When Donald Trump was first told that he may face criminal charges for the Capitol riots, he declared: “It strengthens me. What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”
One year later, after a ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court to disqualify him from the 2024 presidential election, and a slew of indictments (91 in total) that could scupper his bid to regain the White House, Trump is again defiant.
Pollster Frank Luntz warned that the Colorado decision (which is set to go to the national Supreme Court next month) “has just proven Trump’s theory true that he’s the victim of political persecution…his poll numbers won’t drop…they will rise”.
Republican strategist Scott Jennings said: “For Trump haters, this is like getting drunk at your office Christmas Party. It may seem like fun tonight, but you will really, really regret it tomorrow.”
Trump’s popularity isn’t just growing among his Republican base, it seems to be once more reviving among “independent” voters who are crucial to elections. In six swing states, Trump is ahead and on course to beat Joe Biden.
The former president is finding that the magic formula that worked in 2016 – a gift for soundbites, story telling and brutal culture war attack lines – is working again. His populist solutions maybe simplistic, but his economic and social nationalism is striking a chord.
If he does indeed pull off a victory against the legal and political odds next November, Trump will be the “comeback kid” who will give hope to other former leaders who think they can rehabilitate themselves after defeat.
And one such politician may well be Boris Johnson. As unlikely as it may currently appear, the former PM – who met his old pal Trump at his golf club on a trip to the US this summer – hasn’t ruled out a comeback of his own.
There are obvious differences between the pair of ex-statesmen, not least their contrasting views on climate change and Ukraine. But they share a strong sense of grievance that they were ousted from office prematurely and unfairly – from within and without their own party.
Johnson is biding his time for a return to parliament, but his allies believe his popularity among the Tory grassroots means he could effectively have his pick of safe seats.
If a friendly Tory MP wanted to step down at the last minute next year, he could rejoin the parliamentary party at the next election. Or he could wait for a by-election in a safe seat under a Labour government. Either way, few would count him out of another tilt at the Tory leadership.
Just like Trump, Johnson’s popularity plunged over his handling of the Covid pandemic. On the eve of the election that he lost to Biden in November 2020, Trump moaned: “With the fake news, everything is ‘Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid’.” At the recent Covid inquiry here, Johnson had a similar defiance, claiming that he’d got the big calls right.
And like Trump, Johnson knows just how to mobilise his vote with references to the “deep state” or claims that judges are acting as the “enemies of the people”. If the courts rule against the Rwanda plans (which don’t forget first began under Johnson), expect more of that rhetoric if Johnson were to return as leader of the opposition.
This week, Trump flirted once more with the far-right, declaring that immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country”. For many critics that line was a deliberate echo of Hitler’s “blood poisoning”, but the ex-president was unrepentant. “I never read Mein Kampf,” he told a rally, despite first wife Ivana claiming in 1990 he kept a book of Hitler’s speeches in a bedside cabinet.
Johnson is unlikely to deploy such outright racism in the UK. Yet given that “stopping the boats” is difficult for any government, a prime minister Starmer may struggle against a Tory leader armed with simplistic solutions such as leaving the European Convention on Human Rights.
Starmer’s team are acutely aware that the populist right and far-right can still make headway if allowed to. The shock victory for Geert Wilders’ anti-Islam party in the Netherlands, the rise of Vlaams Belang in Belgium, a recent mayoral win for the Alternative for Germany party, all add to successes of Viktor Orban in Hungary and the continuing strength of Poland’s Law and Justice party.
From trans rights to immigration, they are braced for a “culture war” onslaught from the Tories and Tory-supporting newspapers in the general election, as well as deepfake misinformation on the web.
They know too that while the Tories may vacate the centre ground even more after an election defeat in 2024, social media and the rise of channels like GB News give populists like Nigel Farage and Johnson (whose show will start next year) a powerful platform.
But the issue that looks like it is powering a Starmer victory is the state of the economy and the public’s perception of incomes feeling squeezed. For all the focus on Covid in 2020, one of the key factors in Biden’s win over Trump was that before polling day he was more trusted on the economy.
As it happens, it’s the economy, or at least Americans’ sense that they are not feeling any benefits of falling inflation or growth or booming stock markets, that could prove Biden’s downfall.
Should Labour struggle in government to get the economy moving quickly enough, Starmer could be confronted by a Boris Johnson who uses a low tax “boosterism” to tell the voters that he’s the man to deliver a post-Covid boom.
It may all sound far-fetched right now. But no one should underestimate Johnson’s campaigning showmanship, his relish for wounding personal jibes at Starmer, his ability to craft a slogan (“Make America Great Again” and “Get Brexit Done” had real power) and his media heft.
If Trump succeeds with his own comeback, expect Johnson to be among the first to congratulate him. And then expect the “bring back Boris” calls to get louder.
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