Welcome to what, in years to come, will henceforth be referred to in politics textbooks the world over as peak idiocy.

Seldom in the recent history of humankind has such a confluence of bastardry, sub-Machiavellian mendacity and downright barking-mad behaviour occurred on both sides of the Atlantic simultaneously.

First up we cross the pond to what is rapidly becoming the most interminable election in US history.

Even for a country that elected “Tricky Dicky” Nixon, the senile ham actor Ronald “Obe Ron Kenobe” Reagan and Bush pere and fils who between them had the lowest IQs of any president in the nation’s history, the current pantomime is beyond the realms of bathos.

Even amid the toxic cesspit that is US politics it is rare for one candidate to effectively call for the assassination of the other, especially given their less than perfect track record on such matters. But that is exactly what happened this week.

At a time when the US is riven by unrest, racism and inequality on a level not witnessed since the repeal of the Jim Crow laws and where mass shootings are becoming an almost daily occurrence one may have thought it did not behove Republican rabble-rouser and professional bigot Donald Trump to suggest, at a public rally, that the gun lobby had a solution to the Clinton problem, literally, in their sweaty grasp.

If history teaches us anything it is that it doesn’t take much to get a nut-job to pull a trigger. John Hinckley, who was recently released from prison after serving over 30 years, notoriously shot Reagan in a totally unsolicited bid to impress the teenage actress Jodie Foster after having become creepily obsessed with her in her role as a child prostitute in the film Taxi Driver.

And yet despite, or more likely because of his endlessly egregious comments on everything from immigrants to Muslims to women millions of rednecks want Trump to be their commander in chief.

Trump’s campaign team predictably attempted to row back on the remark saying he had only meant that they exercise their vote, not their trigger fingers.

Pull the other one, it plays Yankee Doodle Dandy.

But moving swiftly onwards… On this side of the water we have the ludicrously hypocritical Owen Smith, so intent on “saving” Labour from the “Corbynistas” that he is prepared to tear up the entire rule book for the party in his bid to steal power from the elected leader of the moment.

Smith, who still seems to cling to his fatuous claim to be the radical, anti-establishment candidate in the internecine bloodletting exercise, has done little or nothing to bolster his non-existent credentials.

He can dress himself up as some kind of socialist Spartacus seeking to cast off the equally fictitious yoke of tyranny within the PLP all he wants — he’s still just a two-faced chancer in a suit.

In fact his sole election strategy appears to be premised on hoping the courts do his dirty work for him and disenfranchise 130,000 paid up members of the Labour Party.

Well, you don’t get more anti-establishment than those legendary iconoclasts in the Royal Courts of Justice.

 And then we had the small matter of that other well-known radical Tom Watson who came out this week and claimed that many of those 130,000 were in fact Trotskyite wreckers seeking to destroy the party from within.

Really? If you can find that many Trotskyites in Britain you’re doing better than the SWP are.

Watson’s risible claim led to the surreal situation whereby those paragons of impartiality at the Today programme — who yesterday used a silly season puff piece on what was apparently national Mackem Day to mock Corbyn in northern vernacular — decided to do a whole segment on, er, what it means, in the exact phraseology of the legendarily non-partisan Sarah Montague, to be a “Trot.”

To her evident disappointment the hastily assembled “panel” comprising political scientist Alex Callinicos and, er… Billy Bragg, swiftly and succinctly eviscerated the suggestion as being the total rubbish it was.

Bragg in particular was excellent on the subject mockingly pointing out that there seemed to be a new definition of Trotskyite, someone who wants to help shape party policy by democratic means.

It may be instructive at this juncture to reflect on a well-known quote of Trotsky’s relating to the Kronstadt mutineers, when he branded them enemies of the revolution and called for them to be “shot down like partridges.”

Like Watson and Smith, he was not averse to distorting the facts when it suited him.

And finally, on a semi-related note, it will not have escaped the attention of some that Friday heralded the annual display of class arrogance and mass slaughter that is the Inglorious Twelfth.

To mark the orgy of bloodletting the BBC decided to get together two “experts” from opposing sides of the debate to argue the toss about the relative merits or otherwise of the grouse shooting season.

On the one hand, esteemed environmentalist Chris Packham. On the other… former cricketer and shooting enthusiast Ian Botham.

Packham pointed out the ecological devastation caused by the murderous practice ranging from the killing of birds of prey by game-keepers to the triggering of flooding in areas such as Hebden Bridge.

Botham, unable to respond in any meaningful way instead called for Packham to be dismissed from his job at the BBC for bias.

With no sense of irony he suggested to arch-Tory Nick Robinson, that if he described Jeremy Corbyn as an “evil psychopath” he would be sacked on the spot.

Funny, because that is EXACTLY what the BBC has been doing.

Maliciously slander the elected leader of the opposition on a daily basis? That’s fine.

Criticise the toffs for destroying huge swathes of the countryside and its wildlife on the other hand and you’re a dangerous troublemaker.

Don’t you just love that fabled impartiality…