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Tuesday 12 May 2020

344. Lousy Leader Lottery. Does your country win?


The countries in this lottery are Britain, America and Brazil. The judging criteria are in bold and you can award points as you see fit…

Most moronic statement
Trump – ‘ingest bleach to cure coronavirus’  plus pretty much everything that comes out of his mouth.
Johnson - Libyan city could be a luxury resort if ‘investors cleared the dead bodies away'.
Bolsonaro - claiming his wife gave birth to a girl because he had a ‘moment of weakness’.

Most moronic idea
Trump -   Border wall / Space Force
Johnson – Brexit
Bolsonaro – Openly in favour of torture

Most number of children by different women (but still supported by right-wing media and/or evangelicals)
Trump [5] 
Johnson [6-ish – no one is sure – maybe even Johnson himself doesn’t know]
Bolsonaro [5]

Inability to speak coherently
Trump - seems never to have become acquainted with the English language. 
Johnson - whiffle-waffles though it is unclear if this is real or affectation.
Bolsonaro - generally talks in soundbites of macho bollocks.


Most bigoted/ignorant statement
Trump - re white supremacists ‘some of them are good people’
Johnson - using term ‘picaninnies’ about commonwealth citizens or women in burkas likened to ‘letter boxes’
Bolsonaro - said he would rather his son were killed in a crash than be gay

Insulting other (better/ more successful/more faithful) leaders
Trump – Obama
Johnson – Obama
Bolsonaro – Macron

Stupidest hair
Trump – improbable orange ‘swirled’ tufts
Johnson – spectral blonde wispy basin cut
Bolsonaro - relatively normal on this one

Most dishonest  
Johnson - Brexit Bus NHS lie (+ all his life)
Trump - ‘I’m a successful businessman’ con (+everything that comes out of his mouth)
Bolsonaro – said he would only accept election results if he won

Environment crisis denier
Trump - toady to coal and oil lobby and reversed all Obama environmental protection legislation.
Johnson – sort of supports HS2 which will devastate precious, scarce ancient woodland but as he doesn’t really ‘believe’ or not believe in anything it’s hard to judge this one.
Bolsonaro – happy with deforestation and other environmental wrecking activities.

Age disparity with latest daughter-wife/partner
Trump – 23 years
Johnson – 24 years
Bolsonaro – 27 years

Examples of corruption
Trump – open nepotism, appointment of those known to be corrupt (Flynn) and just generally and always.
Johnson - Garden Bridge / the Jennifer Arcuri scandal.
Bolsonaro - Firing judicial officials who were investigating his corrupt children.

Ignoring Democracy
Trump – filling government posts with incompetent crooks and cronies and family.
Johnson – illegally proroguing parliament.
Bolsonaro – threatening opponents and just generally.

Directly causing the misery and suffering of others in real time
Trump - babies in cages separated from parents on the Mexican border.
Johnson - directly contributed to the extension of the cruel detention of Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe in Iran when May was stupid enough to make Johnson foreign secretary.
Bolsonaro - “not one centimetre” of land to be saved for indigenous peoples

Easily create non-problems but slow to act on real ones
Trump – constantly creating international tensions to distract from his failings in office but slow to act on Coronavirus.
Johnson – happy to create the disaster of Brexit but slow to act on Coronavirus.
Bolsonaro – happy to create political tensions and discord but slow to act on Coronavirus.

Talking shit
Trump – every time he opens his mouth.
Johnson - sacked from first job (Times columnist) for obviously making shit up – and all downhill from there as lying is his habit.
Bolsonaro - like most liars he uses the accusation against others when it suits – i.e. saying deforestation data is lies.

And finally
I was going to add - a love of pointless slogans - but I think their appetite for that is about equal.

I was going to add the discomfiting mix of brat and brute but again – I think they are equal on that though Trump and Johnson are more brat than brute.
All three are big in their own minds and the media play that back to them endlessly but that illusion is matched by how incredibly small they are inside.

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So who wins?

You may say I am biased but it seems clear to me that Britain wins the lousy leader lottery. 
Johnson’s international faux pas range from low level crap like school-boy racism, embarrassing jingoism, inappropriate behaviour. You may say public money wasted on wannabe-dictator egocentric projects (e.g. water cannon he was barred from using when mayor of London) pale into insignificance when compared to Trump’s wall. Even Johnson’s buffoon bigotry feels minor league compared to that of Bolsonaro. However, Trump and Bolsonaro are as you would expect given their background, educational inadequacies and disturbing personality traits. Johnson had not only all the benefits of privilege and wealth and connections he was educated at one of the most elite schools in the world and, unlike Trump, appeared to have retained some of what was stuffed into him there. Eton School is just a stone’s throw from Buckingham Palace and you don’t get in without serious dosh to spend or the right connections. See blog 35– Eton Mess  

I argue strongly that –all things being equal but many things being relative and mostly for accelerating the process of turning a functioning developed country into basket-case Britain - bonking bonkers buffoon Boris bags it for Britain and we win the Lousy Leader Lottery

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