For years Donald Trump and Boris Johnson have fled from the truth.
For years they have twisted the rules, broken their word and trampled over decency. This week reality finally caught up with them.
For perhaps the first time they are being held accountable.
In the US, the former President was in court to face charges of illegally hoarding classified documents.
In Britain, the former Prime Minister’s character was eviscerated by the Privileges Committee.
It concluded he deliberately misled MPs, breached confidences and was complicit in a campaign of intimidation against those who sought to hold him to account.
They are both defiant. Neither has shown any remorse or contrition.
The narcissists see themselves as giants surrounded by pygmies unable to recognise their greatness.
Johnson’s response to the committee borrows so heavily from the Trump playbook the former President should sue for plagiarism.
He spoke of a “witch-hunt”, called the committee a “kangaroo court” and said its findings were a “lie”. It was a “bad day for democracy”.
Then came the most Trumpian line of all: “It is for the people of this country to decide who sits in Parliament, not Harriet Harman.”
This is how all populists present themselves: as the tribunes of the people fighting the Establishment.
Never mind that Johnson (Eton and Oxford) and Trump (son of a billionaire) were born into privilege, they want you to believe they are outsiders who share your distrust of Washington, DC and Westminster.
Before entering No10, Johnson’s CV was pockmarked with dishonesty and double standards, whether being twice sacked for lying or his multiple affairs. Trump was accused of dodgy business deals, paying off former lovers and a serial addiction to lying. Yet both came to power promising to clean up politics.
Trump vowed to “drain the swamp”, while Johnson said in Downing Street in 2019 he would “restore trust in our democracy”.
They understand the dark arts of salesmanship. Trump’s crude, but effective, messaging, “build the wall” and “lock her [Hillary Clinton] up”, were echoed by Johnson’s “take back control” and “get Brexit done”.
Neither is averse to fighting dirty. Trump gives his opponents mocking nicknames such as Crooked Hillary.
Johnson is also a brawler who, especially when cornered, resorts to insults. He frequently claimed Keir Starmer (or Captain Hindsight) wanted to keep the country in lockdown, when there was no evidence to support this allegation.
Having used lies to gain power it was hardly a surprise they continued to lie once in office.
The charge sheet against Johnson includes his Partygate lies, claims of 40 new hospitals, misleading the Queen and promising there would be no border in the Irish Sea.
There is also the greed. In Johnson’s case it was getting Tory donors to fund his holidays and the decoration of his Downing Street flat.
Trump and Johnson never set out to drain the swamp. They wanted to make it so toxic that good people are driven away from politics, leaving a morass where cheats and charlatans can thrive. They sought to drag everyone down to their level, sowing such disillusionment about politics that people think everyone involved is so tainted you might as well back the charismatic conman.
There was no mission to transform their country, just a series of transactions to bolster their power.
Gongs were used to buy people’s loyalty. Allies become so beholden to their patron – and addicted to the power they could wield – they lose all sense of right and wrong.
Behaviour they would rush to condemn in any other politician they excuse, dismiss and deny.
This is why so many Republicans still defend Trump after his indictment and being found guilty in a civil case of sexual assault. It is why Johnson’s allies seek to rubbish the findings of the Privileges Committee.
They are the enablers who could help Trump win the next election and will try to engineer Johnson’s return to frontline politics.
Trump’s legacy is a Republican Party that swallowed his lies wholesale. Six in 10 Republican voters still think the election he lost was stolen.
Johnson’s allies have set up a party within a party, the Conservative Democratic Organisation, and have threatened Tory MPs with de-selection if they vote to sanction him.
Are these the last howls of two populist leaders who are losing popularity? Some claim Trump is terrified he’ll be convicted of illegally retaining classified documents.
“He’s scared sh**less,” John Kelly, his former chief of staff, said. “For the first time in his life, it looks like he’s being held accountable.”
Johnson has rarely looked so forlorn or friendless. Yet both politicians have an unnatural ability to rise from the dead however many times the last rites have been read on their political careers.
