Forget the G-20; will there be a G-2 with Trump and Boris Johnson?

Republican nominee Donald Trump’s trip to Mexico just hours before his speech on immigration is a work of pure political imagination. As the world’s presumptive titans, the G-20, start to gather in China, Trump exposes their globalist pretensions in an age rising instead to populism, devolution, decentralization and nationalism.

{mosads}And the Mexico gambit has that sensational “Nixon to China” quality as well. It is excellent political theater. Trump seems slightly to almost have taken over the American presidency already. His approach might even be described as punk politics; he and his crew an anarcho-capitalist shop like the outlaw bands in “Sons of Anarchy.”

Throughout the China meeting, all eyes will be on Trump on this side of the waters as Xi Jinping scolds the worldly central bankers and governors in Hangzhou and Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma explains the globalist system.

In fact, Trump is attempting to destroy the global hegemony of the G-20 system and with his British big-haired, bleach-blonde twin — Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson — who championed Brexit, he may be successful. It may be suggested that Johnson, a “one nation” conservative, and the “America First” Trump form their own G-2 in opposition to the centralist “one world” uniformity of the G-20. If Trump is successful in his reach for the Oval Office, there soon may be more, many more, to join their grouping.

Polling aside, there are sound reasons why Trump could well be president of the United States this time next year.

1. He sees America as it is today: Judge Judy’s America, Dr. Phil’s America, not as it wishes to be or sees itself through the remembrance of things past.

2. His political rise may be because America is finally coming out of political denial and gotten used to the idea that we must defend ourselves against terrorism and is turning to him as the strong man. Probably Europe sees that as well, and that will bring them to a similar turning.

3. Since former CIA operative and independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin brought a classic conservative Republican position, declaring the Trump effort to be renegade and “inhuman,” he has found little support although he is a worthy traditionalist. Nor has the best Libertarian Party ticket in its history so far managed to draw enough to enter into the debates. It means that conservatives are no longer looking for a Trump substitute. They are getting used to him. They will vote for Trump now.

4. We are now entering Season Two of the campaign season as if it is a television series that changes seasonally. Trump knows how to market this. It is what he does for his regular day job on “The Apprentice.” The Democrats do not, as they do not so well understand the narrative aspect of staged images and will do what they have always done.

5. By the time November comes, an election will have taken place in Austria which could well bring the far-right candidate, Norbert Hofer, to the presidency. Political temperament is shifting rapidly in Europe. This shift in temperament has been partially affected by Trump’s rise (he is “the new Ronald Reagan,” said Britain’s Nigel Farage, who until July was leader of the U.K. Independence Party) and will in return advance Trump’s prospects. Brexit has surely advanced Europeans’ movement to nationalism, as well. It forms a rising zeitgeist. Hofer, then, is prelude to Trump.

We are said by scholars and policy wonks to be entering an “Age of Devolution” at every level of governance and Trump is right in calling for a review of what George Washington warned us about — “entangling alliances” — which includes, in our time, NATO and our relations with Europe and Asia. That America and Britain take the first giant steps with these challenges will have enormous influence on these new directions. Europe and the world will follow.

But there is no indication that America and Britain intend to go there together. George Osborne, then-chancellor of the Exchequer under Britain’s previous Prime Minister David Cameron, had said Britain would seek to do just that after Brexit. He even conjured a vision of teaming up with NAFTA’s “Three Amigos” — President Obama, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau  and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto — as they met in Ottawa in June. Then Osborne was quickly let go when Theresa May replaced Cameron as prime minister. Britain even appears to be backing away from us, perhaps to reawaken an even more intimate “special relationship” with India.

We may not yet be rising as a unified movement as “first state” sympathies in Britain, America and elsewhere would suggest, but without a doubt, if we fail, we will all go down together.

Quigley is a prize-winning writer who has worked more than 35 years as a book and magazine editor, political commentator and reviewer. He lives in New Hampshire with his wife and four children. Contact him at quigley1985@gmail.com.

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