Boris and Trump: is there another twist in their tales?

I’ve often been dumbstruck at Boris Johnson’s ability to defy political and reputational gravity. 

Finally, his act of auto-defenestration to escape the political lynch mob will bring him back down to earth with an almighty thud. Short term, it might feel reassuring like the natural order of things has been restored: what goes up – eventually – must come down. Actions have consequences. But I can’t shake the feeling that there’s another twist in this tale.

There’s a wishful whisper of ‘ding dong, the witch is dead’ in the reaction to Boris’ resignation, just as there is across the pond to Donald Trump’s indictment. But the reality in both cases is a precarious T-junction. 

One path is a yellow brick road over the rainbow; Trump was convicted, Boris banished, and a total reinvigoration of the standards we expect from authority figures and in public life in general. 

The other is a new dystopia in comms which I will call post-accountability.

Post-accountability is a state in which a populist figure willing to lie, cheat, obfuscate, shift blame, incite division and wage war on the institutions designed to check their power can survive the consequences of even the most egregious lapse in standards. 

Boris and Donald Trump have been working towards post-accountability for years, probing and testing the public’s (and media’s) credulity and gullibility with astonishing success as they rose to power. Both have been caught out, but neither has seen their rapacious ambitions receive a fatal blow. Trump is running for the highest office once again, and the subtext of Boris’ resignation statement was clear: ‘you haven’t seen the last of me’.  

Of course, Boris will be structuring a destructive PR on his own party. Since it’s unlikely that even Boris will attempt a political comeback this year, Donald Trump bulldozing through his indictment to win the Republican nomination for the 2024 USA presidential election would be the White Horse of this particular apocalypse. Still, an early harbinger was Boris’s appointment as a Daily Mail columnist 12 hours after (this iteration of) his political career ended. 

Far from his career being over, Boris instantly has an influential national platform on which to practise all the dark arts outlined above – and perhaps even persuade a tribal and impressionable public that he deserves another chance. The plush Mail job has cushioned Boris’s crash landing and may become a launchpad for a shocking political comeback that would signal the dawn of post-accountability.

Mark Borkowski is the founder of Borkowski communications agency. This post first appeared on Mark's LinkedIn channel. Follow Mark on Twitter @MarkBorkowski.