The vast majority of populists are not a danger in terms of what they can achieve. They usually don't understand politics and how to get things done. Any damage they do is usually accidental and not purposeful.
There is, however, a small minority of populists, like Viktor Orban, who are very intelligent, fully understand politics and know very much how to get things done - they've come through the ranks, rather than from nowhere. They make plans and execute them with ruthless efficiency - a bit like the Spanish Inquisition.
Yes, Boris and Trump are dangerous, but only in the comic manner of a bull in a china shop. Their greatest danger is in that their clumsiness and habit of trying to destroy the institutions and sacred protocols that hold them to account will result in democracy being irreparably weakened.
If Trump wins the US election, assuming he's not in prison, he may have learned something about politics during his last term and may surround himself with loyalists, but the problem there is that they'll be as incompetent as him, and no-one is truly loyal to Trump - they're merely coat tail riders.
I'd hesitate to call Sunak a populist, although he does have populist overtones, but it has become manifestly obvious that he doesn't have a clue as to how politics works, and certainly not an inkling about how to get things done, other than just wishing them to happen by some quirk of happenstance.
The sad thing about populism is that any party which hopes to achieve government must embrace some of the lessons of populism if it is to succeed in wresting power from the populists. Democracy will suffer as a consequence, as the genie cannot be put back in the bottle.
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