Could England Breed a Donald Trump?

I’ve been giving this some thought lately.  Mainly because I kept thinking that this man was surely a ridiculous chimera; or that  at any moment Michael Moore was going to appear and admit that the whole Drumph-bumph is merely a satire for a new movie.

Then I realized that people were actually supporting this bombastic buffoon. And I started reading their posts on chat-rooms and forums. I’ve engaged with one or two in various fora  and realized that they were exactly the same kind of people as Trump. Thousands of little MiniMe Trumps.  They truly think he is America’s Great White Hope.  And they unblinkingly accept every ever word he says as the truth.

So the big no-no which lurks at the back of every conversation with a Drumph-supporter is that they are, in great droves, badly-educated.  It would be tempting to write them off as predominantly working-class or dirt-farmers – except that, as the man himself tells us – some of them are really important people. From all over the world.

Now the English school system, too, results in an equally gormless sub-set – and certainly one which would thrill to someone who encouraged them to beat the crap out of anyone who was not like them.

But could  England turn out a man like Drumph I wondered?

And the answer is that I don’t think so.  Someone equally as porcinely vulgar? Like a shot. Someone as full of anger and prejudice? They’d lap him up. A person as ill-mannered and crass? We’ve actually done it. Someone as risible? Probably. A candidate as ignorant?  Without a doubt. Someone with a combover? Never!

Statistics may not be considered reliably exact, but all I’ve found put the numbers of people who believe that The Rapture is going to come at  over 60% and those who think in will come in their life-time at around 40%.   So believing it’s feasible to get the Mexicans to build them a big wall just goes in the “ten impossible things before breakfast” category. 

No doubt they exist, somewhere, but I was unable to get hold of any data giving similar information for England. But, on the whole, we don’t do Raptures, or 6,000 year old earths, or bananas being definitive proof of the Christian god. So I think that our gullible people are a smidgeon less gullible than their gullible people.

Although, like most countries, we do have some people who advocate violence as a means to peace, we don’t walk around fully armed and dangerous, in order to protect ourselves from our government, or our friends and neighbours. And while there would be a fair number of people who’d welcome a good stoush under any circumstances, it’s unlikely that a candidate would be able to get such a large proportion of followers to be willing to biff the bejaysus  out of the opposition’s supporters in England.

Nor would such a significant number of people in England, I think, find the fact that a candidate possessed – or says he possesses – a huge amount of money, a compelling reason to vote or to  feel admiration for. Those with huge amounts of money have been running our Parliaments for centuries. We rather take it as a given.

Besides which, we ARE a nation of shopkeepers, so we’d be much more interested in why all a particular candidates projects have failed and why he declared bankruptcy three times. Whatever the reasons, three is not a number we would feel very easy with.  So a Drumph-like candidate here wouldn’t get as much adulation merely for owning a lot of money as the real Drumph feels he has.

But a person with hair like that? Well, I don’t think that anyone likes to think that their idol looks like a figure of fun. Well, yes there are those who bag the Lord Mayor of London over his hair. Though his appearance, anywhere in public, might be seen by some to be strictly pas comme il faut, at least he doesn’t cause us to blush for Britain.

We’re not averse to a peculiar peer, but a peculiar PM is something else altogether.  The Drumph-ites don’t seem to mind that the man who would be king looks like an ambulatory hay-stack, nor that the rest of the world giggles.  But we simply couldn’t bear the French to fall about laughing because our leader most definitely had a face like a rosbif  and can’t afford a barber.

( Henry the VIII might have had a similar small mouth which, when set in the flat, yet bloated slab of a choleric face, resembles a chicken’s arse in repose – but at least Henry made an effort. Dolled up in his cloth of gold doublets, with silk stockings covering his ulcerated legs, and a satin cod-piece of satisfying proportions covering his syph-ridden Crown Jewels, he at least scrubbed up all right for photo-ops.)

But imagine a chap who looked like a demented travelling salesman ever making it through an English school/uni experience – let alone getting a chance to shame us all in public!  It simply wouldn’t do.

So no, I don’t think we could come up with Drumph in England.

However, if I’m wrong it’s rather sobering thought.

There IS a sector who would vote for any candidate who  promised, in their own language, to make England Great again. Especially if he was as rough as guts.

As long as he was the polar opposite of the effete, prevaricating, and privately-educated cadre who have shown their contempt for the weakest and most vulnerable members of society, I think People on (rapidly shrinking) Benefits would probably follow such a person.

But not unless he visited a barber.