Boris and Trump have more in common than awful hairstyles - Emma Lewell-Buck MP

This week Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom after less than 100,000 Conservative Party members voted for him.
New Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Picture by Aaron Chown/PA WireNew Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Picture by Aaron Chown/PA Wire
New Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Picture by Aaron Chown/PA Wire

That is a measly 0.13% of the UK population. Shortly after the result was announced, Trump tweeted his support of Boris.

This should come as no surprise as the two men have a lot more in common than their awful blonde hairstyles, they have both earned controversy over the disgusting racist, misogynistic and Islamophobic comments they have made. These are the grim times we live in.

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Times when we are now being led by yet another out of touch Tory educated at Eton, a private school with fees around £40k a year. He is the 20th Prime Minister to have attended the elite school. Another Oxford University graduate who was a part of the infamous Bullingdon club, an all-male dining club with a sick hazing ritual in which the rich members who don £3,500 custom suits burn £50 notes in front of beggars and that has over the years vandalised several venues.

Johnson has made attempts to put this elitist past behind him calling his time in the Bullingdon club "a truly shameful vignette of almost superhuman undergraduate arrogance”, however, with earnings around £400,000 last year, coupled with the first policy announcement in the leadership contest being tax cuts for the rich, his actions speak louder than his words.

Countless actions such as voting for austerity at every stage and proudly boasting of “sticking up for the bankers” more than anyone else after the financial crisis.

Not only is Johnson wildly out of touch, he cannot be trusted. He was sacked twice for lying in the past as both a politician and a journalist. He has also been caught out playing a role in planning the physical assault of a journalist. This carelessness with words has consequences, as Foreign Secretary his comments led to a British citizen facing five extra intolerable years in an Iranian prison.

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As if this wasn’t enough, his record as London Mayor is pitiful. Despite his boasting during the leadership election, his time as Mayor was mired with failures.

His vanity project of a garden bridge was abandoned but not after costing £43m of tax payers’ money, his Boris buses were supposed to cut emissions, but their batteries were too expensive to replace so they ran on diesel, emitting more than the buses they replaced.

Boris Johnson has shown that he is full of hot air, bluff and bluster, he has no depth, understanding or even the will to understand the realities of life for people in our country.

I hope that he will recall when he said having an unelected Prime Minister is “trampling on the democratic will of the British people” and let the people decide their next Prime Minister so we will be in with a chance of having a PM for the many, not the few.