As Winston Churchill said “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” And, Mr Barrett, if you believe in democracy (perhaps you don’t?) then you have to accept that democracies need politicians. So to hate them so unreservedly is cheap and it just makes you look foolish.

I have lived a couple of times in my life in States without politicians, political parties and without even the vestiges of a democratic system. There are no checks and balances on the dictators who run these benighted countries. They do what the hell they like and you either accept that or you suffer. Human Rights can only be possible only when leaders are subject to challenge and, eventually, to the risk of being thrown out of office.

When I lived in the Middle East not one of the countries that I visited had any politicians at all – and that was no Nirvana let me tell you! Whilst the unelected leaders luxuriated in their palaces and their yachts slave labourers worked twelve hours a day for a pittance to construct these monuments to their vanity.

That there has been excess in the current US Election campaign is not doubt true. That there has been some grubby politicking along the way is true as well. But on November 4th the good people of America have the right, God-given or otherwise, to make their choice at the ballot box. To deny yourselves that right would be an offence – and a personal failure of grotesque proportions. And if you take my encouragement to go to the polling station (I hope that you do) when you are there just remember that perhaps a third of the world’s population have no democratic rights at all. They’d be very grateful to have the politicians you so ignorantly and gratuitously choose to despise.