A RECENTfront cover of Time magazine features Donald Trump with the banner ‘Bully, Showman, Party Crasher, Demagogue and ?45th President of the USA.

How can Americans be thinking of electing a president who has stated unabashedly that he would build a wall along the boundary of the United States to keep out Mexicans, called into question the veracity of President Obama’s birth certificate and made a virtue of bar room vulgarity.

What has happened to American society in this neo liberal era? And then understand how Donald Trump stands poised to make a move into the White House.

America, the richest country in the world, has a level of poverty and insecurity for large swathes of its population that has created the ideal climate to spawn Mr Trump.

In order to survive, more than seven million workers have two or more jobs; it is not unemployment that is the American scourge, at present it stands at about 5.5%, it is the shamefully low wage levels and the almost total lack of any support for those hard working people when they fall on hard times.

More than 31% of the population have no safety net; they live from wage packet to wage packet. Thirty two million people have no health insurance and eight out of ten of those are in working families.

Health care bills are the biggest cause of bankruptcy and 56 million people are struggling to meet health bills.

In New York more than 60,000 people sleep in homeless shelters every night with a further 4,000 sleeping out on the streets.

Trump’s Super Tuesday rally in Virginia saw 4,000 people cram into a university hall with even more outside.

Blue collar workers are the backbone of Trump’s support; he is the politician not in the Washington clique, the politician who voices their fears about jobs for themselves and their children and he calls into question Free Trade or, as they see it, freedom to manufacture in countries where wages are rock bottom and safety and other protection for workers doesn’t exist.

Trump has capitalised on this.

Our government, emulating the USA, has ushered in wage reductions, zero hours contracts, loss of job security, increase in inequality.

No surprise then that UKIP polled nearly four million votes in 2015; our own version of Trump is not too far away.