Let's consider the proposition that Trump is a performance artist. The past 18 months have been so outlandish, so genuinely befitting of the moniker surreal, that one is led to wonder whether the offensive, contradictory, racist and misogynistic personage put forward as a serious candidate is real at all. What if this Trump, or, this iteration of Trump at least, is a clever role-play by a man who has accurately read the electorate and gambled that such a characterization would maximize his chances of winning the White House? Or, if not the White House, then a new career in media or suchlike as a consolation prize? Is it that implausible?

There are already some indications that Trump may be backing away from some of the key policies on which he campaigned, this in spite of having a majority in the Republican Congress. If Trump is principally a performance then we cannot know how he will govern or what he will do, since all that preceded was essentially provisional, purely a means to an end.

The coming months will test this thesis, so please watch this space.