Could Britons ever vote for someone like Donald Trump? It is a question exercising the minds of many rational, fearful people in these parts, as the mental mandarin is sworn in for another four years of mayhem and lunacy across the pond.

For anyone old enough to remember, there was a UK politician who bore a striking resemblance to The Donald, but who never garnered enough votes to remotely trouble the key-handlers of Number 10.

Decades before Trump was promising to invade Greenland, rename the Gulf of Mexico, and deport millions of immigrants, we had the monster loony ravings of Screaming Lord Sutch.

Among his policies – which in hindsight now appear strikingly similar to those of the new leader of the free world – was a pledge that the constituency of South Hams would be renamed South Hams, Egg and Chips and that immigration would be slashed by replacing employees of the UK Border Force with GP receptionists.

For those who fear a Trump presidency will see an unprecedented assault on the US constitution, Screaming Lord Sutch once proposed that UK general elections should include a three-year “cooling off” period, in case voters wanted to change their minds. Watch this space.

Read more by Carlos Alba

He also recommended that anyone who could prove that they, or their descendants, emigrated to the UK before 55AD could stay, while everyone else would be repatriated to their original country.

Irrespective of where you stand politically, none of us can deny the extent to which Trump has shifted the dial on the way politics is done.

Even compared with his first election in 2016 – and with an arguably........

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