“His ExcellencyPresident for Life, Field MarshalAlhajiDr. Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, CBE” is not best known for his love of jurisprudence .

Arguably Amin shares a number of characteristics , including a troubling relationship with the Rule of Law , with someone more current and closer to home .

Another Head of Government , also critically reliant on an adviser , shrouded in controversy , hovering somewhere between the background and the spotlight comes to mind . Who also exhibits an exaggerated regard for his own legend and a taste for Vanity Projects .

Of course the name of Idi Amin serves to conjure up the archetypical image of a despot . A man who by his daily actions exhibited a disregard for the rule of law , the constitution , democracy , accountability or any other of the building blocks of good governance .

Amin is best remembered as a mythomaniac and megalomaniac . Infatuated with his own legend which he was given to boosting at every opportunity . He went to the length of awarding himself the Victoria Cross .

He also had the megalomaniac’s appetite for Grand Projects . You may remember the scene in the ‘Last King of Scotland , where a young scottish doctor is dragooned into a hospital building project .

Of course it would be absolutely absurd to draw any comparison between the excesses of a despot with little or no regard for the rule of law , constitutionality , or accountability with any British PM .

Until now .

Obviously pointing out that Johnson shares a taste for huge vanity projects with Amin – whether bridges across the Thames , Channel , or Irish Sea , Designer Buses , Cable Cars or Airports in the Thames Estuary – is an entirely shallow comparison made for no better reason than to heap deserved ridicule upon Johnson

And to be fair there is at least one obvious difference between them .

Idi Amin was said to have been a great royalist who held the Queen in the highest regard .

He would never have brought her into controversy and disrepute .

Unlike Johnson