A political analyst said last week that as far as the US Presidential Election was concerned, then "events were in the saddle." What he meant was that the flavour of the campaigns and the likely outcome were at least partly at the mercy of unforeseen happenings, events that could neither be reliably predicted nor necessarily managed. This was in the wake of the terrible week of police slayings and the slaying of police, which built upon a cascade of previous incidents and massacres.

I don't want to get into a discussion of race or gun violence in the US, subjects which I am only tangentially acquainted with. But events are demonstrably a driving force, seemingly irrational and nihilistic, with governments playing catch-up in a reactive way, rather than controlling the narrative. The massacre of innocent people in Nice yesterday is just another example of how this process unfolds. Truthfully, no-one has the power to stop all acts of violence if the perpetrators are well-organised and determined. Many such attempts are thwarted but it only ever takes one or two successes to create apparent chaos. And chaos is a narrative that enables other such unpredictables, such as the election of a Trump.