I met him, once. First impressions: not good. Skin: thin. Self-esteem: high. Self-awareness: low. Saving grace: the odd good one-liner. He said people had asked him to be President of the United States (this was 2010) and I remember thinking: pah, fat chance. Proves what I know about people.

The reason I was meeting the then-future president Donald Trump was the honorary degree he was being given by Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen (he was stripped of it later when he called for Muslims to be banned from entering the US). Even at the time, lots of people were bewildered and angry by the idea of an honour for Trump; one RGU alumnus said to me “what’s he done to get it?” Good question.

But this was 2010. Things were different. A lot of us assumed someone like Trump couldn’t ever be elected, me included. All politicians have a high opinion of themselves I guess, but Trump’s was off the scale. He declared that only he could turn the US around. “With proper leadership, the country would do unbelievably well,” he said. He also told me about his golf course near Aberdeen and how only he could have pulled it off: “There were times when we probably should have given up – most people would have.” We saw all of this stuff, times-a-hundred, when he was president.

Now, of course, we have to worry about what he’ll do with his second term and the initial signs are troubling. First: his personality and attitudes are arguably worse: more arrogant, more angry. Second: the people he’s gathering round him: a vaccine sceptic as health secretary, a TV host as defence secretary, and a host of others with toast-dropping CVs who, above all, have shown loyalty to the boss and who Trump knows, when he asks them to do something, will say Yes Sir.

But what bothers me even more is the fact we’ve fallen so far in so short a time, and it’s........

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