Both are leaving the population with “WTF-did-I-do-last-night?” type hangovers, but I think GB is more fucked: as EW mentioned, lots of important shit is heading for the Continent. Although GB is a more democratic country, waking up to the wreckage, bowing and scraping to the EU, and begging for another chance, GB is not going to get its shit (finance, Northern Ireland, and maybe Scotland) back. Here in the US, losing major industries is an almost daily occurrence and we’re not at risk of losing any actual states—too bad, too, I’d take offers on several: I’m looking at you Alabama, South Carolina, and West Virginia—so at the end of whatever time of reckoning one might choose, GB is more fucked.

UK, by a mile. It is of their own making, not just BoJo’s. If you think that this isn’t what the royal family and the peers want, surprise, it is. They want a return to the aristocracy, they don’t give a damn about the commoners. At least the US has no history of a monarchy to deal with (though we do have that whole slavery and oligarchy thing).

Also, UK is much more infiltrated by foreign intelligence services and lack the independent civil service protections we have here in the US (although I know those are under fire too). The UK royals/Tories had a lot to do with the attack on this nation by Russia and others, Biden knows this, and is under no obligation to play nice right now. The special relationship isn’t looking so special. I think a more close relationship is brewing with the EU, and particularly with France/the Netherlands. Probably this is why China totally capitulated on their trade deal with the EU that’s been in the works for 7 years.

Unlike the participants in this discussion, most voters in the the US and the UK decide their vote on the basis of limited information. What sticks in the head of many in the lead up to a vote is easily influenced by chauvinistic sentiment generously and profitably pumped out by Fox/Murdoch/Limbaugh/Facebook and by Daily Mail/The Times/The Sun/Murdoch. Progressives have to appeal to the heart of low information voters without condescending.

The UK has no way out of the harm of deluding that it actually achieved anything positive through Brexit, nor the quagmire that will keep the an extraordinarily talentless and incompetent group in power in the near and long term. The most talented people in UK politics are sidelined into the devolved governments, are backbench MPs, or a lone (one) radio talk show host. It is difficult to see how Labour can ever gain ground to win a parliamentary majority because of their wishy-washy-ness over Brexit will keep them out of Scotland (which has better newspapers). There is little local press, only one reliable national newspaper in the UK, the BBC has not been an honest broker (we have all learned the difference between middle ground, centrism and truth at this point in 2020). On the other hand, in the US there has been a popular vibrant opposition for four years with a parallel education process that to varying degrees has encouraged Americans to shift paradigms regarding issues such as race, gender, taxes, the “public good,” and — with any luck — the accountability of those in public office and those who wield oligarchic levels of power. For all its challenges, those views have political currency backed by energized you who have, amongst other things, bolstered opposition to gun violence and structural racism. The US continues to have possibilities if through accountability in the public sphere they they push back against the sadistic power of extreme wealth. No such force exists in the UK. The future here, as a twenty year resident, is bleak for this Cayman Island of the North.

I’m not going to get into the “who is deeper in the doo-doo?” question. Time will tell. But a few things need to be said on this, for the UK, sad day.

Firstly at least half the whole country does not agree it is sad. Even in Scotland there are Nationalist, Socialist Brexiteers. I still haven’t unpacked that in my brain, though I have a sibling who is just that.

We cannot tell whether the economy will be worse or by how much. We will have to wait and see and it will be hard to disentangle it from Covid 19.

viget’s view of UK society and governance is comically simplistic. What made Brexit happen in fact was a conjoining of the views of Middle England, largely small businessmen, retailers and business executives, including many who are retired, and the denizens of towns, not cities (that is a very important difference here) which have not shared in the existence or the benefits of the new vibrant multicultural society which the media reflects and which people like me , even if we are not part of it, appreciate.

The people who persuaded them everything was the fault of the EU, when much of it is the natural historic consequence of the existence, myth and conclusion of Empire) were largely not aristocratic, though they might have been to Public Schools (that is expensive private in the UK, sorry to be confusing but this is Britain). They were the sons of the big farmers, rentiers and rogues so splendidly decribed by the late great John Le Carre.

I suspect Scotland will indeed split away, though it will be nasty and perhaps quite long. I will become an accidental immigrant, which will be odd. Covid has helped. AT all times Bris’s natural style has worked against him; he always seems shallow, talking like a tabloid newspaper headline. NIcola Sturgeon has come across as careful, solemn, humble and on top of her facts, all the very things Boris is not. She will have increased her hold on Scotland.

And if Scotland goes can Northern Ireland be far behind? We need to bear in mind that the loyalties to the UK of the Democratic Unionists in N Ireland are very family based, and that the families concerned are in Scotland, not England.
Oh and by the way “GB” can’t lose Northern Ireland, as GB already excludes N Ireland. When I say I don’t think Boris really understands how important putting a border in the Irish Sea is I really mean it. He did it, as he does with every decision, to jump the immediate political hurdle. No-one has ever thought of Cairnryan as a border port. It’s the equivalent of putting a customs post at, let’s say, the Seattle ferry terminal at Bremerton.

I will leave Americans to worry about the USA but one comparison is very strong. The USA believes democracy is everything. It even allows its Supreme Court Judges to be voted upon. It is true the UK has some monarchic survivals, such as the means of appointing our Supreme Court Judges being opaque to this day, though not as bad as in the past.
But when Boris tried to set aside the wishes of Parliament by simply using his powers to get HMQ to close it down, our Supreme Court called him to account, effectively said he had lied to HMQ and set the decision aside. They faced up to the Executive not by a narrow margin, not by a wide margin, but unanimously. It’s one of the things in our recent history I think the UK can be proud of.

I’m no particular fan of Johnson; we have a Tory government because the Labour Party couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery (a source of regret to some of us). But, you have to be joking…..right? Trump has unleashed attacks on your elections, and rule of law (including pardons for , shall we say, some rather dubious characters); separated migrant children from parents, encouraged violence against elected officials, promoted racism. I see that some commentators in the USA believe these effects on society will outlast Trump. I see no comparable actions by Johnson.
Brexit was decided by a referendum, by the popular vote. Some of us knew that our economic bargaining hand would be poor, but we had joined the EEC which had mutated into the EU (moving from an economic commuity to a union with much grander plans). The flavour evidenced as progressive loss of national sovreignty, alignment with some very unpleasant anti-democratic East European countries; its continued dangling of membership to that well-known liberal democracy, Turkey; its treatment of Greece – enabling that country’s debt and then bringing the hammer down. Economics was not the sole issue for some of us. All we need to do now is to lose our own grandiose ideas of being a “world player” and concentrate on being the small country that we are. Anyway, isn’t it the American way to make your own way in the World?
The Tories have always been the party for whom the United Kingdom has been paramount, hence its official title: The Conservative and Unionist Party.
The break- up of the UK is the aim of various political parties in the devolved nations of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Interestingly, only England (where I live) doesn’t have its own national assembley. Enough said.
As for Covid, I don’t believe there is any comparison between Trump and Johnson. Have you watched their news conferences on Covid? (Johnson is still giving them, by the way). We have had a national lockdown and a series of regional ones. The government has been leading the response, and Johnson emphasises the seriousness of the problem. There were mistakes at the beginning, it is true, but it hasn’t simply given up.
One last thought, is it just possible that you have displayed some confirmation bias?

I agree that it is the UK that was screwed much worse by Johnson in the short term, but ultimately Brexit will be just very, very disruptive while still presenting a host of still-solvable problems, whereas in the long term the UK will still suffer the dire consequences of Trump’s inaction on climate. So I wonder if Trump will have screwed the UK even worse.

Some great posts here. Thank you.

Our at times partner across the spit are imploding empire now; Brexit was a fatal mistake.

Getting Trump out of office is just the beginning of trying to see through the smoke; it will take longer to get a good view.

all the grifters are just making money now off their ignorant base at least up to Jan 20. Network effects are becoming more obvious.
Gotta hold some people accountable this time or we may end up Proper Focked right along with Brits.

Best to all.

One thing that might influence the US/UK more-screwed-up ranking is what condition the US will be on 21 January.

Our adversaries are spending energy right now trying to decide if and/or what they are going to do in the next three weeks. That’s not to say they think that Biden is a super-hero or miracle worker, but he has to hit the ground running to begin fixing a lot of things. The nation states of China, Russia, and Iran are undoubtedly considering what they might want to do during this period.

Trump has been packing loyalists into DoD and the IC. Part of the calculus for the adversarial players is how much damage Trump might do to the US whilst responding to a range of different external acts. Those effects could be immediate or long term. The Russians have traditionally played the long game (thus the records of all those international students who studied in the USSR and the KGB’s records of Trump’s first visit decades ago). China is so massive, it can just “be there”. Iran has some resources to act directly, and vast capability as a political/social/religious influencer.

Trump has been so reckless that international clients and friends are sometimes “no longer”, and sometimes at increased risk. Our “friends'” vulnerabilities are now our risks.

I’ve been telling friends for the past half year that the period of time that would worry me the most was between Election Day and Inauguration Day. These are the days of uncertainty. ISO 31000 tells us that Risk is the “effect of uncertainty on objectives”.

Trump has never understood risk. I know less about Johnson, but his understanding appears to be very limited.

These are VERY risky times.

Things can happen in the next three weeks that will re-shuffle the deck…And may shake up this topic’s ranking exercise.

I would try to keep the distinction between the two variants of the question clear; Who fucked their county up worse (Trump or Boris) versus which country is more fucked going forward.

In answer to the first question, I weigh in on the side BoJo. Trump’s screw job has been (or may be) more ephemeral. It appears he will fail to destroy our democracy entirely, and we may yet get some accountability (if not trials and jail time at least a more honest accounting of what happened) with the change in administration.

But as to which country is more fucked, I think the US wins that one. Our political system is almost completely dysfunctional. It was designed, to a degree, for gridlock and it is providing that in spades. Our campaign finance system is in tatters and moneyed influence runs amok. Polarization is through the roof, and we live in completely isolated fact universes on the left and the right.

In Britain, they have basically a unicameral legislature (the house of Lords having no significant powers anymore), with no separate executive. They are stuck with Boris for a while, but when he is gone they will have a chance to go in a new direction. And even under the conservatives at least they get to implement their agenda and the people can fairly judge the results. In the US, everything is murky and accountability is unclear because of the divided nature of our government. No party ever really gets to move an agenda forward and be judged on it’s results.

Boris. Not even close. The UK will be paying the consequences of Brexit a lot longer than we have had Trump.

Hmm. I couldn’t start to answer that kind of question, but a couple of points:

The first is the relative amount of facism, along with fascistic fellow travellers and other kinds of anti-democratic person, and their relative power. I suspect the US has a lot more of them, and more in positions of power and influence. I have no idea of numbers, but if it is ten or fifteen million (out of 350M or so), then that is a heavy burden, and the UK has ‘merely’ tens of thousands (out of sixty odd million). Both groups have a fuzzy and much larger penumbra and a lot of current politics is about opportunists like Trump and Johnson pulling our anti-democratic enemies into ‘real’ politics, so as to get votes from that penumbra. That calls against the USA, but:

Second, and I think I have said this here before, the US has, in some important ways, a deeper and stronger democratic system. It looks horribly frustrating, but it seems to have saved you, despite your large and armed fascistic minority. That is very much to US credit.

Another thing, by way of context about the UK is that we have had worse in my lifetime. Brexit is viciously stupid, and will, I am pretty certain, make us poorer, cut our freedom (less freedom of movement, etc.) and cost a lot (every one of those customs officials on EU borders is a waste of life, and that useless make-work has to be paid for), never mind the bureaucracy). But, we had Thatcherism in the eighties, which destroyed more of my country: more communities, more businesses, more technical and other skills and so on, than Brexit is doing, and we recovered. There are permanent losses, of course, but even Thatcherism didn’t open us up to facist take-over, and the loss of most of the international financial service business, which we now face, won’t be as destructive as the loss of our manufacturing, which Thatcher did.

On those lines, the colour I associate with Thatcherism is the pinkish/purpleish red of rosebay willow herb, because that is what grows first in the yards of abandoned factories, and there were a lot of them.

And incidentally, three bits.
Independent Scotland seems good to me, so it doesn’t do to count that as the UK being fucked over – not at all.
That aristocracy stuff is certainly what Thatcher and her successors wanted, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the remnants of the old version, like the monarchy. They want a new and revitalized version, drawn from people like Thatcher (her father owned 12 Grocery stores), and Edward Heath before her – they despise and detest the remnants of the older aristocracy.
Johnson is, happily, a feeble and pale shadow of his predecessors, with aristocratic affectations but without the greedy savagery which would make him real. I am very glad about that.

I am entitled to Irish citizenship, and if I am too optimistic here, then I will go for it. So Dr EW, should we meet in Lisdoonvarna, if the UK and US really go to hell? I saw Kevin Burke play there in a dance hall, after the show-band had given in. I was about four feet away. Ah! civilisation.

Is DJT enough of a mad man to do this:
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2020/12/31/more-clues-indicate-iran-attack-may-be-next-in-trumps-farewell-bag-of-surprises/
to remain in power?

Whose population is more terrorized?

I don’t just mean the escalating (threats of) gun and explosives violence — and context to each man’s rise is everything here, too — but specifically the Miller-Bannon-Goebbels wing (backed by Barr and McConnell when respectively relevant) effort to enshrine their sickness in law and practice. The years in review include everything from banning trans persons from homeless shelters, to Miller sharing the idea to move immigrants around on trains to evoke the Holocaust, to taking away public benefits from different vulnerable groups, to the new office dedicated to denaturalizing citizens… Everyone* has watched them chip, chip, chip away to remake the core into an anti-David, devoid of soulful gaze but glossy white muscle nonetheless.

*And so I should add to the opening sentence, whose population is more emboldened?

Each is the product of a dysfunctional political system, the reform of which the ruling minority will obstruct at all cost. Which is why I’d flip the question: Which country’s people was more driven to self-harm purely to stick it to the other half of their fellow citizens by CHOOSING an obvious sociopath as leader? It’s common in both countries to describe what we see — in connection with Covid, specifically — as incompetence. This misses the nihilism driving Trump and Johnson … and the millions who cheer them. For the many dead, the consequence has been tangible and immediate. For the rest, only time will tell. One thing is certain: both of these dudes and their many enablers will enjoy comfortable, accountability-free retirements. By the time the chickens roost, blame will be directed everywhere but at the guilty.

A reasonably pleasant and slightly less insane 2021 to all.