Dutch, French, Germans, Trump, May, Article 50, water torture, voting fraud and alternative facts. The world is building a wall of populist politics. And we are going to pay for it

Right-wing European politicians who do not like the free movement of people all moved to Germany, where they agreed free movement of people who weren’t white and Christian was terrible.

The leaders of the Dutch, French, German and Italian populist parties gathered for a conference and toasted Donald Trump and Brexit before uniting in cries of “lugenpresse” – lying press, a slogan last heard in Nazi times.

In Washington, Trump was accusing the media of lying about how many people were at his inauguration, his campaign adv iser Kel lyanne Conway explaining that while photos showed empty seats, she had “alternative facts” which imagined the crowds were much larger.

Alternative facts didn’t stop there, Trump signing several executive orders which set about denying women in developing countries proper health care, closing down debate on climate change and beginning to build the wall between the US and Mexico.

The president of Mexico planned to visit Trump but assured everyone he wouldn’t be paying for the wall – provoking the question why on earth he was going to Washington.

As he mused on this, Trump tweeted he was feeble. So the Mexican president cancelled and Trump promised a 20 per cent import tax on Mexican goods to pay for the border wall.

On a roll, Trump also initiated an inquir y into voter fraud, claiming only crooked ballots could have given his rival Hillary Clinton victory in the popular vote last November.

People were about to object, given the only person who thinks there was fraud is Trump himself… but they became understandably distracted when he said in a TV interview that he thought waterboarding torture was a good idea.

Theresa May already had her bags packed for the US Capitol and spent some of the week saying she wouldn’t stand for any of that pussy- grabbing stuff from the new president. In almost her next breath, she started to f lirt with Trump, say ing she thought “sometimes opposites attract”.

Before she left the UK, the Supreme Court ruled that she had to go to Parliament to trigger Article 50, the clause which starts Brexit negotiations.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn thought this gave him an open goal at Prime Minister’s Questions, preparing to ask why she wouldn’t publish a white paper on Brexit.

May began PMQs by saying she would publish a white paper on Brexit and Corbyn was left slack-jawed, only able to ask for the date of its publication.

Behind him, his party let out a collective sigh of despair, no longer clear what Labour’s position is on Brexit but pretty clear what they thought of his parliamentary skills.

Another Labour frontbencher quit and others voiced alarm at the three- line whip from head office saying they all had to vote in favour of Brexit.

Alternative facts had become the popular term of the moment and was used by opponents to attack the shambles of the Scottish Government budget, where the numbers only add up if you are using magic beans and an invisible abacus.

To no one’s surprise, the Supreme Court also ruled that Holyrood had no authority over Brexit, which meant Nicola Sturgeon had to pretend to be surprised before she issued yet another threat that if someone didn’t appreciate her surprise, she’d hold another independence referendum.

Her anti-Brexit minister Mike Russell avoided the “alternative facts” phrase but said the UK Government were “not telling the truth” about the less-than-special relationship between London and Edinburgh. He added that another indy referendum was now in “Westminster’s hands”, which sounded like a contradiction of Sturgeon’s threat but wasn’t if you listen to this stuff for long enough.

There was no response to this from London, with May too focused on her special relationship with Trump. She f lew off in an elated mood, thinking she had got control of things at last.

She had U-turned on just about everything she had ever said about Brexit but managed to make it look like statesmanship, not slipperiness.

Double bonus – for which she may have given a small fist pump – was that the disaster of leaving the single market might be alleviated by a new economic pact with the US.

If she can strike a deal with Washington which allows Britain to trade with America tariff free, that might make up for whatever chaos is caused by leaving the tariff-free EU.

And so the great roundabout of opportunism and populism turns, so much going on that nobody has much time for a dying NHS, failing education system and the plight of those not as rich as politicians.