Will Donald Trump have the last laugh?

‘I am getting nervous. But it’s not because Trump is good. It’s because people are stupid’. So said the (usually) very funny US comedian Bill Maher on TV recently. When I heard him say it, my first thought was: Trump’s going to win. Not because Maher is right, but because I recognised something from the EU referendum campaign, when the great and the good – from metropolitan comedians to overpaid columnists — piled in to suggest that Brexit backers were all dimwitted lemmings, marching zombie-like off a cliff. Pro-EU devotees, some from positions of astonishing privilege, were punching down. It wasn’t a good look, and it harmed their cause.

The parallels between Brexit and Trumpism are largely inaccurate. Brexit has been painted by some American commentators as indicative of a dark tide rising across the Atlantic, but this is far from the truth. Polls indicate that the primary reason for voting ‘Leave’ was national sovereignty and the belief that British laws should not be made in Belgium.