It was Harold Wilson, allegedly Keir Starmer’s favourite premier, who first observed that a week was a long time in politics.

All over America, folks will be praying PM Wilson got it right, and that the barely 13 weeks till their own election will be enough to find a winner who will spare them four more years of Trump.

Most of the rest of the world share their sense of panic. There is a famous picture of Trump sitting smugly, cross-armed, at a major summit whilst leaders from the major global economies tried to reason with him. They might as well have addressed the wall behind the US President.

Trump took to calling Joe Biden both “crooked” and the “worst President the US ever had” as soon as word came out that Joe was finally standing down. Surely one of the most lurid examples of pots labelling rival kettles black.

Trump has somehow survived a host of scandals and court appearances which would have sunk any other candidate without trace. Instead he has managed to paint himself as a victim and a martyr. The bullet which apparently grazed his ear has already played into this sorry narrative.

There was a time when the Republican Party, whilst admittedly not a group with whom I have much in common, strutted its stuff as a right-of-centre but respectable political outfit. That was then. That was a time when candidates from all parties would be swiftly binned if they strayed from the marital home or were caught crying in public.

Now it seems swathes of voters, even so-called Christians, are prepared to sell their souls and send their cheques to a convicted felon and alleged serial fraudster and tax evader. It is now the Trump party, pure and simple.

Will there ever be a Harris Party? Nobody is taking serious bets, because in truth nobody yet knows how this extraordinary psychodrama will play out.

Kamala doesn’t seem to have made much of an impact as a Veep, but then very few number twos do in America unless unforeseen circumstances propel them into the top job, like Gerald Ford and LBJ.