It is a mistake to compare too freely, as many seem to do, Boris Johnson and Donald Trump.
Yes, both look like bloated dirigibles inflated with the air of born-to-rule self-entitlement. But it is more appropriate to compare Johnson with Trump's opponent, Hillary Clinton.
It is scarcely worth enforcing the axiom that suggests politicians are natural born liars, and yet it is a curious sign of the times that possibly within a matter of months, the UK and America could both be led by two politicians who, perhaps more than any other in western politics, are characterised by their almost pathological inability to tell the truth.
Johnson has been fired from cabinet and from newspapers as a punishment for lying about an extra-marital affair - itself a deception - and for fabricating quotes.
Look at character profiles of him and you can't help but be left with the perception of a man as ruthlessly hungry for power as he is devoid of any tangible plan of what to do with it.
His record as London Mayor is woeful. Firm campaign pledges he made in both 2008 and 2012 elections on homelessness, tube fares and ticket office closures were all broken, and then some. Only very recently, he was subject to painful scrutiny by a select committee who burst the various anti-EU balloons that Johnson had clownishly blown up with calumnies, exaggerations and outright fabrications.
Clinton is a woman who, if you opened her closet in search of skeletons, would likely result in a scene not dissimilar to Pieter Bruegel's 'Triumph of the Death'.
Stories abound in endless quantity of her penchant for lying; from accusations of harassment and bullying of women making allegations of sexual misconduct against her husband, to the Whitewater scandal, to her ongoing private email debacle, to her infamous story of coming under hostile fire in Bosnia (footage existed showing her calmly strolling from a helicopter in perfect safety...)
Christopher Hitchens said "one should not become President for therapeutic reasons." Similarly, with regard to Johnson, the role of Prime Minister should not be given to someone who covets it for no other reason than to fulfil the arrogant proclamations made in an Eton dinner hall.
It is said that the pathological liar is someone who is oblivious to their own lying. Perhaps in these illusory times, the only statesmen we can trust are those who at the very least believe their own lies.
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