Toby Neal on politics: American election inquest and how Rachel Reeves' 'working people' get by

Cripes, what a terrifying, troubling, prospect. Four years of news organisations reporting on America with teeth so firmly clenched that their dentures might crack at any moment.

And so the inquest must begin. What went wrong?

I have my own theories. The first is that the American voters didn't know what they were voting for. Didn't anybody think to warn them that they would be electing a fascist, lying, crooked dictator?

If only the Democrats had portrayed Trump as a new Hitler figure whose election would spell the death of democracy. Voters were misled by a populist demagogue who the liberal Left should have called out at every opportunity.

My second theory is ­­- and please don't read the following if of a sensitive disposition ­- that the Americans knew exactly what they were voting for, but voted anyway, ushering in the second Trumpian era with eyes open and in expectation that he will bring them better things.

When Trump was elected for his first term it caused similar shock. One commentator famously said during that campaign, in a phrase which came to define how and why the media were so badly caught out by the Trump phenomenon, “the press takes him literally, but not seriously. His supporters take him seriously, but not literally.”