So you don't trust your hard-won instruments of state to constrain him. Today, the man who spent seven years wrecking this country is appearing before an enquiry which will expose his severe shortcomings in the pandemic. He was forensically investigated for his breaches of covid lockdown rules and, though his fixed penalty fine was derisory, his reputation was ruined as his lack of integrity was exposed. We suspected that he wanted to ride roughshod over some laws but the instruments of state pulled him up short. I may be premature but I suspect that he will make a fool of himself today as the enquiry pulls him to pieces. We are currently witnessing strenuous efforts by our government to override human rights laws in order to promote a doomed and pointless populist scheme to deport refugees to an unstable African country. They will fail, because there is equally strenuous opposition, in spite of years of damaging populism.

At worst, Trump will get four more years. It's a fair bet that he'll become a lame duck president half way through. I'm surprised to read your apocalyptic predictions. I don't live there, but I'd like to hear you explain how he could become a dictator. He has done a lot of damage and will do much more, but are you seriously suggesting that there won't be a presidential election in 2028? And, speaking of holding former leaders to account, a vital cog in the wheels of democracy, why hasn't Trump been held to account for conniving in the Jan 6 riot, if not actually inciting it?

Germane to this discussion is the second Reith Lecture, given by Professor Ben Ansell, which I've just listened to. He discussed the uneasy position of liberal democracy between anarchy and autocracy. There are more pressures than just Trump. There's social media and there's AI. Of course, he'll try to use them to his advantage. He hasn't do too well so far with social media but his followers have.