Eighteen months ago, I had the pleasure of telling Lee Cain, Boris Johnson’s now departed head of communications, about the nickname that the American president had come up with for Britain’s new Prime Minister: ‘Britain Trump’.
My amusement was matched by the look of horror on Cain’s face. This was very much not the label that Number 10 wanted for their man in 2019, and it’s even less so in 2021. The coincidence that both men rose after uprisings at the polls in 2016 is just that, they argue – a coincidence.
The ‘Johnson isn’t Trump’ case is well made by James Forsyth in the Times, and it’s right, as far as it goes. Donald Trump is one of a kind. But this doesn’t quite get Johnson, or the Tories, off the hook.
Yes, it’s true that you have to deal with the US president that you have.
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