The most interesting thing about Trump is that huge numbers of solid, heart-of-gold people support him knowing what kind of person he is.

Look closely at his choice of J D Vance to run as his candidate for vice president. Where Trump is impulsive, His book, Hillbilly Elegy, describes communities that are abandoned by middle classes, forgotten, condescended to, or despised by “the liberal elites and the free traders of the Wall Street Journal”.

This feels like 1938 must have felt. Europe then was threatened by violent and expansionary nationalists. The international order was based on the powerful getting their way, not a rules based system. Back then, another Ohio senator, Robert Taft, was a powerful opponent of the Democrat’s New Deal (or “Inflation Reduction Act” if you need a parallel). An isolationist who opposed American entry into World War II, he opposed the formation of Nato after it. Trump and Vance will end US support for the people of Ukraine. They will weaken Nato. Vance was the lone senator who opposed a Nato-backed no-fly zone in Ukraine. “He would capitulate to Russia and sacrifice the freedom of our allies in Ukraine,” Republican Liz Cheney said on X. Trump will plan to return from a summit - might it be in Munich? - declaring, as Chamberlain did, that peace has been achieved through appeasement.

Trump and the billionaire backers like Elon Musk and Bill Ackman admire Putin because they want a world run by kleptocrats and plutocrats. The greatest threat to them is a rules-based system, in which no one is above the law.

Our problems do not come from global institutions that are too strong, or global laws of trade, human rights and sovereignty. The real problem is the opposite, says David Miliband. Global institutions that are too weak, global laws and norms that are not enforced, global justice that is denied. “Our flammable world is full of tinder and full of arsonists; some of them are in power; so we need fire fighters, preventing fire and fighting fire with bravery, with insight, with innovation.”

Josie's Post column is here.