Eva Perón addressed the Argentine people from one. Communist Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu gave his final speech on another. As for Mussolini, he liked to grip the balustrade of his as he orated, lantern jaw jutted to the masses.  

The demagogue’s natural habitat is a balcony. When Donald Trump mounted the White House version this week, days after testing positive for coronavirus, the US president invited comparisons with the autocrats of yesteryear.

But then these have been flowing, rather too casually, since before he was elected. True enough, his nationalism, his messianic following and his political rise in the aftermath of a financial crash are all suggestive of the 1930s far-right. It is just that so much else about him bucks the parallel. The past week has brought it out.