Is this the same thing?

I find it strange how the media seem to think that the Brexit vote in the UK and the election of Trump are somehow related.

Last June, I voted to leave the EU.  I didn't do it because I believed that immigration was wrong - I actually believe that in manageable numbers it's a good thing.  I didn't do it because I felt I'd been left behind by the political class - I've had a very good and very lucrative career, thank you.  And I didn't do it because I was persuaded by a particular newspaper - I don't read them.

I did it because, on balance, I felt that the EU had become an organisation driven by principles that I don't share.  An organisation run by political appointees, rather than democratically-elected, accountable representatives.  An organisation that gives too much space to lobbyists, that listens too much to commercial interests to make rational decisions that are truly good for the people of Europe.

No, I'm not a conspiracy theorist.  I don't doubt that there are any number of politicians out there who actually try to bring their idea of "good" to the people they represent.  However, I don't believe that companies or corporations can do the same thing.  Companies exist to make profit for their shareholders, and everything they do is about maximising that profit.

And when they get big enough, and influential enough, they use that influence to try to steer government policy.  And with Europe, they can steer twenty-eight governments at the same time by influencing directives, which then have to be enacted in national laws..

I don't like that.

And having worked in the finance sector for the last thirty years, I was rather surprised, to say the least, that the former PM of Luxembourg, that little country of 600,000 (very rich) people, should be the consensus candidate for President of the European Commission a couple of years back.  Here was the man who had - in 20 years as Luxembourg's Minister for Finances - steered the little country to its position as the top tax haven in Europe.  And this guy was the best that Europe had to offer?  Or did it have something to do with the influence of all those global multi-nationals whom he had persuaded to store their money in the Grand Duchy? And when I heard his eve-of-the-referendum comments on the possibility of any future renegotiations (it was de Gaulle's "non" again) I didn't even need to answer the question for myself.  I voted Leave.

Mr Trump, however, is altogether another matter.  

Try as I might, all I can see is somebody who thinks that running a country is the same as running a corporation.

It isn't.

In a corporation, you only hire people you think will succeed, and when they don't, you sack them.  Countries have a lot of people who will probably never succeed, but you still have to provide for them, because you can't sack them.

The tragedy for me is that Trump managed somehow to persuade those people that he - the man who seemed to take pride in the fact that he had paid very little in tax for the last 20 years - would help them.  Paying tax actually means helping other people who aren't as lucky as you are.  If you're a sentient human being then you'll see it that way.

So for me, voting Leave in the U.K. does not make me a Trump supporter.  The real problem for the people of the US, as I saw it last November, was that the only alternative to Trump was to vote for Hillary Clinton.  I was a big Bill fan (after all, he played the saxophone) but in this case I think I would have had to vote for None of the Above.