How bad can it get?

Boris Johnson

How bad can it get? is a question being asked in Great Britain and in the US. The question is the title of the latest London Review of Books collection of opinions from British writers.

The obvious answer: very bad, both in the US and Britain. 

How much damage will Trump and his proto-fascist Republican Party do to the country---to the world, actually---before we can get rid of him? 

The crises in both countries have been created by conservatives. Trump is a uniquely awful president, but his administration is what a right-wing US government must look like.

Lorna Finlayson:

It has finally happened: Boris Johnson is prime minister. There have been some surprises in politics over the past few years, but this isn’t one of them. As far back as the 1990s, when Johnson’s wit and superficial charm earned him his place as everyone’s favourite Tory, it was foreseeable that he could one day inhabit Number 10. 

Johnson himself has had his sights on the job since at least his Oxford days: the close and enduring entanglement of class, education and politics in this country made it a realistic ambition. Having positioned himself in the right place at the right time, all he had to do was win the votes of a small group of posh, white, male racists, just like Johnson himself.

Brexit, the crisis that was his opportunity, has placed a further monumental obstacle in the path of those who hoped finally to break with the mode of politics that helped produce the crisis in the first place. 

This politics---which Johnson, as much as anybody, represents---has impoverished and privatised British life, entrenched inequality and insecurity, and attempted to steal the far right’s thunder by displacing resentment onto immigrants and foreigners. The effect of Brexit has been, and will be for the foreseeable future, to intensify these features while derailing efforts at resistance...

Rob's comment:
Sound familiar?