We are badly governed. This is why Donald Trump might win next month.

If the sensible people knew how to govern this wouldn't happen. They don't, so it will and not just in America.

Donald Trump is a bad man. I know this because pretty much every mainstream media outlet, not to mention countless pundits, pollsters and opinionists, has told me that Donald Trump is a bad man. I don’t need to run over the accusations (criminal, sex pest, fascist, racist, sexist and just plain rude) to appreciate that, in the eyes of everyone who thinks they matter, Donald Trump is a bad man.

So riddle me this? Why is there an evens chance, possibly better, that Donald Trump, this bad man, will be elected as the next president of the United States? Surely the American people aren’t such suckers to put Trump back in the White House after, we’re told, the disaster of his first presidency? The days of America’s embarrassment were ended in 2020, except for the cosplay insurrection of January 6th 2021, so surely a wise Democrat is a shoo in on November 5th this year?

Many in the media - and pretty much every left of centre politician - respond to these questions by telling us that the problem is the public. All those millions of Americans planning to vote for Donald Trump have been swizzled, misled, deceived and conned by an avalanche of lies and misinformation on social media and the handful of right-wing TV or print channels. Or to put it how many of these experts believe in their hearts - most of the American people are stupid.

Nobody, in responding to the question - why Donald Trump - asks a different question. Perhaps Donald Trump, like populists in Europe, merely reflects a sort of “fuck you” from Americans fed up with being governed so badly. The most shared clip from Kamala Harris’s interview on Fox News is where Bret Baier asks the Vice President why 79% of Americans in a poll said the ‘country is on the wrong track’ and she attempts to blame this finding on Donald Trump. The US public, including lots who are going to vote Democrat, believe that their country is badly governed. Had it, in their view, been better governed since 2021 then it is unlikely that Donald Trump would be a whisker away from getting elected president.

And, by the standards of the west, America is a long way from being the worst governed nation. If we look at France, Germany, Canada and the UK we see the same picture of the general public looking on in abject horror as politicians, public sector leaders, media ‘experts’, NGOs and academics make an absolute mess of government. In the UK the public, without a great deal of eagerness, dumped a sleaze-ridden, inadequate, petty and divided Tory party for what now appears to be a sleaze-ridden, inadequate, petty and divided Labour Party. For all the grand words and talk of mission, nobody is remotely interested in governing better, just in blaming the other side for any and every problem.

There was a time when, even through differing ideological lenses, the media, academia and public sector leadership shared with the wider public a broad view of what matters - make people’s lives better, protect the nation and her allies, sustain liberty and uphold the rule of law. Today the media and political class, almost like courtiers at Versaille, flutter around worrying about who is in or out, inhabiting a world of gossip, spite and back-stabbing entirely unconnected with the real issues facing the public they pretend to govern. Worse when the real issues arise the response is either to lecture or to patronise rather than pay attention to the problem.

We are badly governed. Mostly, but not exclusively, because the personal objectives of those involved in government are directed to the sustaining of position not the delivery of service. All decisions are either made collectively or else distantly (sometimes both) meaning that nobody can be blamed, held accountable or have to take responsibility. There are legions of disastrous results from bad government - Flint’s poisoned water, Spanish care homes, English blood transfusions, burning tower blocks in central London - but only institutions are accountable and institutions can’t be made responsible. Or, if big efforts are made, some more junior officials can be blamed rather than the politicians, directors and chief executives under whose leadership the disasters occurred.

Donald Trump is the available lightning rod for regular folk whose experience of public administration is that nobody cares, nobody wants to help, and most of them have no interest in doing a good job. There are some headline issues - immigration, queues for healthcare, endless lectures about equalities and net zero - but, truth be told, these are just the most obvious symptoms of the cancer running rampant in our bodies politic. For the likes of Kamala Harris, Keir Starmer and Emmauel Macron the task isn’t to fix the system, to get the institutions that govern us to do their job. No, these leaders say what is necessary to get (or attempt to get) little changes in polling numbers so as to keep the sinking ship of state sailing for another day.

When it suits Harris of Starmer to shout “Refugees Welcome” and accuse concerned people of racism, then that’s what they’ll do. And when, later, they say they’ll stop the boats or close the border, the Keir and Kamala waffle and dissemble to try and make out that was what they always wanted. But it is just words. They don’t intend any action. Just like the words about fixing public finances, seeing that poorly people are treated more quickly, housing the homeless or getting prices under control. We’ll be promised a cure but the treatment turns out to be an initiative here, a piffling amount of money there, not a comprehensive fix for systems that fail us.

Instead their actions just make things worse (although Harris, Starmer and their ilk will lie by saying this ain’t so). The crazy pursuit of Net Zero in Britain means people are planning for what happens when there’s a blackout over Christmas because the wind doesn’t blow. And over in the USA promises of rent controls, price caps and anti-’gouging’ laws result in higher prices, more homelessness and closed businesses. Everywhere more priority is given the race, sex and gender of the police officer, firefighter or prison guard than whether they can do the actual job. Rainbow flags are flown from town halls, the right flavour of lanyard hangs round the managers’ necks and middle aged lesbians are chased through the courts because they hinted that maybe men can’t turn into girls (and anyway lesbians don’t sleep with penis-owners).

We are badly governed because the people in charge think it more important not to offend campaign groups, the perpetually offended and grifters cashing in on the nonsense of intersectionality. Nobody tells opportunist academics exploiting - for clicks, likes and money - a ridiculous sensitivity about colonial history, slavery and ‘whiteness’.  Our museums and art galleries are trashed while the public stands by bemused and disturbed by what they see. All while opening hours are cut, libraries are closed and children are subject to inappropriate propaganda.

We are badly governed because every decision is made by a committee, because that means nobody is accountable. The public is lectured about its behaviour and warned that they won’t get looked after if they get cross and upset with arrogant public servants after waiting in line for hours. And the simple things we used to take for granted - street sweeping, emptying bins, plants flowers in parks - simply stop happening. Meanwhile public employees go on strike for more money. Or just go off sick because someone misgendered them or their manager spoke out of turn.

We are badly governed. The comfortably off don’t care about the economy so long as they stay comfortably off. And politicians promise the earth but deliver nothing except platitudes, spite and petty pieces of new law designed simply to please the gallery. Which means that even after a decade of almost everyone telling us that Donald Trump is a bad man, enough Americans may think “fuck you” so the bad man is back in the White House. If the sensible people had the first clue how to govern properly this wouldn’t happen. But they don’t, so it will.