The Trump effect will benefit Farage – and cost the Tories

At the start of a roller-coaster ride, a motorised chain pulls the carriages up to the highest point of the circuit, emitting a clanking sound as a ratchet takes effect. When the clanking stops those in the cars know they are about to go over the top. The canniest politicians across the western world are hearing such a clanking sound right now. In just a month’s time, the second term of President Donald Trump will get underway and those with the closest connections to it are promising us all a wild ride.

According to Steve Bannon, Trump’s former senior adviser and continued confidant, we are going to see ‘as aggressive a first 100 days as any administration going back to FDR’s first 100 days’. ‘Now we have the House and the Senate, there’s support for his legislative agenda, for executive action, all of it. You are going to see people that are very aggressive on the main policies,’ he added.

Those main policies will include the expulsion of illegal immigrants by the tens of thousands, demands that Nato members increase defence spending – perhaps to as high as 3.5