Since resigning over Theresa May’s Brexit blueprint, which he rather inarticulately slammed as “BINO, or BRINO, or Brexit in Name Only,” Boris Johnson has been uncharacteristically demure, declining even to capitalize on an endorsement from Donald Trump. Perhaps that is because BoJo, as BuzzFeed News reports, has been occupied by a separate transatlantic dalliance with Steve Bannon. Although the pair have known each other for some time, they reportedly reached new depths of understanding during Trump’s trip to Britain. While Trump was resetting U.S.-U.K. relations to 1814, Bannon holed up in a five-star hotel in London’s upmarket Mayfair neighborhood, where he entertained a steam of Europe’s far-right leaders and extolled Johnson in a series of interviews, urging him to challenge May for leadership of the Conservative Party. At some point, a source told BuzzFeed, Bannon and Johnson were “in private contact,” presumably to discuss their shared interest in the deconstruction of the liberal-democratic order. “I’m sure they weren’t discussing the cricket scores,” the source said.

An alliance with Johnson seems a logical evolution for the former White House strategist. Ejected from the Trump orbit last summer after telling journalist Michael Wolff that Robert Mueller would “crack Don Jr. like an egg,” Bannon ultimately found a second home amid Europe’s burgeoning array of right-wing populists. Building relations with the likes of Nigel Farage, France’s Marine Le Pen, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, and others who share his distaste for so-called globalists, Bannon’s efforts were recently formalized with the establishment of his new foundation, The Movement. Though the name sounds like a nod to his fleeting Hollywood career, Bannon insists The Movement has more longevity—the organization, Bannon told the Daily Beast, will aim to unite disparate right-wing interests across Europe, with the intention of catalyzing a populist revolt, beginning with the European parliamentary elections in May. “I’d rather reign in hell than serve in heaven,” Bannon added of his ambitions, paraphrasing Paradise Lost.

Beneath the stirring veneer of John Milton quotes, The Movement faces a fundamental problem. According to Politico, some of Europe’s bona fide nationalists are refusing to be roped in as apostles. “Bannon is American and has no place in a European political party,” Jérôme Rivière, a member of Le Pen’s National Rally Party, told the site. “We reject any supra-national entity and are not participating in the creation of anything with Bannon.” A Eurosceptic member of the European parliament raised another obstacle: “I’m told that in the U.S. Bannon has irritated Trump and Trump tends to dislike people who collaborate with him.” A budding friendship with Johnson—whose prime-ministerial ambitions are an open secret—is therefore something of a coup for Bannon, offering unrivaled access to Europe’s corridors of power.

The affinity between BoJo and The Donald is relatively easy to grasp. Though they certainly have their points of divergence—it’s impossible, for instance, to imagine Trump displaying the same schoolboy vigor that prompted Johnson to flatten a 10-year-old during a casual game of rugby in Japan—they effectively market a similar brand of publicity-fueled populism. The synergy between Bannon and Johnson is harder to fathom: whereas Bannon fancies himself a sort of Leninist with an eye to the grand sweep of history, Johnson is a creature of the 24-hour news cycle. If Bannon is frank about his aspirations, Johnson is flippant. After pushing to leave the E.U. (and failing to secure David Cameron’s vacant role), he suggested a bridge be built to connect the U.K. and France. “For those who really want to make Britain less insular, the answer is not to submit forever to the E.U. legal order,” he said, “but to think about how we can undo the physical separation that took place at the end of the Ice Age.”