Often spoken of in the same breath, Boris Johnson and Donald Trump are not in fact all that similar. Both men inspire devotion among their followers. Both men are egotists, born privileged in New York. Both have weaknesses when it comes to the opposite sex.
But Johnson is more of an introvert than Trump and less interested in money. Boris is a voracious reader who writes his own books. Donald might, like the satirical horror novelist Garth Marenghi, be one of the few people who has written more books than he’s read.
Still, it is curious how, since the rabble-rousing year of 2016, the lives of Johnson and Trump have overlapped. This week, we see Donald Trump about to be indicted in New York over a complicated allegation that he falsified his business records to cover up secretive payments to an adult entertainer. We also see Boris Johnson hauled up before the privileges committee, his political career on the line, over whether he ‘recklessly’ misled parliament in his failure to adhere to social-distance guidelines.
The story is driven by a primal desire to kill off a big beast who once dared to upend the political world
Boris’s tale is like a twee PG-13 English adaptation of Trump’s X-rated gangster flick.
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