Trump outbursts are ill judged but UK can do nothing about them

Mr Trump told four left wing Democratic Party congresswomen to “go back” to the “broken and crime infested places from which they came”.

In fact only one of the women to whom he was referring was born outside the US. The others are of ethnic minority background.

The two contenders for leadership of the Conservative Party, Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson, have echoed the criticisms of the woman they hope to succeed as prime minister, Theresa May.

Mr Trump has been making extraordinary and ill judged and occasionally outrageous comments since long before he was elected to the White House.

His recent criticism of the UK ambassador to the US was entirely inappropriate and undignified for an American head of state to make, as was his criticism of Mrs May.

But Mr Trump might well be re-elected as president next year. His popularity with much of the American public remains high.

There is, in short, nothing that anyone in the UK or Europe can do aout his outbursts, which happen with remarkable regularity.

It is a grim state of affairs for Britain, because he is one of the few major politicians in the western world who supports Brexit.

We will badly need a good relationship with America in the years after our departure from the European Union, and Mr Trump might well be around for another six years.

But that fact notwithstanding, and the huge respect that British people have for the superpower that is the United States, is insufficient reason to stay mute or cowardly and to refuse ever to criticise comments that are so utterly and starkly unpleasant.