Here Are All the People Who Could Potentially Become Britain's Donald Trump

I am reminded of Donald Trump every time someone aggressively does close-up magic at me in a pub. This happens more than you would think, the magic thing. Maybe it's a London thing? Unsure. I do not remember the first time someone did close-up magic at me in a pub, but I know that since that day, my life has been cursed by dudes in waistcoats with three small foam balls squatting towards my table, interrupting my conversation and doing magic at me in exchange for change.

Anyway: there is something about Donald Trump that reminds me of the pub-magician. Maybe it's the braggadocio, the in-your-face and in-your-conversation insertion into things; maybe it's the very unique and eerily not-human look he has cultivated over the years. Maybe it's the fact that I'm not actually sure his campaign exists; is Donald Trump actually running for president, or is this all an elaborate card trick? As far as I can tell, he's made it this far by shouting into podiums a lot and occasionally saying: "Terrific, you're gonna love it." Is that it? Is that all you need to do to be president? Is that it?

The main fear, of course, is that a Trump could happen to the UK – that someone from either our celebrity classes or our rich people classes or our "men who look like a vacuum cleaner bag stuffed with hay and racism" classes will rise up and, riding the crest of a wave of pro-Britain sentiment, will ascend to ultimate power. Could it happen? Could a BritTrump™ happen in the UK? And to who? Let us find out, friends, together.

Well, first we have to splinter the essence of Trump into 23 easily definable categories. Potential BritTrump™ candidates need to share three or more of these attributes to be viable, and obviously whoever has the most in common with Trump will be anointed the winner. This is the essence of Trump – all of these stars have to align for a Trump to happen. This is Donald Trump:

We are then left with the following potential BritTrumps™:

Kerry Katona is only on this list because she likes to get bankrupt and is also famous. Similarly, we could have gone with Antony Costa from Blue (went bankrupt, once publicly urinated on a cashpoint, which in itself seems like a ham-fisted visual metaphor for bankruptcy); Shane Filan from Westlife (went bankrupt), two other members of Blue (went bankrupt, but did not urinate on a cashpoint about it), Fazer off of N-Dubz and Michael Barrymore. But I just think more people would vote for Kerry Katona out of that admittedly thin list of British formerly bankrupt celebrities. If Kerry Katona went on This Morning, pissed, and started going, "We should build a big wall between France and England! Tek their crepes, fuck the rest of them off!" then yes, I would be inspired to hate France. Kerry Katona is – and you can't deny this – darkly charismatic.

Gemma Collins is probably the best thing to happen as a result of the TV show The Only Way Is Essex, in that – like Trump – she is essentially a light entertainment Bond villain, and we need more of those. Is it any great stretch to imagine Gemma Collins, in high couture, dangling a tuxedo-wearing Arg over a shark tank while slowly saying, "Prepare to die"? No. What about Gemma Collins slowly unpicking her hands from her shoulder-length leather gloves after calmly strangling a lackey to death? No. Gemma Collins, hair slicked to her forehead with rage-sweat, driving a modified school bus through neon Japanese streets as a swarm of motorcycles with machines guns buzz around her in pursuit of an enemy? No. Like Trump, you feel that Collins could turn at any second, calm and calculating one minute, furiously jabbing a red button marked "FULL ON NUCLEAR WAR" the next. Also: she has a line of tasteful muumuus and busty gal clothing, and allegedly charges £12 for selfies, so she's a moneymaker, too. All in all: a strong BritTrump™ candidate.

Alan Sugar is the most obvious candidate to be BritTrump™: he took the Apprentice format that Donald Trump pioneered in the US and ran with it; is only a year younger; is a rich entrepreneur and already has a foot in the politics door with all the being-a-Lord stuff. Sadly, he isn't bombastic enough. Alan Sugar does every "You're Fired" point with a sort of fundamental boredom with life. Donald Trump loves being alive. Look at him. Look at him! For a 70-year-old, he has some real zeal. I hate to say this, but I still think Donald Trump could really fuck. And that's the difference here: put Sugar in charge of a country and he'll just spiral ever further into apathy, waving his hand effetely at Europe, telling the NHS to "shut your trap". He'd leave most of the day-to-day grunt work to Claude. Look at the last few Apprentice winners: one of them released a weird nail file, the other does face injections advertised exclusively through Lord Sugar's Twitter page, and that plumber one is just a slightly more high profile plumber. This is what Lord Sugar would do to the UK. He'd take all of our enthusiasm and turn it into a middling, if not unsuccessful, small business idea.

You forget about Calum Best, sometimes, don't you, until his face comes at you like a mirage in the middle of the night: those placid, cow-like eyes, mid-career Jude Law hairline, the elaborate chest tattoos. But even when you're not thinking about him, Calum Best is there, happening. Read this sentence back pretty much any time, day or night, over the next week, because it is almost always going to be true: Calum Best is in the VIP section of a club right now, really getting some fingering done. This is where Best is a sort of proto-Trump: a copy of his father, but not an exact facsimile; successful in his own way, but not deliriously so. Also he has his own range of pre-faded T-shirts that have his own name printed on them, so he's more like Trump, with his caps, than we thought. All Best really needs now is a seven-season reality TV show – he's currently on an E! show called Famously Single, so if they spin that out into a Kardashian-like megalith between now and 2023, that could be just the ticket. What I am saying is: don't be surprised if Calum Best, huge and orange and still famously single, triumphs to victory in the 2025 election on a platform of really liking models and money.

Jamie Vardy – in this, the year of our lord 2016 – is arguably the most English man alive. He is uniting us in our Englishness by being really, really English. Came up from nothing? Check. No nonsense? Check. Hard trier? Check. Teeth all over the place? Check. Wears England shirts a lot? Check. It's no great push to say James "Jamie" Vardy is causing a resurgence in national pride just by existing, unapologetically, Englishly, being so brazen in his nationality that it's actually a form of hope. And that's the exact platform Trump is trading on in America. Honestly, with the Euros still rumbling, all I think it would take is five total tournament goals from Vardy – or two very brave ones against Germany – and he would be instantly voted in as Prime Minister. David Cameron wouldn't even have a choice. He'd just have to sadly step to one side and let it happen, while Vardy shakes a ceremonial nebuchadnezzar of WKD all over Downing St.

James Dyson is similar to Trump only in that he is an extremely ill-looking millionaire, but ill in a very hard-to-diagnose way. Trump and Dyson are both exceedingly rich but also look like they could be the first person to ever die of whatever disease is consuming them. That's the only thing that really makes them similar. You feel James Dyson doesn't really hate Mexicans enough to take a crack at being BritTrump™, and for that reason, he's out.

Chris Evans is orange and rich and Trumpian in the way that he has tried really hard recently to make something that people will like (a Top Gear reboot/a greater America), but now a vast majority of people (Top Gear viewers/the Latin community, the LGBTQ community, young liberal America, old liberal America, people who want abortions, &c.) hates him for it. This is where Trump and Evans differ: where Trump is humiliation-proof, his ego flawless, this whole extended Top Gear knock-back has made Evans look dejected, dressing more and more like a really stressed mature student, tweeting big rants with "FACTS" in them – and you just get the vibe that he spends a lot of time sitting in his car now, with the engine running, revving it occasionally and saying "Come on, Chris!" If Chris Evans ever ran for PM on a platform of strong borders and loads of guns, he'd probably fall apart at the first negative tweet, ruling him out from being BritTrump™ this time around.

Richard Branson is rich and has that whole "dinner lady that got caught in a Fly chamber with an Afghan Hound" look going on, which makes him by far Britain's most aesthetically bizarre millionaire, but he also seems intent on spending his money on doomed cola brands and hot air balloons and on-fire islands rather than pooling it together to make a concerted political charge, because – and I know what I'm saying here, and it surprises me, too – Richard Branson doesn't have quite enough ego to be a Trumpian president-cum-millionaire. I know. I know.

Who has a more punchable face: Morgan or Trump? You can't say both, no. I'm putting you on the spot. I've got your family. We're on the edge of a cliff, here, and I've got henchmen. You don't know what I'm going to do next. I'm screaming at you. You love your nephew, don't you? You wouldn't want him to die now, here, in front of everyone, would you? So just tell me. Tell me now: who has the more punchable face? Morgan, or Trump? It's a simple question. Make it hypothetical, if you want. You have one, allotted, retribution-less punch in the face of one of those two men. Who you swinging at? Come on. I've got your mum. I mean it. You can't tell me, can you? You can't tell me who you'd like to punch more. And that's what makes Piers Morgan our version of Trump.

Yeah, I don't want to alarm anyone, but Katie Price is definitely, definitely BritTrump™. No argument, no disambiguation. Kieran Haylor is her mute, docile, beautiful Melania. Harvey Price dropping cunt-bombs on Loose Women is her Ivanka. Every novel, calendar, Katie Price-themed fragrance launch and magazine cover is her Trump Towers. Katie Price's net worth is an estimated £40 million, and she's done that just by being herself, really hard, really loudly and bombastically, in a spray tan and a "fuck you" attitude, with a weird get-on-with-it emotionlessness that only the hugely successful or brilliant serial killers ever do.

Compare Katie Price and Donald Trump again on the matrix: they are essentially the same person, only Katie Price has better hair. This makes her dominant. In fact, it's possible that Price – essentially Trump without the Trumpian Achilles heel of having the most fucked up hair in the entire world, and with the welcome addition of breasts – is probably a stronger prospect for being Donald Trump than Donald Trump is. A Britain with Katie Price as leader would be a terror zone, for sure. But would she make Britain "Great" again, in her own diamante-studded way? Undoubtedly: yes.

@joelgolby

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