Russell Jones's Week Moment: Jabba The Pizza Hut and The Triumph of Hair Hitler

The bestselling author of 'The Decade in Tory' on the real causes of Donald Trump's grotesquely successful election victory

To quote Bill Clinton, “It’s the economy, stupid”.

Except, of course, Bill Clinton didn’t say it, his advisor James Carville did. Then, as now, inaccurate reporting is dangerous, and it’s the people behind the scenes that you really need to watch out for.

Which is why – at the risk of deepening your already crippling levels of existential anxiety in a week like this – it’s not a little disturbing that the author of Donald Trump’s policy wish-list, Project 2025, quite genuinely proposes burning the Boy Scouts of America.

Britain’s Girl Guides are currently safe from immolation, because comfortably 80% of Britain hates Hair Hitler and all he stands for. And in an entirely non-scientific poll I conducted of people despairingly shrieking in my local dog park, it seems the nation is not universally happy with the return of the first non-consecutive US President since Grover Cleveland.

But the vast unpopularity of Groper Cleveland is an aspect of British Culture that has failed to seep through the thick skins of Britain’s Culture Warriors. We flushed and flushed and flushed, but Kwasi Kwarteng has bobbed back to the surface again to inform us that Trump “has only enhanced America’s leadership in the world”. The never-knowingly-right former Chancellor likened Vladimir Gluten to Dwight D Eisenhower, who wrote:

“Should any party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group of course, that believes you can do these things… Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”

Their numbers are no longer negligible, but stupidity remains, especially regarding the economy.