The life expectancy of Russian men nosedived in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union. Society blamed it on the rise in vodka consumption. Mortality rates for America’s blue-collar whites have also been soaring. Many pin it on the opioid epidemic. Both mistake symptoms for cause. What Donald Trump’s electoral base shares with post-Soviet males is cratering morale. Their world is vanishing. Short of inventing a time machine, there is nothing anyone can do to bring it back.

Whether Mr Trump loses in November his candidacy has awakened a virulent new kind of politics — the white backlash — that is not about to disappear. Pro-Trump sentiments among this group are impervious to virtually anything he says or does. Indeed the gap between the Trump voters’ contempt for the Republican establishment is only likely to be reinforced by the exodus of senior Republicans following the latest leaked Trump remarks on women.

The position of US blue-collar whites is declining both relatively and absolutely. In relative terms, they are at the wrong end of America’s worst income inequality in almost a century. This includes the ultimate inequality — how long you live. Low income middle age men in 1970 had an average life expectancy five years below that of high income men of the same age. By 1990 that gap had risen to 12 years. The latest estimates put it at almost 15 years.