“Buffoonish”, “cartoonish”, and like a “demented” person are some of the less extreme descriptions the Australian media has applied to Donald Trump in recent weeks. In Washington, London and Sydney the price of entry into polite society is loud contempt for Trump and his “populism”. It’s a price some in the Australian media are all too willing to pay. In any case, it’s easier to abuse someone and call them names than to try and understand them.

John Gray, a British philosopher of the centre-left was correct when he remarked recently that “populism” has “no clear meaning, but it is used by liberals [in the American sense] to refer to political blowback against the social disruption produced by their own policies”.