If Hillary Clinton could just admit she's a terrible candidate, people might vote for her instead of Donald Trump

Can't she just level with them and say: 'Look, I know I’m a creepy lying sleazebag who can’t be trusted. I know I backed the Iraq War, and make up so many lies I accidentally claimed I was under fire in Serbia when I meant to say I wandered across a car park – but come on'?

Clinton is the ultimate symbol of the banks, businessmen and politicians who have overseen the decline in living standards of millions of Americans. But Trump is a sociopath

Now it’s desperate, as if our daughter is going out with a crack dealer for a gang called the Stab Everyone U Meet Crew. You want to say to America, “Look, we’ve tried being nice in the hope you’d see sense, now just bloody listen. You CAN’T have anything to do with this lunatic. Go to your room and we’re not letting you out until after the election.”

Normally a candidate is finished if he’s caught avoiding a parking fine, but Trump could be filmed trafficking children and he’d say, “That’s smart business. Hey, we’re teaching these kids the value of honest work.” Then he’d go up two points in the polls.

He could admit his favourite way to relax was spending all Sunday walloping dwarves with a shovel, and be recorded heating up heroin on a naked Vladimir Putin’s arse, and his rallies would be even bigger, with crowds holding placards saying: “We all back the man who takes smack from a Russian crack”.

The opinion of tens of millions of Americans appears to be: “He may be a sociopathic misogynist who would delight in destroying the planet, but he sends his emails from the right account so that’s the main thing.”

This could become a standard defence. The stigma will be taken from serial killers, who will at last feel free to stand in elections for the board of governors at a primary school, saying, “I may have a collection of heads in my fridge, and doesn’t Mrs Nesbitt go on and on about it, because she’s afraid to talk about the important issues. But my opponent Mr Puddleton might have sent an email from somewhere that wasn’t his normal email thingy – is THAT the sort of monster we want in charge of our children?”

Even if he doesn’t win he’ll say he won, because he’s already declared the establishment has rigged the vote against him. Of course it has; he’s had to struggle all his life as the outsider against the establishment. The media is so biased against him they only made him a reality TV star and not head of Nasa. City planners conspired against him and only let him build one tower in New York City named after himself.

Has he ever been awarded the Nobel Prize for marine biology or been invited on to Dictionary Corner on Countdown? No, because THEY don’t want common folk like him.

It’s because he speaks the truth others dare not say. For example, since the banking crash, wages have fallen and working hours have gone up. And who caused that? Mexican immigrants, that’s who, by sneaking over the border at night and forcing building companies to lower their wages while firing guns in the air and screaming “Yayayayayaya!” in the way Mexicans do.

Meanwhile, establishment figures get away with not paying taxes, and who caused that? Muslims did, by calling out tax avoidance schemes from mosques. We think they’re singing “Come to prayers and praise Allah” but they’re actually wailing “Form a subsidiary company and place its assets in Belize where there’s only a tax rate of two cents” in Arabic.

Trump, however, did his best to bravely expose the way billionaires avoid paying tax by being a billionaire who avoided paying tax.

The exciting prospect is to imagine what he’ll be like when emboldened by becoming president. He’ll put Nero in the shade, convinced he can do whatever he likes. The White House lawn will be turned into a golf course, he’ll make it illegal for Mexicans to own a fridge, he’ll launch a war against Kyrgyzstan for being too hard to spell, and women will have to cluck like a chicken all day if he thinks they’re overweight.

Even more dramatically, every mini-Trump round the world will be encouraged. It will be standard to refer to Mexicans as rapists, and any father attending a parents evening will at last feel comfortable telling the teacher, “My daughter may be failing at geography, but she’s a great piece of ass.”

Banning Muslims will become a normal custom, so if Strictly Come Dancing wishes to adopt a similar policy, on the grounds that it has to be sure none of the contestants explode during the Charleston, they will only be following the ethics of the US President.

Everyone will think it’s the way to win support. Tim Farron will announce on The Andrew Marr Show: “The Liberal Democrats back a thorough examination of Article 50 with a soft approach to Brexit, and may I just add, Andrew, I’ve grabbed many a woman’s pussy after a hard day at a conference on rural transport policy.”

The problem may be that there are millions of angry people in America, who have become cynical as their living conditions decline, and Hillary Clinton is the ultimate symbol of the banks, businessmen and politicians that have run the country while that’s happened. So her most effective strategy may be to announce: “Look, I know I’m a creepy lying sleazebag who can’t be trusted. I know I backed the Iraq War, and make up so many lies I accidentally claimed I was under fire in Serbia when I meant to say I wandered across a car park.

“I know I’ve been so carefully trained as a politician that I smile and yell, ‘Hey, it’s great to be here in Wisconsin!’ during an orgasm. I expect there’s something to do with my emails that are dodgy as everything I do is dodgy.

“I know almost any random human being would be a better candidate against Trump than me, including people who think they’re from Jupiter.

“But this bloke will incinerate the lot of us. So please, pretty please, don’t f**k about like this anymore.”