The parallels between ‘Britain Trump’ and the real American thing are overstated
Remember when Donald Trump described Boris Johnson as “Britain Trump”? Quite apart from being ungrammatical, turns out it was inaccurate.
Mr Johnson, for all his faults, is no Trump.
Britain, for all its faults – and its virtues – is no America. (Some might say it would have served Britain well to emulate American productivity and other such things, but there you go.)
Anyway, nothing underlines the falsity of Mr Trump’s ennoblement of Mr Johnson (as “Britain Trump”) than recent events within Britain’s Conservative Party.
For, it has done what America’s Republican Party has failed to do.
Britain’s Tories have made a break of sorts with their toxic, unserious, norm-defying leader.
America’s Republicans have not. Or, mostly not. According to a new poll from the New York Times/Siena College, Mr Trump’s quest to consolidate his support within the Republican Party isn’t going so well. Apparently, nearly half the party’s primary voters want someone different to Republican nominee for president in 2024 and a significant number say they would not vote for him if he won the nomination.
That said, Britain’s Tories have been a great deal more decisive and thorough with Boris than America’s Republicans with The Donald. I’m not sure if this says something very profound about Britain, but it sure underlines the slowness with which it adopts other countries’ and cultures’ ways of being.
That can be infuriating most of the time, but in this moment, it may be a benediction.
