Boris Johnson Tumbles Like Trump, Difference Being Nobody’s Rioting At 10 Downing Street

The western world has been through some real upsets in governance the past few years. We have lived to see Boris Johnson follow Donald Trump out of office and into the history books — although we’re far from done with Trump yet. Both were flamboyant buffoons with goofy hairdos, creatures of the tabloids. Both were inept and ran scandal-ridden administrations, although “inept” as applied to Johnson and to Trump are two different things. Johnson is smart.

But the difference here and it is a big one, is that Johnson is walking out the door quietly. He may have blamed everything on the members of his party while going through the door, but at least he left and is not staging a sit-in at Buckingham Palace nor sending armed goons through the streets of London to break down the doors and windows of Parliament.

Boris Johnson is out because the Conservative party in Britain still has standards. They reached a breaking point with him. The GOP here in this country hasn’t found that point, because they have no standards left. Johnathan V. Last, the Bulwark.

Despite his corruption and populism and intransigence . . .

(1) Boris Johnson did not summon an armed mob to Downing Street and then instruct them to march to Parliament and “fight” for their country in an attempt to change the minds of Conservative MPs.

(2) Johnson did not go around the country demanding that other British politicians commit crimes on his behalf, as Trump did when he requested that Georgia election officials “find” enough votes for him to win the state.

(3) However popular Johnson was with the Conservative party’s base, at the end of the day it was the Conservative party elites who deposed him.

This all seems significant. Especially #3.

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I remember talking with a close friend about Donald Trump in late 2016. My friend told me that he couldn’t believe that he was going to vote for Trump, but that he had to, because Trump would arrive in Washington with thousands of Republicans and these people would constrain and change him.

I suggested that it seemed equally possible that the reverse would happen: That the good and noble Republicans would be transformed by Trump into something quite dangerous.

Seems fair to say that I was correct.

Yet however compromised the Conservative party was by Boris Johnson, at least members of his government were eventually able to resign en masse. At least there was a movement from within the party elites robust enough to push him out of power. At least the Conservative party retained enough independence from the man to finally act in defense of itself.

That is the key right there. The Conservatives retained enough distance, enough independence from Johnson as a party, to where they were able to act in their own behalf for their own self-preservation. We have yet to reach that moment with the GOP — although I thought we might be there on January 6 when McCarthy and McConnell were making the right noises. Turns out that’s all it was, was noisemaking, no action.

Johnson was finished off by scandals that went virtually unnoticed when Trump did them. Johnson allegedly breached COVID-19 lockdown rules. Didn’t Jared and ivanka do that very thing and flaunt it? Johnson spent a lot of money on a luxury renovation of his residence. That pales with how much Trump charged the Secret Service to stay at his hotels. As to Johnson appointing a minister who had been accused of sexual misconduct, my God, it’s laughing time. The GOP doesn’t care about such things, whether it is “grab ’em by the pussy” or domestic violence, or rape. You name it. Trump himself was credibly accused of numerous rapes.

But in this country it all rolls off Trump. And you know why he’s Teflon? Because the Republican party itself is utterly corrupt. If they had done what the Brits did and resign en masse, we would never have gone through two impeachments let alone the insurrection.

The difference between Trump and Johnson, between the U.S. and the UK, is the fact that the Conservatives abroad are still conservatives. They’re still a party. They still stand for something. The GOP in this county is utterly and I fear irretrievably lost. And if they don’t find their moral compass soon and fix it, then I fear for democracy, plain and simple.