"Muslim women who wear
the niqab, the full veil,
resemble nothing so much as
letterboxes or bank robbers."
"Africans can be described
as piccaninnies."
Those aren't the words of Donald
Trump, who was visiting London
this week for a state visit.
No, instead, they were the
words of Boris Johnson,
the lead contender in the race
for the Tory party leadership
and quite possibly Britain's
next prime minister.
- You think you're too divisive
a character to be Tory leader?
As it happened, Mr Johnson
was launching his campaign
just as Mr Trump landed
in Britain this week.
And I think the
juxtaposition illuminated,
for lots of people, the
similarities of these two
politicians - the America
First nationalist arriving
to meet the Queen and
the Britain first,
England first nationalist
who wants to be
the next prime minister here.
So I know Boris.
I like him.
I've liked him for a long time.
I think he'd do a very good job.
Mr Trump, of course, ignored all
the diplomatic niceties about
not interfering in the domestic
affairs of other countries
and promptly backed Mr
Johnson as his favourite
for the leadership and for
the premiership and said,
and if he gets it, he'll
offer him a good trade deal.
Thank you very much, everybody.
Thank you.
The two men focus a lot
on national sovereignty.
In Mr Trump's terms, it's
pulling back from globalism.
For Mr Johnson, sovereignty is
about getting out completely
from the European
Union and getting out
whatever the conditions
or circumstances.
He's pledged that if
he's prime minister,
Britain will leave the European
Union by October the 31st,
come what may.
If need be, we will
just simply crash out.
If I get in, we'll come
out, deal or no-deal,
on October the 31st.
- man, good man.
We'll do that.
Thank you very much.
Would that mean you come back
and vote Conservative again?
Yes.
That's the spirit.
Boris Johnson's politics,
although he doesn't say this
explicitly, are
essentially those
of the English nationalists.
He pledges of course
to get a better
deal, a great deal for Britain.
That's sheer fantasy.
But fantasy's always
played a significant part
in Boris Johnson's politics.
We saw that when he
was foreign secretary
for a couple of years.
We've seen it in
his promise that we
can get a deal with the European
Union in which we have our cake
and eat it.
Mr Johnson do you accept that
you just deliberately misled
the public?
And Boris Johnson's attitudes
to facts and to analysis
and to truth is very much
like that of Mr Trump's.
He's not interested.
He's interested in
making his point.
He's interested in
advancing his own career.
And he doesn't
want truth or facts
to get in the way of that.
We saw that during the
referendum campaign in 2016
when he was making claims that
the NHS would be awash in money
if only we left the EU.
And if we didn't
leave the EU, we'd
be overrun by Turkish
migrants, both of those things
were palpably false.
Good afternoon, everybody.
Good afternoon.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for coming.
Can you hear me?
There's much that unites
the political approach,
the populism of Donald Trump and
the approach of Boris Johnson
and indeed some of the other
Brexiteers like Nigel Farage.
It's a politics which appeals
to people's grievances,
ignores truth and reality,
brushes aside facts.
And I think they
reinforce each other.
And I think they're a
real danger to democracy,
because our democracy depends,
in the last resort, on everyone
agreeing a certain framework
of truth and decency
and of standards.
I think both these
politicians have
stepped outside that framework.
