Boris Johnson Vs Donald Trump: Parallax Snaps

 By Ichie Tiko Okoye

There certainly was more outrage in his voice than the sadness he professed to feel at being forced to “give up the best office in the world,” when British Prime Minister Boris Johnson read out his resignation letter in an address to the British people last Thursday (06 July 2022). His resignation announcement came right after it finally dawned on him that a sizeable number of top government officials and Tory MPs were no longer interested in buying into the distracting conjuring tricks he was deploying in response to a recent slew of ethics scandals. 

*Boris Johnson

To all intents and purposes, Johnson has been the English equivalent of America’s Donald Trump. Both are charismatic front men with a knack for manipulating the media. Just as Johnson crystallised a decisive electoral victory with the memorable tag line of “Just get Brexit done!” Trump equally mesmerised American voters with his campaign psychobabble of “Make America Great Again!” – MAGA for short. 

Johnson and Trump are perceived to be born-winners with a cult following and mammoth fan bases. But truth be told, their popularity is more the result of political sleight of hand than genuine political pedigree. Both men are incorrigible liars, whether it is unabashedly looking their fellow citizens in the eye and spewing lies in furtherance of their own personal interests and agendas or momentarily succumbing to the malady of selective amnesia whenever convenient or spreading falsehoods about a “stolen election.” 

Ben Bruce: Heading For The Senate

By Banji Ojewale

As it is going to be with the next set of Senators of the United States of America, where new faces, the majority being the Republicans, are coming up, Nigeria in 2015 may witness a similar displacement of old hands in its Senate. I am not making any attempt to predict bloc party victory or defeat.

Ben Murray Bruce

(pix: thenewsnigeria)

There is always some tricky of impreciseness in it for analysts. In the case of the US, it was perhaps “easy” for the Cable News Network (CNN) to arrive  at its 246-Senate seat forecast for the Republicans in the November 2014 ballot because of the near-infallible opinion poll system in the country. CNN journalists and experts relied on such advanced sampling techniques as computer technology and sociological and psychological research.  

But it was not always so. The pollsters of the previous age plunged the US into trouble when their statistics misled the nation’s media. In the 1948 Presidential election, the “soothsayers” predicted victory for the Republican candidate Thomas Dewey. Now without waiting for the official count of the vote after the ballot, US newspapers declared in screaming headlines: Dewey defeats Truman.