For Trump the most significant lesson may have been that Johnson was able, not to crack, but to smash the Labour Party’s so-called “Red Wall” in northern England. Just as Trump won in the Rust Belt states in 2016, so Johnson cruised to victory in working-class areas that supported Brexit and want to see a rebirth of their traditional industries. For Trump, it’s a sign that his strength in the Rust Belt was no fluke.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson won a resounding election victory on Friday that will allow him to end three years of political paralysis and take Britain out of the European Union by Jan. 31. Brexit represents the country’s biggest political and economic gamble since World War Two, cutting the world’s fifth largest economy adrift from the vast trading bloc and threatening the integrity of the United Kingdom.
Also Read: Could Boris Johnson’s Election Victory Spell End Of The United Kingdom?
Genuine ideological differences have returned to British politics. That is as true in foreign policy as in questions of domestic politics. The post-Cold War foreign policy consensus in UK politics around liberal multilateralism is fraying.
Social media and smartphones have pushed voters further away from mainstream news sources toward friends, memes, and Facebook for “news” that may be anything but. British voters are awash in a sea of trivia, propaganda, and three-word slogans—and no one knows what they will make of it all.
In 2000 and 2001, candidate Bloomberg forged a path that seemed almost dauntingly difficult, but he pulled it off by recognizing an unusual opening and quickly moving to capitalise on it. It was a campaign that relied on a lot of things going right for him but also made sure that his candidacy was well-positioned to exploit his advantages whenever and wherever he could. It’s not crazy to think he could do it again.
Both the United States and the United Kingdom experienced seismic votes in 2016. The outcomes of both—the decision to leave the European Union in Britain and the election of Donald Trump in the U.S.—have been attributed, at least in part, to a growing polarization and division within their respective societies. Both countries are led by men who are seen as encapsulating these divisions. And now, both are headed for elections. But that is where the similarities stop.
Disinformation is harmful on and offline. The people who spread disinformation have various motives. They might use it to seek attention, promote an ideology, sway an opinion, or receive financial gain.1 The issue of financial motivation is particularly problematic when it comes to programmatic advertising…Those who seek to disinform have taken advantage of an increasingly connected world to push online narratives that sow division and spark conflict.
Billionaire media mogul Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of America’s largest city, jumped into the race for the Democratic U.S. presidential nomination on Sunday as a moderate with deep pockets unabashedly aiming to beat fellow New Yorker Donald Trump in the November 2020 election.
Gotabaya Rajapaksa has won the Sri Lankan presidential election after a closely fought race against ruling party candidate Sajith Premadasa, with the country’s Election Commission declaring him the winner on Sunday. “I would like to inform everyone that I will execute everything you trusted in me [to do],” Rajapaksa said at the results announcement, flanked by his brother Mahinda, a former two-time president.
