Trump, Johnson’s ‘dishevelled populism’ fits the era

Despite their many flaws, the trans-Atlantic populists are better equipped to deal with new faultlines than their rivals.

Boris Johnson and Donald Trump: are they leaders for our time? Picture: AP/AFP

The gentle jilt Boris Johnson deliver­ed to Donald Trump during his state visit to London this week won’t have troubled the notoriously sensitive US President too much.

We don’t know exactly what was said between the two in the phone call that replaced the face-to-face meeting that had been expecte­d but we can be confident that Boris would have been at his emollient best. Stroking the lustrous Trump ego is a costless way to win valuable merit at Donald’s court. You can rest assured he’s still the President’s favourite next British prime minister.

It’s early days in the Conservative leadership contest, and the usual caveats about the fragility of frontrunner status must be ­applied in force, but should Johnson’s ambition be realised, the Donald­-Boris axis would surely be one of the most extraordinary relations­hips in the long history of the two countries.

It’s an old saw that the two nations, divergent though their histories have been, have produced some remarkable, epoch-shaping partnerships: Churchill and FDR; Reagan and Thatcher; Blair and Clinton; Blair and Bush (the ideological flexibility of the former prime minister was gymnastic).

Now we have a chance of a Trump-Johnson (do you prefer DonBo or Bojonald?) condominium and it’s a cause of near cardiac alarm to much of the polit­ical establishment in the West.

To many it would represent the apotheosis of reckless populism, the elevation of clownish charisma over sober statesmanship, the primac­y of preening ego and low mendacity over high principle and responsibility. Yet there’s reason to think that it might be, if not exactly a match made in heaven, then at least an unexpectedly productive partnership that may hold the key to unlocking the political deadlock that grips both countries.

Of course there are differences. Boris is well read, with plausible pretensions to scholarship. There’s still a lively debate among those who know Trump well about whether he has read a book in his life. Boris is quite well versed in the classics and will regale his readers and listeners with relevant political precedent from Livy or Thucydides. The closest experience Trump is known to have had of classical civilisation is an occasion­al interest in acquiring the equity of Caesars Palace.

But there are common traits and experiences that go way beyon­d the unorthodox haircuts, multiple marriages and shared birthplace — New York City (though it may say something profoun­d that while Boris was born amid the self-regard of Manhattan’s upper east side, Donald’s first breaths were taken in Jam­aica, in striving, chippy Queens).

It may be unfair to say that neither would recognise a principled political position if it nested and reproduced in their exuberant hairdos but they’ve certainly demon­strated an impressively elastic approach to the big issues.

As an ambitious but conventional New Yorker until very recentl­y, Trump held conventional New Yorker views: a social progressive, he was pro-choice, pro-gun control. Indeed, his entire character and lifestyle seem the louche antithesis of the conservative values that had come to define the modern Republican Party.

Now he’s a committed relig­iou­s conservative who leads prayer breakfasts and wants to arm schoolteachers and put abortio­n doctors in prison.

Boris’s political journey has been on a narrower causeway, but his fateful choice on the key issue of Brexit — friends thought he was going to plump for Remain until days before he went for Leave — has shown the same ruthless commitmen­t to self-advancement over consistency of belief. Let’s not forget he once derided Trump but now embraces him.

In America, Johnson is portrayed as almost a perfect, posh replica of Trump. “Divisive, dishevell­ed, populist”, is how NBC News recently described him, in echoes of the way the big media have derided Trump. But to regular folk, for whom he brings the only life and colour that they ever experience in British politics, he’s regarded as the same breath of fresh air that Trump represents.

They both deploy language that outrages polite society while inducing nods of agreement among a wider, less refined audience, whether it’s the President’s caustic dismissal of “shithole” countries or Boris’s description of women in burkas looking like letter­boxes. It’s precisely this — the mindset that sees fit to articulate popular prejudices, allied with their seemingly thinly principled approach to political ideals — that most worries the critics.

Won’t a post-Brexit Johnson government, concerned to make cause with whichever ally is willing, find Trump’s America a vital crutch? And doesn’t his populist, some would say cynical, opportunism portend an ugly turn for political discourse already coarsened in a Trumpian way by the rancour over Brexit?

Perhaps. But there’s an alternative reading. Both men have ridden more effectively than their rivals the new trend in Western politics: the primacy of identity and cultural characteristics in determining political identification. In doing so, they have both shown a remarkable capacity to cut across the traditional lines of partisa­n politics — Boris as mayor of London with its 60 per cent anti-Tory majority; Trump with his ability to appeal to traditional Democratic voters.

These new faultlines will drive politics for the next generation and politicians will need to find ways to navigate them. Trump and Boris have already demonstrated they can do so. Responding to and channelling the populist pressures in their different ways, Trump and Boris may end up proving more adept at managing the political turbulence than their critics.

The alternative to populism isn’t necessarily the ordered calm of political consensus. It may be something much worse.

The Times