With election day upon us, the battle between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump is on a knife-edge and could produce the tightest result in recent history.

As I was Ambassador in Washington through much of Trump’s time in the Oval Office, I am often asked for an assessment of him. How to explain his continued popularity, despite legal woes that would have downed any other politician?

My advice about Donald Trump is not to underestimate his skillset as a politician. Behind his brashness lurks an instinctive electoral talent without parallel in our time.

To size up his achievement, you only need to recall how he came back from the abyss after the storming of the Capitol in January 2021, when practically the entire Republican establishment turned against him.

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Yet he went on to win this year’s Republican Primary in a canter against impressive opponents in Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis who, in the pre-Trump era, would have wiped the floor with him.

Trump has skilfully played the role of unorthodox insurgent ever since he became a presidential candidate in 2015. Raging against elites turned out to be electoral gold dust as many Americans proved to be........

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