A land in which billionaires will pay much reduced tax, but too impoverished to afford decent schools, universal health care or provision for the aged and infirm. A land where bureaucrats have less power, and police have more. A land which refuses to control its guns. And a land in which about half the population must receive heavy financial support because their education, industriousness and employment cannot feed families, sustain good health, and provide clean water. An atomising country where politics no longer turns on a sense of community or the concept of the common good, but the demonisation of immigrants and entrenching the poverty of the poor. What a triumph of American politics, and JD Vance, that those who suffer most from such theories are among those most enthusiastic for it.

Martyrdom transforms Trump