On 23rd of July, with Britain teetering on the cusp of a heatwave, Boris Johnson emerged triumphant from the Conservative Party leadership contest and became the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Barely ten minutes after the announcement US President Donald Trump, or perhaps an aide as it was 4.45am in D.C., tweeted his support for Johnson, saying, "He will be great!", apparently the only adjective in his arsenal.

Later that day Trump appeared on stage to address conservative high school students in Washington, and mentioned the news of Boris' appointment to cheers from the crowd.

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President Trump on Boris Johnson: "They call him 'Britain Trump,' and people are saying that's a good thing. They like me over there. That's what they wanted. That's what they need." pic.twitter.com/mh1zhMEU2U — The Hill (@thehill) July 23, 2019

"They're saying Britain Trump," he said. "They call him Britain Trump and people are saying that's a good thing." While the title's lack of grammatical sense has tickled plenty of people - British Trump, surely Donny? - there's less amusement to be found in the relish with which he spoke about his newly-anointed counterpart.

Admittedly Trump's name has been used in comparison to a number of leaders across Europe and beyond, from France's Marine Le Pen, to Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro. As such, saying someone is a certain country's Trump has become a catch-all way for saying they're a right-wing politician riding the wave of global populism.

Yet, there's something worryingly fitting about the new moniker for Boris, Trump the crude American cousin to his smug, bumbling English counterpart. Both are products of extreme privilege and yet portray themselves as men of the people. Using a hatred of political correctness and a smokescreen of amusing incompetence to disguise a hardline right-wing agenda, the stocky blonde men are all bluster and buffoonery.

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There's also the fact that no scandal seems able to sink either of them. Trump had his "grab them by the p**sy" tape, and the unrelenting Russia election hacking scandal; Johnson in turn has made remarks which arguably contributed to a British citizen's continued imprisonment in Iran, and had a domestic dispute in the final weeks of his leadership bid in which the police were called.

These, and endless other news cycle controversies, roll off both of their backs time and time again. Both have been accused of out-and-out racism multiple times. Just last week Trump told Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a group of female lawmakers of colour (otherwise known as 'the squad') to "go back" to their own countries. Johnson meanwhile wrote a column for the Daily Telegraph in 2018 that said Muslim women wearing burkas "look like letter boxes", and has previously referred to black people as "piccaninnies" and talked about their "watermelon smiles".

After Boris' rousing speech yesterday afternoon a "six point" plan of things he would address surfaced on Twitter. It was in fact made up of five items, and with little more than THE NHS and POLICE on it, it read more like a Christmas wish list than a plan.

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Johnson isn't at the point where he could, as Trump once said, "stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody" without losing voters. Not yet anyway. But he'll undoubtedly have been studying the politics of distraction that Trump has executed so well, knowing that news cycles will lap up his gaffes and, as a result, he can deploy them to divert attention from what he's really doing.

It happened yesterday, as Johnson stood on stage at the Tory leadership contest and vaguely promised the world on Brexit. One of the biggest moments reported on afterwards was his mortifying joke that he would add E for energise to his campaign of Deliver, Unite, Defeat. "DUDE!" he said to laughter from the party audience. "We are going to energise the country!"

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Everyone made a mistake by not taking Trump seriously until it was too late. By now we should know that Boris Johnson is no laughing matter.

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