Donald Trump could still beat the odds and become President – using the Brexit model

There is a part of America where people shout ‘hell yeah’ or maybe ‘amen’, where preachers opine that Hillary is worse than Satan without recognising the irony of that statement. They don’t worry overly much about Trump’s values – because he isn’t Hillary

Mr Trump has reportedly tapped Indiana Governor Mike Pence, left, as his vice-presidential pick, after considering former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (Getty)

“They won’t elect Donald Trump,” my friend said with confidence.

We’d stopped for a drinks break in the middle of our wheelchair basketball session, and after indulging in a little gentle teasing of our opponents – who were losing to us in a two-on-two game – the discussion had turned to politics.

I shudder to say it, but I found myself disagreeing with him.

A Trump Presidency would be a disaster for America and an even bigger disaster for the world, but he’s beaten the odds again and again and it’s now down to a choice between him and Hillary Clinton. Brexit was a choice between sanity and a leap into the unknown that will cause disaster for Britain and perhaps for the world as well, but its supporters won.

At this point you’re probably asking what on earth Trump’s insurgent bid for the US Presidency has to do with Britain’s disastrous referendum on its membership of the EU.

Let me explain.

There are chilling similarities in what Trump is doing and what Leave did to secure its victory, and they go beyond the fact that Leave was led by the Trump with a thesaurus that is Boris Johnson.

Both, in essence, have sought to sidestep rational arguments with an appeal to the gut, and their messages have resonated with vast swathes of people who haven’t seen much benefit from decades of economic growth. People who are struggling, and who frequently see immigration as a threat to what little they do have. A fear that is preyed upon by the populist right.

These people don’t see the lie when people like Trump, or the cynical cabal of businessmen who funded the Leave campaign, imply they will put their interests first with their cries of Britain/America First. They don’t seem to grasp that Trump, and the Leave leaders, will ultimately serve only the interests of themselves and their wealthy friends.

I wonder if part of the reason for that is the legacy of the financial crisis, which imposed a brutal toll on both sides of the Atlantic and badly shook what little faith people had in the political classes. The banking industry was bailed out with taxpayers’ money and within a matter of months the bonus bandwagon was back on the road. No one was called to account and no one paid much attention to the difficulties those taxpayers were facing. They were left to stew in an angry silence.

Too often those on the progressive side – the Democrats in the US, or Labour in Britain – subscribed to a cosy economic consensus and, secure in their bubbles, they paid too little attention to those left on the outside looking in.

Now with people coming along saying, “we will put you first, we hear your concerns”, is it any wonder that they so readily find an audience? Even if that message represents a confidence trick.

As the great Jon Stewart said during a head-to-head debate with Fox News blowhard Bill O’Reilly, “the populist right offers simple solutions to complex problems”.

The trouble is, people are buying into those simple solutions on both sides of the Atlantic. Exit the EU and things will be better. I’ll build a wall between the US and Mexico, and impose a ban on Muslims and that’ll keep you safe. So much easier than trying to understand the intricacies of the working families’ tax credit or the health marketplaces of Obamacare.

If progressives want to get back on to the front foot they don’t just need better policies, they really need better messaging.

Another reason for my Trump nightmares is that people too often forget that just as multinational, multiracial, outward-looking London is out of step with large parts of the rest of England, so there is a huge country beyond the parts of America Europeans frequent and which give them the impression they know it when they leave.

Most go to the big cities on the seaboards; New York, Washington, Boston, LA. If they have kids, they probably stay within the bubble of Florida’s theme park land and if they don’t, perhaps it’s an adults-only equivalent in Nevada.

There is another America they simply don’t see. A few years ago my wife and I spent some time in it, starting out in Nashville, then driving on to Memphis and from there to New Orleans via Mississippi. We also ventured out of the cities and into the rural heartland, where it is church on Sunday and the schools have electronic signs outside on which the legend “We support our troops” is on permanent loop.

Walking through Nashville, a man selling leather belts from a stall engaged us in conversation. He was an anglophile who had been to London, and he seemed pleasant enough, until he opined that the way the US went wrong in Iraq was in not aping the methods used by the Japanese in China during World War Two. We made our excuses and left.

The next day the city seemed to have been taken over by a religious group; teenage girls in pink T-shirts printed with a bible verse. Their grown-up leaders were similarly decked out in brown T-shirts with a different verse.

These are just snapshots, it’s true, but this is a part of America where, when the College Republicans tweet #NeverHillary as they have been, people shout “hell yeah” or maybe “amen”, where preachers opine that Hillary is worse than Satan without recognising the irony of that statement. They don’t worry overly much about Trump’s alleged “New York” values because he isn’t Hillary. Even his infidelities can be forgiven. Because he isn’t Hillary.

Combine people like this, who will deliver the traditional red states to Trump, with those in the rust belt attracted by his cry of “America First”, and no to trade deals that destroy jobs, and his ability to portray himself as an outsider who will “get things done” and “Make American Great Again”. Oh yes, and his pandering to racism. Just as it was with Brexit among people who looked at the metropolitan values of Remain campaigners like me, and snarled.

It’s true, Clinton is ahead in most polls, and she enjoys a comfortable lead in important “battleground” states such as Florida. But Remain was ahead in the polls when the referendum campaign kicked off and look where we are now.

Clinton is also a short-priced favourite – she’s 2-5 to win with Paddy Power. Trump is at 9-4. But guess what? The bookies got Brexit wrong. The odds favoured the establishment’s choice of remain, only for a bitter, resentful and right-wing part of that establishment to lie and cheat its way to a result.

Trump is a member of American’s establishment of wealth but trades as an outsider against Hillary, the ultimate insider and a politician who inspires distrust even among some of her natural supporters. And as I said above, he’s made a habit of beating the odds.

I’m not saying Trump will win. I hope – hell I’ll even pray – that America can show that it is better than the old, and fading, colonial power that is today’s Britain. Perhaps its “terrifyingly liberal” millennials – I quote pollster Frank Luntz – will do what they failed to do in Britain’s referendum by turning out in numbers to vote and thus hold their own nightmare at bay. Perhaps America’s women will turn out in force alongside African Americans and Hispanics to make him pay for his casual misogyny and racism.

I hope so. But after that Brexit vote, and having had some experience of the “other” America, I don’t have my friend’s confidence.