Two odd men: and our destiny

Donald Trump does not tick any of the boxes that should define the characteristics of a 'suitable' candidate for the Presidency of the USA: but he is in office, and is making a big difference to the role.

Jean-Claude Juncker emerged as President of the EU Commission from a world of smoke and mirrors, and has taken upon himself a mission to punish the British people for having the temerity to indulge in an outburst of democracy that resulted in the Brexit decision. His recent statements have convinced me that the European Union is intellectually and morally bankrupt. If he is indeed determined to try to hurt the British economy so much that no other country will be tempted to follow the UK to the exit, then that destroys any case for remaining in the unaudited claque of states that continues to pursue the path to mutual destruction called 'ever-closer union'.

There is a lot that one could be scared about in leaving the European Union. Scots have good cause to assess their economic future without English subsidies, and gifted with abandoned oil wells. All of us should be scared at the decisions along the way being left to the prime minister, whose lifelong obsession with fashion makes a sorry sight in the photographs in the daily press. The real concern about her fitness for the role that she has so powerfully embraced is her lack of economic knowledge and her lack of international experience. If she looks back to her predecessors, she has some appalling precedents.

Heath led the country into the Common Market, admitting to his lickspittles that he had deliberately and consistently lied to parliament and people to the effect that the plain words of the Treaty of Rome would have no operative effect in declaring the ambition for a European Union to emerge from the EEC.

Thatcher boasted about recovering a rebate on what all the other member states recognised was an unsustainable contribution to common funds; the quietly went on to sell the country's sovereignty as the move to create the European Union.

Major broke his hold on power and undermined his surprising popularity, by agreeing to the Maastricht Treaty, branding his many principled and opportunist Conservative critics as 'bastards'.

Blair would have led the country into the disaster if the Euro, and blithely followed the EU Commission's line on most other matters.

Then Cameron caused the current chaos. He apparent thought that he would finally dish the anti-EU cohort, whom he misjudged to be trivially small. Then, disastrously, he allowed the commission and the continental powers to treat him with utter contempt in his supposed 'reform' of the Union. Then he persuaded parliament to grant a referendum: which became a chance for the nation to vote against the EU, and against loathed figures like George Osborne and Juncker; and, above all, against the despised 'political class'.

That is the inglorious position in which Mrs May finds herself. Nobody sane envies her.

Trump comes next...