We thrive on lies and scare stories every election year

To anyone who doubts the potency of the post-reason and post-fact political world, where politics, like football, demands absolute unquestioning devotion to your team whatever its defects, I have three words for you, Donald J Trump.

The celebrity billionaire now sits in the world’s most powerful office as the President of the US after his inauguration on Friday. Anyone who watched the American presidential campaigns must have been shocked at how voters on the right were willing to believe anything evil about Hillary Clinton, even from obviously fake news-sites, while their opponents on the left were committed to despise anything Trump even when he supported causes they believed in. Goodbye to facts. Goodbye to reason.