As South Africans, you might well feel you’re living in a parallel universe where the good guys like Pravin Gordhan and brave Daily Maverick journalists are vilified and the bad guys somehow carry on unscathed.

But just try Britain. We’ve got Boris – a parallel universe all on his own, behaving in a Donald Trump way, and so far getting away with it like his alter ego does.

He’s torn up all the rules of parliamentary convention and protocol by corralling the queen to prorogue for a new Queen’s Speech to set out his legislative agenda (quite properly), for an ulterior purpose (quite improperly), namely to railroad parliament into a No Deal Brexit by removing sitting days that might be used to stop this catastrophe.

Britain had already become pretty dreadful under Theresa May – governmentally gridlocked and rudderless. But under Boris we’re becoming a banana republic.

Imagine if Jeremy Corbyn were prime minister and manipulated the constitution so flagrantly? The predominantly Eurosceptic Tory media would be crying for his blood, with charges of the “end of civilisation” and a “Marxist republic”.

Instead they’re obsequiously subservient, cheering Boris on through their false prism of the people triumphing over evil parliamentarians determined to thwart a hard right Brexit which only a very small proportion of voters ever wanted. Certainly, in the 2016 referendum, Leave leaders like Boris never promised this.

At the root of the problem is that he and his fellow Brexiteers never have had a proper plan. They won the referendum (very narrowly, though you’d never guess from their triumphalism) by being against something, in this case the European Union.

Though it was very evident knocking, on doors during the campaign as I did, that in many respects the EU was a convenient scapegoat for a predominantly working-class populist revolt against the neoliberal elite, which had spawned the 2007-8 financial crisis, austerity and rampant inequality.

But Boris and Co never said what they were for.

Theresa May at least tried to grapple with this conundrum. Her task was to attempt to square an impossible circle. To keep all the benefits of being in the European Club without complying with any of the obligations. And we all know that, whether it’s our local sports or book club or even family, that’s a non-starter.

She had to satisfy her hard-line Eurosceptic party members whilst protecting the nation. And she couldn’t. So they axed her. But at least she came up with a workable plan, including maintaining a fully open Irish border, which is so crucial for the unfinished Irish peace process.

A salutary measure of the reckless dogmatism of the Brexiteers is that surveys actually show that two-thirds of Conservative Party members and the same proportion of Leave supporters simply don’t care if Brexit means a hard Irish border or Scotland leaves the UK. For them Brexit is everything – come what may. You might say for them Brexit Trumps everything.

Their fanaticism might be tolerable if it were confined to the political fringes. But it’s personified in Boris and above all his ruthlessly efficient chief of staff Dominic Cummings. And they’re running the country. The “One Nation Conservativism” of Disraeli, Churchill, MacMillan, Heath (and even in her awkwardly angular fashion May) is for the birds.

So many South Africans have incredulously asked me during my regular visits, talks and university teaching sessions these past few years; “What on earth has happened to Britain? Safe, reliable, maybe boring, old Britain? Has everyone gone mad?”

We’re marginalising ourselves internationally. We’re alienating our European neighbours. We seem fully prepared to walk out of the biggest, richest economic market in the world which accounts for half our trade.

But don’t believe Boris is stupid, any more than Trump is. They’re part of the same hard-right project to shape the world in their neoliberal image where what matters above all is appealing to their narrow but electorally sufficient political base.

Another question South Africans have habitually asked me is “What is going to happen over Brexit?”

My answer has been this: “I’ve been in politics for 50 years, including at the senior levels of the British Cabinet. I used to pride myself on knowing the likely way forward. But – I haven’t a clue! Except that it’s going to get worse.”

So far at least I have been proved correct on that.

Maybe Boris in his parallel universe will confound me. But I wouldn’t bet on it. DM