First Americans got rid of Trump in 2020. Then Australians got rid of Scott Morrison in May. Last week, the Tories rid themselves of Boris Johnson, even if he’s lingering like a particularly malignant odour left by Larry the Cat at No.10. Time to cheer the return of normality or, at least, the departure of lying populism?
The gruesome threesome have commonly been lumped together — by some of us with carefully constructed caveats about key differences, by others with much less subtlety. But the differences and similarities between them constitute myriad combinations.
All three routinely lied as a core function of their personal political style, but Trump was an extraordinary outli(a)r, lying virtually every time he opened his mouth. Trump and Johnson both came from television, whereas Morrison was from marketing. All three posed as opponents of elites while being elites themselves. Johnson and Morrison were never fully able to capture their own parties, at neither the parliamentary or membership level, and to an extent were hired to win elections, whereas Trump even now retains a tight grip on the Republican Party at both levels. Trump and Morrison were both defeated at elections at which their personal character was a key issue; the Tories struck Johnson down before that could happen in the UK.
But the removal of the three is by no means an end to the forces that produced them; if anything, they may have furnished a playbook for later, more successful efforts to come.
That applies regardless of whether Trump pursues, or succeeds in regaining, the presidency in 2024, which the autocratic-minded vulgarian may do not merely in spite of but because he may face criminal prosecution for his role in the January 6 insurrection, or for myriad other crimes.
The best-placed Republican after Trump — who beats Trump in some Republican polling — is Florida governor Ron DeSantis. A taste of DeSantis: gun control is communism, he has a long history of racism and associating with racists, he banned attempts to mandate masks, he’s passed laws outlawing abortion in all circumstances after 15 weeks, banned discussion of diversity and sex education, wants to gerrymander the state to disenfranchise Black voters, campaigns against “critical race theory”, refuses to say if Biden was properly elected, and tried to claim Nazis spewing anti-Semitic rhetoric were Democrats trying to smear him. Sound familiar?
Problem is, DeSantis is no crass property developer turned reality TV figure — he is an academically distinguished Yale and Harvard law graduate and a decorated Iraq veteran. And he has the benefit of seeing what Trump did right and wrong. He’ll know to surround himself with better advisers than Trump did and be far more calculated in how he goes about undermining US democracy — and to realise the imperative of stacking courts as much as possible.
Both Trump and DeSantis would be backed by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, one of the world’s most malignant and anti-democratic companies, which in the form of Fox News was not merely a key source of support for Trump but, over decades, a generator of and platform for the kinds of extremist political views steeped in white grievance that Trump exploited so effectively.
This echo chamber of proto-fascism remains intact in the US, now portraying itself as a resistance voice, the Combat of the beleaguered forces fighting liberalism. And it remains intact in the UK and Australia too. Despite arguments that it is losing its power, News Corp remains the most dominant media company here and one that, crucially, operates as the in-house network of the Coalition, even if the deranged rantings of many within it carry little weight among ordinary Australians.
With that propaganda infrastructure in place, any favoured right-wing populist starts with an automatic advantage both over their internal party rivals and progressive political opponents, even if it’s not sufficient to guarantee victory.
Tomorrow: how the political and economic stars may yet align for more Trumps, Johnsons and Morrisons.
