While 50 percent of voters say they now prefer to remain in the EU, the biggest pro-EU party — the Liberal Democrats — is polling at just 12 percent.

The fracturing is severe enough that Tony Blair and John Major — two former prime ministers from opposing parties — urged Britons to ditch the parties they used to lead.

While many Western democracies are showing signs of stress, Britain’s political parties can’t take all the blame. Britons are as divided as their political class.

Corbyn offers a heavy dose of socialism and silence on Brexit as his solution. Johnson’s solution has been to merge politics and entertainment.

Like Cher or Madonna, the prime minister is known universally by one name: Boris, even to his hecklers and opponents. He is funny and endearing in the eyes of tens of millions, which is different from the cultish loyalty and train-wreck compulsive viewing that Trump inspires. Johnson’s political backflips are legendary but tolerated, because they aren’t delivered by a packaged politician.

It will make great viewing in a future season of The Crown, but Johnson is not the first showman to run a country. Silvio Berlusconi headed Italy multiple times and Trump is currently in the White House.

While Johnson shares their penchant for insults, and their slippery relationship with the truth, he differs from Trump and Berlusconi in three key ways.

First, his lack of vanity: expressed by his ability to laugh at himself and his slapstick appearance. Second, Johnson understands how the government works. Third, he’s the only Western politician who has managed to neuter the far-right. Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party has been a campaign flop: down to 3 percent in polls, from a June high of 23 percent.

From his globetrotting childhood to his elite education and high-profile journalism career, and later as London‘s mayor and Britain’s chief diplomat, Johnson has more than mingled with Britain’s establishment: Johnson is the establishment.

Those attributes, and the political necessities brought about by Brexit, are set to create Boris’ biggest stage next week.