Whatever you may think of Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and Vladimir Putin – and if you’re reading this blog I guess it isn’t very much – you must be struck by the way the personalities of all three of them seem to reflect the present-day characteristics, or widely perceived characteristics, of their respective countries. Trump is a crooked capitalist who headed a crooked capitalist USA; Johnson a representative of the faux-aristocratic public school-educated class that the Brits (or at least the English) are supposed to have subjected themselves to for decades; and Putin, with his KGB background, could be said to personify the cruel autocracy that has been a feature of Russian life from Tsarist right through to Soviet times. Who could be more quintessentially American, or British, or Russian than these three?
Of course two of them are gone now, for the time being at least; and the third is possibly on his way out, thanks to Ukraine and Wagner – although I wouldn’t bet on it. Whether their successors will be quite so starkly representative of their nations remains to be seen. Rishi Sunak – public school, ex-empire, and a wealthy financier – reflects a slightly different, but still characteristic, side of modern Britain. In all these cases, our leaders mirror our dominant (but not necessarily typical) national characteristics in a quite remarkable way; far more than Wilson, say, or Thatcher, or Major ever did; or Khrushchev and the Bushes, for that matter.
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Grateful thanks to those who sent me good wishes during my spell in hospital. I’m out now, and back in Sweden; to whose health service I’m about to entrust my elderly body tomorrow. (I’m afraid – and I’m reluctant to write this, in view of my principled and I think patriotic support for our NHS – that my English hospital made a bit of a mess of me.)
Porter’s Pensées 
There are, however, some plus points to be made about those three. Obviously not their personalities, although I think Putin is by far the most stable personality of the three.
All three were elected by an electorate which was fed up with “more of the same”. All three are entirely outside the bog standard box which was presented when they were elected.
Trump was undoubtedly preferable to Killary, and didn’t start a war. He wasn’t controlled by the Neocons as Killary was, and promised to “drain the swamp”…an impossible task anyway.
Johnson won because, unlike all the others who were actually trying to overturn the outcome of the biggest democratic exercise in British history, he promised to “get Brexit done”…and did.
On that point, Corbyn was stabbed in the back by Starmer who persuaded him to reverse his previous stance of rejecting the Referendum result. At the previous election Corbyn almost won by confirming his respect for the result.
Then Corbyn is labelled anti-semitic because he disagrees with Israel’s policy on Palestine…and thrown out of the Labour party! Disgraceful…but I digress…
Putin won an election (his first one) because the Russian people were tired of being kicked around by the American Empire and being robbed. The election was, apparently, free and fair…
With regard to Putin’s personality, I think we’ve just had a glimpse of a possible alternative to him…in Prigozhin. Having someone like him in charge of the Russian nuclear arsenal is terrifying, especially with Biden as US President.
And yes, the NHS is collapsing; no amount of “patriotic support” can fix it. It needs entirely re-thinking. It doesn’t need “privatising” because it already is; the GPs should be employed by the NHs…not contracted to it.
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Dear Bernard, Your sign off is rather sad….I do hope it is not entirely true…..but I can see how it might be, judging by what we hear of events in the NHS – notwithstanding the universal disgruntlement over the way that the Govt has handled this year’s events. I hope that you will emerge from the Swedish system with renewed vigour. John E
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