Today is Thursday, July 7, 2022. This country’s repugnicans should follow their British counterparts in their toppling of a populist leader, Boris Johnson, who was generally compared to our Orange-haired fascist as he announced his resignation from the ruling Conservative Party after serving as Prime Minister for three years. Today Boris Johnson delivered a resignation speech as he lost the support of his own conservative majority. In an intriguing online analysis by Stephen Collinson for CNN entitled “Why Johnson fell but Trump remains his party’s de facto leader – for now,” we see how these two leaders are compared and contrasted by Collinson.

As opposed to our Republicans, Britain’s Conservatives just did what this country’s repugnicans never dared to do: “They toppled a wrecking-ball, right-wing populist leader who reeled from one self-created scandal to another and who was accused of flagrantly breaking the law, abusing power, and building his political career on an edifice of lies.” Does this sound like someone here in the United States who was a former president, maybe?

After weeks of clinging desperately to office, Johnson finally resigned as the ruling Conservative Party’s leader today after a rebellion by his own lawmakers. Now the party will elect a new leader, who, according to the customs of Britain’s parliamentary system, will become prime minister.

Unlike Johnson’s own party, America’s Republican Party never turned on Donald Trump in the same way – despite his far more ruinous offenses against democracy than Johnson’s. It’s not that Republicans didn’t have their chance, as the ex-president was impeached twice, but most GOP senators chose not to voter to convict him of high crimes and misdemeanors last year – a step that could have barred him from future federal office.

Contrasting the two leaders are differences in personal styles, electoral politics, and the idiosyncrasies in the political systems of the two nations.

Johnson was long seen as a vote-winning machine. He was the talismanic figure who won a referendum in 2016 that led to Britain’s exit from the European Union. Then, in a general election in late 2019, he delivered an extraordinary victory for the Conservatives – capturing postindustrial working-class heartlands in England and Wales that had long been the left-wing Labour Party’s power base.

But Johnson was the author of his own demise. His appeal suffered ruptures over revelations that he had attended parties in 10 Downing Street after ordering his country into COVID-19 lockdowns. Johnson’s orchestration of the Brexit shocker – after a campaign lambasting the European establishment and inciting a working-class revolt – was in retrospect seen as an early warning sign of Dumpf’s even more stunning victory when he won the presidency on a similar tide of populism a few months later.

Both Dumpf and Johnson have been viewed as two peas in a pod – and not just because of their strong sense of victimhood and refusal to take responsibility for their transgressions on the way out of office. “Both have turbulent romantic histories, both rose to power on the force of untamed personalities and have distant acquaintances with the truth.” Both often appeared to prioritize their own goals and craving to satisfy massive political egos over the national interest. And both desperately tried to cling to power – Dumpf after losing an election fair and square and Johnson as his party deserted him – long after it was obvious they were on the way out.

Where the two politicians are actually disparate is their personal styles, where Johnson comes across as hardly being antiestablishment as his golden-haired rule breaker on this side of the Atlantic, since Johnson emerged through Britain’s pipeline to power – from exclusive private school Eton and Balliol College at Oxford University. He is exceedingly well read and a talented writer, unlike Dumpf who needs a “ghost writer” to write his soporific books; he has probably not read a book since college. Johnson has benefited from the sense of entitlement his upbringing has instilled in him.

In contrast, Dumpf has never moved in high society or felt comfortable in the club the way Johnson has. The key to his bond with voters – even though it’s all a charade – who felt themselves left out of the American dream was that he understood what it was to be spurned by elites – in his case by Manhattan old money that saw him as vulgar.

Like the chaos experienced in this country under the turbulent leadership of Dumpf, Britain faced the same situation, with high inflation, the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, and rising industrial unrest, as Johnson showed his contempt for the rule of law. This same sense of a nation spinning out of control was felt here during Dumpf’s chaotic leadership during the pandemic in summer 2020 and as he tried to steal power in late 2020 and early 2021, triggering the U.S. Capitol insurrection.

The simple reason why Dumpf survived and Johnson didn’t lies in the extraordinary power of the ex-president over rank-and-file republican voters and the fact that a presidential candidate’s first job is to lock in support from primary voters. Johnson lost much of his party, while the Orange Menace has yet to experience a similar revolt from his party – but it could happen within time.

Most GOP lawmakers understand they must effectively support, enable, and shield their Golden Idol if they want a future political career because of his magnetic hold over the Republican base. Despite the scary revelations emerging from the House select committee’s investigation into Dumpf’s coup attempt in 2021, Dumpf remains the favorite for the 2024 Republican nomination. As of now, Dumpf is still an electoral asset. On the other hand, British Troy MPs, however, feared they would lose their seats if they kept in power.

The difference in British politics here is that prime ministers are accountable to parliament and are not directly elected by voters in the way that presidents are every four years. Johnson did try to insist today that he had a mandate from the British people and condemned the “herd” of conservative lawmakers who finally ended his career. But his complaint didn’t hold up because of the customs behind England’s parliamentary system.

Here the situation of Johnson’s fall from power could be construed as an early warning sign for Dumpf. Even though there are many Republican voters who will never desert the ex-president, there are some who have come to believe that another America First-style candidate with more discipline and less personal drama may be more likely to beat the Democratic opponent in 2024. This is why the political stock of fascistic Ron DeSantis has been rising fast – though it’s unclear whether the Florida governor would risk taking on Dumpf in a primary. Who would want this bigoted, antiwoman, anti-LGBTQ+ governor be installed as president in 2024, I wonder? I do contend that he’s smarter and more articulate than the former president.

It could not have been pleasant for the occupant of Mar-A-Largo to watch the downfall of a truth-challenged, populist rule breaker like himself across the Atlantic. Maybe he does see a similar fate for himself in the twilight of his life. Oh, we could only wish.

Let’s hope Dumpf will suffer the same fate as his tousled-haired British counterpart.

It’s getting late here. There’s so much to write about, but I’m getting woozy from our long day, which began very early for something I cannot report on for fear of trampling one’s right to privacy.

I can say that Elliot and I did drive to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, for brunch at Juliette, then drove to Bleecker Street, where I brought in a shopping bag of 20 books that I was hoping to sell to the manager at Codex Books. I succeeded in selling a few books, which I didn’t count. I got $13 for them. A few I left behind for the $1 shelves outside. I took back at least five books.

We then drove home where we relaxed, though I went out to the gym and ran some errands, which took me first to Walgreen’s to wait on a long line of impatient customers in order to get my prescription. One older, tattooed woman was speaking loudly to another woman in back of me (she had an old black dog walking down the aisle with his leash under him); an 82-year-old man was shouting to his doctor over the phone, complaining that his pill bottle indicated there was 1 refill left, but that the pharmacy was claiming there were no refills left, which was exactly my situation with a certain medication. I also had to call my doctor to get my prescription refilled before our trip next week to England. What a waste of time, I thought! One refill was written on the pill bottle and I noted this to the cashier; she couldn’t care less since her records indicated there were no refills left. How coincidental! This exasperated man said he couldn’t go home and return to the pharmacy, so he was going to wait in the store for the issue to be resolved, however long that would take.

So that was my exciting day.

Have a nice Friday.

Stay safe and be well.