The nightmare prospect of a second-term and disgraced President Donald Trump coinciding with a second-term and disgraced Prime Minister Boris Johnson is beginning to hove into view. We know that the latter is an admirer of the former (see https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/19/boris-johnson-says-trump-back-in-white-house-is-what-the-world-needs). He could also be his son, just about; viz their birth dates, Trump’s known promiscuity and the fact that Johnson was born in New York. No, of course not; but if so then Boris has clearly inherited the Donald’s dishonesty, greed, narcissism and amoralism, as well as his philandering tendencies. The main difference between them is Eton, which polished Johnson’s flaws, allowing them to slip down British gullets more smoothly. The American equivalent in Trump’s case was his apprenticeship in the world of real estate.

Trump’s place as the Republican candidate in November’s Presidential race has been pretty well assured – we are told – by his recent victory in the New Hampshire primary. Over on this (British) side of the pond, Johnson needs to get back into politics before he can become a Prime Ministerial candidate; but the turmoil at the top of the Conservative Party just now makes that a real possibility. There are a couple of bye-elections coming up where he could be selected by his local admirers to stand. I’ll be surprised if that happens; but not very much.

Trump and Johnson are both of course products or beneficiaries of the ‘populist’ tendency in present-day politics, which now seems to be overwhelming the entire world. – ‘Populist’ is put in scare quotes here, because there is little evidence that a majority of ‘the people’ support the populists’ policies on – say – immigration, as opposed to their hazier and more negative rhetoric. In this connexion, I have been tremendously heartened by Keir Starmer’s new stand on the very negative but also vague ‘culture wars’ issue, which the Tories have been exploiting as a prospective vote winner over the last few months (see https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/keir-starmer-rishi-sunak-general-election-woke-b2482628.html). Hopefully the US Republicans can do the same: meet the anti-wokeists on their own turf, to show how treacherous it is.

Another tack might be to draw parallels between proto-fascist movements abroad on the one side, and the British and American Right on the other; and to highlight the influence the former are exerting – or at least trying to exert – on the latter. The place to start is probably Russia’s subvert cyber war against America and the EU, which in Britain’s case almost certainly influenced the narrow Brexit referendum vote of 2016. (Putin’s motivation for this is explored in Timothy Snyder’s The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe and America, 2018: highly recommended.) If enough Americans and Brits come to realise how much in hoc their domestic right-wing parties have become to what Snyder boldly characterises as Russian ‘fascism’, they might find another reason to steer clear of them – simple patriotism. That usually works with these folks.