Perhaps it’s just an undocumented feature of populism or one of those simple coincidences that life occasionally throws up but the similarities between Boris Johnson and Donald Trump continue to stack up.
Earlier this week, Donald Trump, the other crazy-haired blonde with more personality than principle, gave the first big policy speech of his pre-re-election campaign. He still hasn’t declared, of course, but this was as close as he’s yet come, presenting the agenda of the would-be 47th president at the American First Agenda Summit in Washington, DC.
The speech was relatively unusual for Trump, being largely scripted, but what was familiar was the rehearsal of the former president’s usual American carnage. In a 90-minute speech dominated by law and order, he spent a good portion of his time simply revisiting recent history with the broadest of brushes. He detailed recent horrific crimes – as though no politician couldn’t have done the same at any point in the past century – blaming the shootings, stabbings, and at least one gratuitous murder using a traffic cone on the Democrats. He went on to promise that a Trump administration would “be tough, be nasty, be mean if we have to”.
