"Following a vote to leave the EU the former Mayor of London was called 'scum' and 'racist scum' by crowds waiting outside his home..."

"Wearing a blue suit and red tie [Boris] Johnson, a leading Leave campaigner, was forced to move swiftly as a large group of people chanted and screamed at him following the vote."

Johnson said nothing the dozens of journalists waiting outside his London home when he finally left. He was flanked by several police officers who escorted him to a waiting car, while one member of the public was heard to shout 'twat'....

A crowd of roughly forty cyclists and bystanders blocked a junction, taunting him with "where are you going Boris?".

One man yelled: "The pound is down, what do you say about that? Is it going to be all right, Boris? Is the UK going to be all right, Boris? Are we going to be all right, mate? Come on, man up."

Here's a picture of Boris Johnson, whose resemblance to Donald Trump is very weird.



He may be the next British Prime Minister (and David Cameron just announced, after the Brexit vote, that he's stepping down). And Johnson has been compared to Donald Trump. Here's former Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg saying: "Perhaps Boris has looked across the Atlantic at the Republican presidential front-runner and decided that with enough bluster and bravado he can get away with ignoring the facts and saying whatever he wants."

And Donald Trump is in the UK right now. What's going on? WaPo columnist Dan Balz writes that Trump's trip may just be a coincidence (really?) but there are similarities in the "emotional issues of national and cultural identity at a time of growing demographic diversity, highlighted in both countries by often-angry debates over immigration."

In this new arena [of social media and cable television], Trump proved more skillful than his Republican opponents at mastering communication. In Britain, there are complaints that Cameron and others leading the “remain” campaign have been outdone in this category by the likes of Boris Johnson, the flamboyant former mayor of London and a Conservative member of Parliament, whose ambition to take Cameron’s job is well known....

And here's Politico's Joseph J. Schatz:

An American in London could be forgiven for having Donald Trump flashbacks Tuesday night. In the penultimate debate before Thursday’s landmark vote on leaving the European Union, held at Wembley Stadium, former London mayor Boris Johnson delivered what might be called his “Make Great Britain Great Again” speech, telling the British people that "if we vote leave and take back control, this Thursday can be our country's independence day.”

But rhetorical similarities to “Make America Great Again” aside, Boris Johnson is not Donald Trump. And for all the common misgivings about globalization in both countries, and the parallels being made between Great Britain’s nativist-tinged debate over leaving the EU and the rise of conservative populism in the United States, a vote for “Brexit” doesn’t exactly equal a vote for Trump....

... Cameron has appeased the anti-EU backbenchers in his ranks for years, but instead of strengthening him, the appeasement has expended him. To [Tim Oliver, a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science] it’s very much like how GOP leaders stoked anti-Washington rage among their members, inadvertently fueling the rise of Trump. Cameron kept “throwing concessions to his Euro-skeptic backbenchers” in the same way that U.S. Republican leaders kept saying “no, no, no” to Obamacare and promising again and again that they would repeal it, Oliver said. That helped discredit the GOP establishment—and lead to Trump.

AND: Here's the NYT: "Populist Anger Upends Politics on Both Sides of the Atlantic." Excerpt:

“Basically, they took back their country,” Mr. Trump said Friday morning from Scotland, where he was promoting his golf courses. “That’s a good thing.”

Asked where public anger was greatest, Mr. Trump said: “U.K. U.S. There’s plenty of other places. This will not be the last.”...