Have Your Say Now - Hit these links:

Voice Comment or on Twitter

Join in on any of the topics discussed on this episode or indeed topics that you would like discussed in future episodes.  

In this episode I look at the leaders of the two so called Super-Powers and the men at the top.  

This is a tale of two cynics: Donald Trump and Boris Johnson. They’re equally volatile and dangerous, but they afflict their two nations differently.  Trump is a president who says a hurricane is threatening Alabama when, actually, it isn't; who believes wind turbines cause cancer; who purges references to climate change in government reports; and on, and on.  

He doesn’t read, and he likes to be surrounded by ignoramuses. Few of his lieutenants are appointed for their expertise. Dr. Ben Carson, a former neurosurgeon, knows nothing about housing policy; Betsy DeVos is the Education secretary who visited the nation’s largest school district and didn't stop at a single public school.  

And few of Trump’s notions are original:  They are the fancies of his evangelical-oligarchic-Fox News alliance, who believe that climate change is either nonexistent or part of the cosmic order of things, that America is “infested” by nonwhites, that open-carry gun laws save lives, and so on. Trump stands out as a weirdo.  His contempt for knowledge would not fly at the top of any serious business, yet he has come from a business background. His economic advisers are outliers. 

And his reversals cause whiplash.  When Trump named Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson as secretary of State, for instance, he commended him for his “tenacity, broad experience and deep understanding of geopolitics.” When he fired Tillerson after a year in office, he tweeted that Tillerson was “dumb as a rock” and “lazy as hell.”  

Boris Johnson, is also given to wild spins with a distinct lack of respect for what is true.  Johnson and most of his predecessors learned the arts of debate, slapdash generalization and high-level schmoozing at Oxford.  Johnson even knows how to go lowbrow, having recently boasted: “The madder Hulk gets, the stronger Hulk gets.”  

He undoubtedly is overseeing a political strategy similar to Donald Trump, as 22 of his own party lost the whip after voting to stop a no-deal Brexit, his response was “Trumpian” in terms of the type of language being used and the overall tone of debate.  At divisive Downing Street, briefings he uses words like 'collaborator' and riles up party activists in a way that all belong to a strategy that corresponds more to Trump than to the long tradition of the Conservatives particularly Winston Churchill, whom he often compares himself to.  

It is easy to liken Johnson and Trump, “They are very different personalities but in terms of political strategy, what we see from No 10 is divisive and exercising the base and that is very similar to Donald Trump.  Today, both countries are deeply riven socially — between winners and losers of globalization, between rural and urban voters, and between generations. 

These divisions also cut through their main political parties.  In this polarized environment, many British and American politicians have concluded that they must ride the populist tiger rather than search for votes in a barren center ground. Compromise offers few rewards now, and moderates seem to have left the field.  Are we the electorate indeed reaping what we have sown by allowing politics to become like this because of our choices?  Also, the lack of credible alternatives is frightening in a time when both nations need a coherent opposition both are frighteningly unavailable.