A sneering elite could land us all with Trump

With less than a week to go before America votes, hillary Clinton’s 12-point lead has melted away like New York snow. trump, incredibly, is now ahead in the latest poll.

hillary’s camp is fighting back hard, of course, using every ounce of Establishment power to limit the damage caused by the FBi investigation into 650,000 emails found on a laptop used by one of her top aides and her estranged husband Anthony Weiner. he of the X-rated selfies.

When it comes to tawdry sexual behaviour, there’s not much to choose between the two camps. indeed, if anything, hillary’s side comes off worse. At least trump has always been an out-and-out sexist pig, whereas Bill Clinton and Anthony Weiner did all their perverting behind a veneer of political correctness.

But all this is just noise. the most serious problem Clinton faces has nothing to do with emails or rogue males. it’s all to do with attitude.

the behaviour of Clinton and her supporters is strikingly similar to that of the Remain camp in the runup to the EU Referendum, as their attempts to scare British voters off supporting Brexit escalated into self-righteous hysteria.

And if team Clinton don’t do something quickly, the same blind arrogance that brought down Cameron’s leadership could end up handing trump the White house.

the question facing America is, of course, different to the one we faced here in June. But the political circumstances are very similar.

ON thE one hand the Establishment: slick, sophisticated, selfassured. On the other, the challengers: rough, ready and occasionally raw. But above all, real.

And this is key. Because it’s not so much about what trump and his supporters do, it’s what they don’t do. they don’t, for example, get sanctimonious multi-millionaire celebrities who live in 27-bedroom hollywood mansions to lecture middle-class Americans struggling to make ends meet about how to lead their lives.

they don’t accuse those who are worried about the impact of high immigration and rising crime rates of being racist retards.

they don’t get leading liberal lights to satirise them on late-night talk shows, or take the mickey out of how they dress, or their funny rural accents or bad teeth.

they don’t get media darlings such as stand-up comedian Amy Schumer to humiliate them live on stage or suggest that they all like to sleep with each other’s offspring.

they don’t give the impression that they are conducting this campaign with all the humility of Marie Antoinette bestowing her bounty on a starving people.

in short, they don’t profess to have a monopoly on the moral high ground and think that anyone who dares to question their world view is so beyond the pale they deserve to be excluded from the democratic process on the basis that, as our very own David Attenborough has just argued over Brexit, mere members of the public are not ‘wise’ enough to make the right choices.

if there is one lesson to be learned from the EU referendum, it’s that there is nothing voters like less than being bossed around by those who believe they have a God-given right to rule. Remember when Obama came over here telling us all we had to vote Remain? the response of most Britons was: Who are you to tell me what to do?

the power of the ordinary individual may not amount to much on a day-to-day basis; but patronise and insult voters long and hard enough and they will rise up and strike you down.

i don’t want Donald trump to become the next President of the United States. he is an egomaniac and a threat to global security. But, like Remain, liberal America might just be about to find their smug certainties have brought about their worst nightmare.