by bbc.com — Anthony Zurcher — What’s an American to make of Boris Johnson?
Not the person-on-the-street American, who may look at a photograph of the new British conservative leader and think they’re being asked to identify an aging 1970s glam rocker. I’m talking about the US media analysts and commentators who get paid to think about politics and, occasionally, cast their eyes across the oceans to see what the rest of the world is up to. At this point in US history, it’s hard for Americans to view any major political event outside the context of the rise and rule of Donald Trump – the crashing cacophony that drowns out all other thought. Emmanuel Macron is elected president of France? A rebuke of Trumpism! The Liberal/National right-leaning coalition prevails in Australia? Trumpism triumphs! Such is the case with the Mr Johnson. The comparisons between the two Anglophone leaders have come fast and furious – some facile and others more nuanced. Even Mr Trump himself got in on the game, in a speech in Washington on Tuesday afternoon. “He’s tough and he’s smart,” Mr Trump said of Mr Johnson. “They call him ‘Britain Trump’, and it’s people saying that’s a good thing. They like me over there. That’s what they wanted. That’s what they need.”
There are plenty of other opinions, of course – that Mr Johnson is either the second coming of Donald Trump in a good way or in a bad way; a British original or a knock-off nationalist. “The front-runner to become Britain’s next prime minister is a portly white man with unkempt blond hair, an adoring base of supporters, disdain for Europe, a dodgy private life and a loose relationship with truth and principle,” the New York Times editorial board wrote last month. “There are also differences between Boris Johnson and Donald Trump, but the similarities have been much noted in some European circles, with no small misgivings.” The hair is where the comparisons always start – although the Associated Press’s Gregory Katz and Natasha Livingstone note that while both pay careful attention to their trademark coifs, they do so in differing ways. “President Donald Trump’s hair is very carefully styled before he appears in public, while Johnson’s precisely the opposite,” they write (in fact, Johnson is known to ruffle his hair before he goes on camera). “From the start of his political career Johnson has sported what could only be called the ‘slept-on’ look, declining to style his locks in any way so they have a natural, spontaneous, even unpredictable quality.”
Beyond appearances, American observers note that both Mr Trump and Mr Johnson were born in New York City, and both have elite college pedigrees – the former at the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania and the latter at Oxford. The more discerning will note that Mr Johnson qualified through an academic scholarship, while Mr Trump admission reportedly required some familial arm-twisting. Mr Johnson also occasionally betrays his ivory tower pedigree with allusions to classical history or the arts, while Mr Trump… does not. Both men also have taken unusual paths to power – the American through his real estate and reality television celebrity, and the Brit by being a sharp-tongued journalist. “Johnson’s rise is akin to Trump’s: People in the political class don’t like, or even trust, him,” writes Kyle Smith of the conservative National Review. “Yet he found a path around them.”
