The intolerant left is driving moderates into the arms of the right - Royston Smith

Most of us don’t buy into the extreme theories of a corrupt mainstream media working with the elites, but it is they who have enabled Donald Trump.

They are so arrogant they refuse to understand or accept that people might not think and behave as they do. They have created a backlash that has seen Trump win the White House with a landslide, the Republicans win the Senate and likely the House of Representatives, and the Democrats left humiliated.

They are incapable of reflecting on recent elections, not just in the US but across the West, and coming up with the obvious common denominator.

In the USA they are deploying the same tactics used by obsessive remain voters during the Brexit Referendum in the UK.

They accuse those that disagree with them as being uneducated, a basket of deplorables, fascists or garbage. These are not the words of children in a playground. These are the words of Hilary Clinton, Kamala Harris and President Biden, amongst others.

The left, the woke, the celebs around the world were queuing up to denounce Trump. “He will never be President” they said, with almost one voice. How gut-wrenching it must be for them all now. They are, of course, entitled to their opinions. They are not world leaders or senior diplomats.

The same cannot be said for Sir Keir Starmer and his outspoken Foreign Secretary. David Lammy didn’t find himself the top UK diplomat by accident, Starmer chose him.

In the first weeks and months of the Labour Government we have seen countless examples of the Prime Minister’s shocking lack of judgement, but the appointment of Lammy takes incompetence to another level.

Starmer knew what Lammy had said about President Trump before he appointed him. He was fully aware about Lammy’s Trump is a "tyrant" and "a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath" comment.

But it doesn’t stop there. Sir Keir Starmer tweeted (on Elon Musk’s social media platform) “An endorsement from Donald Trump tells you everything you need to know about what is wrong with Boris Johnson’s politics and why he isn’t fit to be prime minister.”

If, as he claimed, Trump’s endorsement made Boris Johnson unfit to be Prime Minister he was, in effect, suggesting Donald Trump wasn’t fit to be President.

LATEST OPINION FROM MEMBERSHIP:

• Hate crime nightmare for columnist Allison Pearson is a battle for us all - Kelvin MacKenzie
• 'Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby should have taken a lesson from shamed politicians'
• How Keir Starmer is picking up tips from Donald Trump - Christopher Hope Baku analysis

And Wes Streeting, now Labour’s Health Secretary, said: “Trump is such an odious, sad, little man. Imagine being proud to have that as your President.”

This is how the so-called tolerant left demonstrates their tolerance. These are the people who are driving moderate people into the arms of the right. It doesn’t matter how many times it’s said, they just can’t see it.

If you disagree with them prepare to be ridiculed, silenced, and cancelled. This is where liberal democracy finds itself and why it is in decline.

We fair little better in the UK. In July’s general election we were left to choose between a dysfunctional Conservative Party and Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. Our electorate were left with little choice.

I have said before that the Reform Party in the UK could displace the Conservatives as the opposition to Labour, but I don’t think they will.

Under the Leadership of Kemi Badenoch, the Conservatives have an opportunity to reimagine themselves as an actual Conservative Party and abandon all the social engineering forced upon normal people in this country by the elites, the advertisers, and the media.

Do and promise less but do it better and respect those you seek to represent. They are not a means to an end; they are the end.