Ferdinand Mount

Sir William Robert Ferdinand Mount, 3rd Baronet (born 2 July 1939), commonly known as Ferdinand Mount, is a British political commentator, writer, novelist and former columnist for The Sunday Times.

Quotes

• The purpose of sketching out these half-dozen areas of risk is not to claim to know how bad they would turn out to be, but simply to point out how little thought the Brexotics have given to them, or to the suspicions and fears they have roused, not just in their own country but across the whole continent. There remains the last and to me the worst suspicion: that they would be quite happy to put their supposedly beloved country through a period of prolonged turmoil and stagnation simply for the exhilaration of being on their own at last.
  • "Nigels against the World", London Review of Books 38:10 (19 May 2016).

• What still puzzles some people is that so many old-fashioned Tories should have fallen for such a seedy, treacherous chancer. In fact, I think [Boris] Johnson has succeeded because of his amorality, not despite it. The transgressive sayer of the unsayable breaks through the carapace of conventional politics with a mixture of humour and vituperation, slang and high-flown rhodomontade. Clowning is part of the act for the leader who wants to reach beyond good and evil in the fashion Nietzsche recommended. A cartoon Superman? Yes, but they all are. See Charlie Chaplin, passim.
  How long will he last – five weeks, five years? I have no idea. All I can say is what I see. And it is not a pretty sight.
  • "How bad can it get?" London Review of Books 41:16 (15 August 2019)
  • Ferdinand Mount was one of 17 contributors to the LRB to reflect on the situation in Great Britain after Johnson became prime minister in summer 2019