It was a stunning election victory. Despite a track record of lies and lawlessness, he romped home in a landslide, seeming to attract a new coalition of voters, from the conservative rural vote, to rust-belt post-industrial workers, and unexpectedly diverse sections of the cities and their suburbs.

As the chaotic but iconic blonde with a chequered personal past took up the highest office in the land, it seemed like nothing could stop him.

What could stand in the way of his big economic policy goal of national exceptionalism? He would erect trade barriers against capitalists from competing nations. He would stop freedom of movement and protect his labour force. And, though appealing to the public about their pocketbook issues, the new leader's administration would open the way to a raft of crony appointments and favours to his super-rich backers.

Many said his coalition would dominate the nation for the next two or three election cycles.

Three years later, in 2022, Boris Johnson was gone from Downing Street. Two years after that, the Conservative Party suffered its worst election result since it was created nearly 200 years ago.

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Compared to Johnson's 'Get Brexit Done' General Election of 2019, the success of Donald Trump this November is much more momentous and earth-shattering. But the question of how this authoritarian populism will play out in power - and the extent of its collision with reality - is still an open one.

Trump - who once referred to himself as Mr 'Brexit Plus Plus Plus' and described Johnson as 'Britain Trump' - also vaunts an exceptionalist 'Amerexit': a project that assumes the US can somehow sail out of the modern world of interdependency and internationalism and go it alone.

But here in Britain, Brexit is deeply unpopular four years on - especially with those who voted for it and have been impacted by its economic shortcomings, as Byline Times revealed in a major investigation last year.

Trump has already sold to his voters the idea that tariffs on foreign goods will somehow solve the plight of inflation, though they will only aggravate it. Johnson's Vote Leave campaign also promised lower energy and food prices, though delivered the reverse.

Trump's plans for the expulsion of millions of undocumented migrants, mainly from Mexico and South America, are as evocative and impractical as the various hostile environments and 'stop the boats' schemes the Conservatives have tried here, most notably the unlawful Rwanda policy.

The US is even more reliant than the UK on migration for cheap labour, and the economic costs (let alone the moral and practical implications) of these mass deportations are likely to be much higher than the rhetorical advantage of attacking 'outsiders'.

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The Psycho-Social-Techno Politics of 'MAGA' Trumps Democracy - And the Liberal Left Has No Answer

Hardeep Matharu

The contradictions are untenable.

Just as Johnson claimed to have a policy of 'levelling up' but was really in hock to a millionaire concierge class for donations, then rewarded with honours or government contracts, Trump's appeal to the blue-collar vote, or black men or Hispanics, or disaffected Gen Z voters, sits ill at ease with his real alliance with billionaires and the tech 'broligarchs'.

His coalition in 2024 remains as vulnerable as Johnson's in 2019.

How will Trump satisfy both the hedge fund owners and the union vote? The angry Muslims who voted for him over Gaza, along with right-wing American Jews who thought he would be more pro-Netanyahu? Where's the commonality between soccer moms fearing transgender people and the cryptocurrency porn barons? The right-wing evangelicals and the Silicon Valley transhumanists?

In this edition, Byline Times details how the Democrats lost this election, and the perils ahead for the world and the UK of another Trump presidency.

On a note of optimism, it's worth remembering that we surv...