU to change is easy. Delivering that change is almost impossible.

Overpromise, win the vote, underdeliver, then leave the burning building.

Photographer: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images Europe
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Boris Johnson and David Davis, Britain’s freshly departed Brexiteer ministers, are a cautionary tale for anti-establishment politicians across Europe.

The U.K.’s vote to quit the EU was hailed as the beginning of a continent-wide transformation, which would see national governments claim back control from the Brussels bureaucrats. Yet the failure of the now former Foreign Secretary and the ex-Brexit Secretary to devise a plan for how to actually do this is instructive.