Commitment to a political party in the UK is not always simple because our system can lead to strategic rather than commitment voting. If you live in a safe constituency for a party you don’t care for, then it is tempting to vote for whichever alternative might unseat them.

And this has played a large part in what has just happened in the USA. It may be that Donald Trump is at heart no more a Republican in the traditional sense than he is a Mexican or a champion of gay rights, but he knew which buttons to press in an environment of endemic distrust of politicians and the establishment in order to make his manifest imperfections, rampant misogyny, prejudice and arrogance less important than his Pied Piper like beguiling of vast number of citizens who thought themselves forgotten and disenfranchised.

He is the man who said in 1998 that if he were ever to run it would be as a Republican because they were ‘the dumbest group of voters in the country.’ QED, you might say. The reality may prove less terrifying than we fear.  But the signs are not propitious.

A Republican party that has all three branches of the administration in its grasp for the first time in almost a century will be unlikely to champion the causes of gun control, global warming, gay and transgender rights, a woman’s right to terminate a dangerous pregnancy, tolerance – the list goes on. 

The lesson of the Berlin Wall has not been learned either. If the Mexican Wall becomes a reality then it will be the most retrograde step in international relations since the cold war.

That Putin, Le Penn et al have welcomed the Trump accession says it all really.And the political malaise that has produced this result in America is not limited to that country. 

There is a global trend towards nationalism that has produced unrest and political extremism throughout the entire world. 

Brexit is a symptom of this.  When surrounded by intolerance and terrorism there is a very natural tendency to withdraw into the corral and look after your own.

We voted to be a little island again with the sole responsibility of looking after ourselves, please. If only we still had a strong agricultural and manufacturing base, we would have more chance of success in that ‘Don’t mind us. We’ll just be quiet over here in the corner’ ambition.