Both are larger-than-life public figures whose popular appeal puts them outside the reviled political establishment, even though both the London mayor and the Republican presidential nomination frontrunner come from very establishment backgrounds.
Boris plays the Old Etonian who is a decent bloke really, while Mr Trump is "establishment" of the American kind - the scion of a multi-millionaire property mogul, who also somehow retains populist credentials, in his case the aura of the self-made man.
Both men are smarter and subtler than their bluff public personas would imply, and both find themselves (cynically, their critics would say) trying to surf a wave of public disaffection that – despite all the predictions of the establishment – could yet propel them to the White House and Downing Street before the year is out.
That’s right. It is a thought – sobering or uplifting, depending on your point of view – that by the time you sit down to eat your turkey this Christmas the leaders of the English-speaking world could be Boris Johnson and Donald Trump.
First, the common sense reasons why this could never happen:
Donald Trump is clearly a clown who even if he wins the Republican nomination – and the bookmakers give him a 50 per cent chance at this – will be crushed by Hillary Clinton, a candidate with a pretty much unparalleled resume for the job of President of the United States.
Trump is having fun, but still only wins at best 30 per cent of the GOP vote, or put another way, about one third of the 26 per cent of Americans who self-identify as Republicans. He’s like Marine Le Pen in France, the commander of a significant vocal minority, nothing more.
Nationally, Trump has among the highest negative poll-ratings of all the potential presidential nominees – from either party – and will have to win a contest where the electoral and demographical matrix inherently favours Democrats.
In short, there just aren’t enough angry, white folk in America to see those signature golden "T-R-U-M-P" letters hoisted above the south portico of the White House.
Similarly, with Boris. His route to Number 10, at least in the short term, comes only via a Brexit vote that dethrones David Cameron and George Osborne, clearing the stage for a bobble-hatted Boris to claim the office he has always craved.
But that too still looks unlikely, when you stop to think about it.
Discount the vocal fringes and that skew online polls and the telephone polls (which were much more reliable in the 2015 general election) and you will see a persistent, solid margin in favour of the "remain" camp.
Boris may be popular, but the balance of the ledger still tips firmly in favour of the status quo – the PM, the Chancellor, the Home and Business secretaries, as well as elder statesmen like John Major and William Hague all say “stay” - not to mention 80 per cent of the CEOs of the FTSE 100.
In short, Boris will have his fun, but as the Scottish referendum demonstrated, after all the hullaballoo the innate conservatism of the British public means they will never take that “leap in the dark”.
But now the reasons why they very well might.
A US general election – like a referendum - is essentially a two-horse, one-question race – and the history of modern US elections shows that after two terms of a president with approval ratings in the mid-40s, the “other guy” (from whichever party) usually wins by default.
Hillary Clinton, despite her CV, is a weak candidate. Prickly on the stump, deeply mistrusted, a 1990s throwback (look at Bill tottering off the stage these days) and a woman – you have to ask, is Trump’s America really ready for a female commander in chief?
Additionally, in a low-turnout election – as this Ipsos study shows – Trump has an even better shot if the young, Hispanic and African-American voters (who tend to vote in lower numbers) don’t get to the polls.
This is not the only similarity with the Brexit campaign, where a low turnout would also help the older, whiter (Eurosceptic) vote to disproportionately propel Britain out the exit door.
Both the Brexit the Trump campaign are selling a kind of nostalgia that, even if it doesn’t stand up to serious scrutiny in the view of the establishment and professional classes, simply makes a lot of voters feel warm and fuzzy inside.
As the satirical Saturday Night Live observed, Trump is offering a “golden goose to Hillary’s cold chicken”, and the people want goose.
Trump wants to “Make America Great Again”, just as Boris and the "out" camp want to put the “Great” back into Great Britain by freeing us Brussels’s python-like embrace that is said to be suffocating our indigenous ingenuity and Elizabethan buccaneering spirit.
Trump wants to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it; he wants to shut out Muslims and start a trade war with China, all of which of is mad, but it has a basic appeal.
The Brexit debate is more nuanced, but the Brexiteer’s dream of unshackling the UK Europe, the "In" camp will argue, is equally emotional and incoherent.
Boris writes that we will soon have inked in a new free trade-deal with Europe – perhaps – but skates over the reality that that deal will tie us back into Europe in many ways, not all of them advantageous.
The UK will still be obeying EU regulations, will very likely still be contributing to EU funds, and if French irritation was any guide at last week’s Brussels summit, there is a serious risk the UK be on the wrong end of Franco-German lawmaking, and be largely powerless to stop it.
But no matter, for now, that most of the stump promises and the mathematics don’t add up, that didn’t stop Alexis Tsipras and his motorbike riding, far-Left friends getting elected in Greece – although that didn’t work out so well.
But after a two decades of flat wages and globalisation that has seems like it has enriched elites and flattened the wages of Europe and America’s middle classes (it’s a deal more complicated than that) the truth is the angry publics of Britain and America can no longer bear too much reality.
President Trump and Prime Minister Johnson, a brave new world awaits you.
Original Article
Source: telegraph.co.uk/
Author: Peter Foster
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