The political demise of Boris Johnson and Donald Trump — what would Cicero say?

The parallel political lives of former US President Donald J. Trump and former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson are the stuff of Roman intrigue and drama. And which historical Roman figure encapsulated the intrigue of Roman politics more than Marcus Tullius Cicero — statesman, orator, scholar and lawyer — who witnessed and chronicled the dying days of the late Roman Republic and birth of the early Roman Empire?

Cicero, to be sure, would have had a field day documenting the dying days of the American Republic and its UK junior imperial partner in our time, of which the rise and fall of Trump and Johnson are arguably major signposts on the way.

Both men arrived at the apex of their respective country’s political systems as establishment outliers, pledging to “drain the swamp” of business as usual in Washington and Westminster; both enjoyed and continue to enjoy the support of a social base of in the main disaffected working class white people in the post-industrial heartlands of both countries; and both have experienced a vertiginous collapse in political fortunes to the point of public disgrace and opprobrium.

Or at least, they have if you still believe in something called integrity and decency in public affairs.