Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.
“I am an innocent man,” proclaimed former United States President Donald Trump after his attorneys told him he faced a 37-count felony indictment for allegedly retaining and mishandling hundreds of top secret and classified documents since leaving the White House — including some about U.S. nuclear secrets and military plans.
And just a few hours later, as Americans were left mulling the first ever federal criminal prosecution against a former U.S. president, there was another political explosion, albeit lesser in scale, on this side of “the pond,” with “Britain’s Trump” announcing his departure from frontline politics — at least for the time being.
But the circumstances aren’t exactly comparable.
For one, if found guilty, the Trump indictment could see the former president jailed for decades, whereas Johnson risks only reputational damage and the possible deprivation of privileged access to the Palace of Westminster.
Still, much like his political twin in Mar-a-Lago, Johnson seethed over the unfairness of it all, arguing he was the victim of a witch hunt by the House of Commons Committee of Privileges over pandemic partying and his alleged misleading of parliament. “Their purpose from the beginning has been to find me guilty, regardless of the facts. This is the very definition of a kangaroo court,” he fumed in the shock announcement that he was quitting as a lawmaker.
Over the years, the populist pair have often mirrored one another — in their solipsism, grievance-filled rhetoric and promises to make their countries great again, as well as in bluff and bluster. They are also both masters of revisionism. Trump may be more hyperbolic than Johnson, and less literary, but they both claim victimhood, blaming hate-filled liberal elites, the deep state — and in Britain’s case, the supposed “blob” — for their all too often self-authored troubles, and for reality creeping in to upset their fantasies.
For Trump, the enemies of the state — his critics — are Marxists, communists, “environmental extremists,” Rinos (Republicans in Name Only), “open border fanatics” and “radical left Democrats.” Meanwhile, for Johnson, the witch hunt is conducted by the Labour party, Liberal Democrats, Scottish Nationalists, civil servants and Conservatives in name only, who are all part of a wider plot to reverse Brexit.
The pair has never looked more like norm-shattering and truth-bending twins than last week, a transatlantic Tweedledum and Tweedledee, with both Britain and America crashing through the looking glass into a fantastical world of make-believe and reverse logic once more.
But there’s another major difference between the two as well: Trump still retains solid support among Republican voters and is the leading candidate for the presidential nomination of the Republican Party — whereas the same cannot be said for Johnson.
Trump has captured his party, and his political comeback is in full swing — though deeply imperiled by legal woes — yet Johnson is more of a Mini-Me than a Tweedledee. He is deeply unpopular across the country, even among party-switching Brexit voters who once adored him, and a comeback is truly hard to envision — although few political observers and allies think he’s ready to actually give up.
“I’ve absolutely no doubt Johnson’s resignation is about setting the stage for yet another run at the Tory leadership in the mid-to-late 2020s. God help us,” reckoned Matthew Godwin, an academic and the co-author of “National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy.”
Godwin views Johnson’s decision to jump before he was pushed by the privileges committee as a calculated move, “with one eye on his future after a likely Conservative defeat in 2024.” “Nor would I be surprised — at all — if he also has one eye on setting up a new populist movement” that would target “a corrupt Westminster, a broken duopoly, and a ruling class that’s out-of-touch,” he added.
Never one to look a possible gift horse in the mouth, former Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage is certainly circling to see how he can benefit, already outlining a plan for a new alliance with Johnson to supposedly defend Brexit. “Would there be a possibility of a new coming together on the centre-right?” he said on GB News. “I have discussed it with people very close to him and around him,” he added.
But while “Boris Johnson’s road with the Conservative Party is coming to an end,” according to Farage, Johnson’s remaining fervent allies in the party say it isn’t — there’s still hope of a comeback. Conservative Jacob Rees-Mogg, knighted in Johnson’s resignation honors, said that “at some indeterminate date in the future,” Johnson could come back “on his charger to save the nation.” And the former prime minister does indeed still have fans among the Tory faithful, with a Savanta poll last month suggesting 64 percent still think favorably of him.
Still, while many Conservative lawmakers seem to share the sentiments of Tim Loughton, a Tory MP and former minister who would like Johnson and his “mob” to “shut up and go away,” there seems a slim chance that he will actually slink off. Even in his resignation letter Johnson warned he will stay away from parliament “at least for now.” Plus, he will no doubt also be looking to channel his hero Winston Churchill, who overcame the wilderness years in the 1930s to win a postwar election after a crushing defeat by Labour in 1945.
And yet, it’s hard to see how Johnson can be anything more than a political distraction — an Old Pretender waiting for the call, conspiring with fellow Conservative mavericks, flirting with other populists to form a grand alliance that has little prospect of succeeding in Britain’s first-past-the-post voting system.