IN America, polls are predicting a big win for Joe Biden and the end of Trump’s tenure in the White House. In 2020, hope is in short supply, but when chinks of light start to shine through the dark clouds of prejudice, we can dare to dream. We’re all holding our breath now until polling day in under three weeks.

A large proportion of us would agree that the world without a Trump presidency will surely be a better place, even though Biden hardly sets the heather smouldering, never mind alight.

It will take a lot of hard work to mend the damage Trump has wreaked during his four years in power – the kind of racist beasts he has unleashed will not return to their lairs quietly, the environmental havoc and abdication of responsibility in the face of global warming and climate change has gravely endangered all our lives, and the Conservative bias in the Supreme Court will take at least a generation to balance.

And all this is before his disastrous handling of the pandemic, although he is hardly alone on that abdication of the duties of leadership.

However, sooner out, sooner mended. And on the bright side, if Biden wins, Boris Johnson and co are in trouble. Just last weekend, Barack Obama’s former deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes was reminding the Twittersphere about Boris Johnson’s racist comment when he claimed Obama opposed Brexit because of his Kenyan ancestry.

Biden remembers this dog whistle about his friend and former colleague, too. And he’s more than aware of Johnson’s Brexit shenanigans that threaten the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. Biden and the formidable house speaker, Nancy Pelosi, have made it crystal clear that there will be no trade deal with the US while the Brexiteers’ antics play fast and loose with peace in Ireland.

At the same time as Rhodes’s comment, the journalist Tim Shipman, was writing about No 10’s panicked efforts to “woo Biden” and “dump Trump” now they can see the writing is on the wall for their big pal. Johnson’s careless and nasty verbal gymnastics may finally catch up with him.

Be careful what you wish for Mr J – a policy of “splendid isolation” is looking less and less attractive with every passing day; out in the cold in Europe and cold-shouldered by a new American leadership. Not so much splendid isolation as total isolation.

There’s a side of me that thinks, hell mend them all. Johnson was happy to play the populist card to further his own career, taking tips from Trump’s former right-hand man Steve Bannon. No 10 has denied any borrowing from Bannon’s style of prejudiced low-life tactics to get “the people’s” racist juices flowing despite plenty of evidence to the contrary. Now Bannon is himself awaiting trial for allegedly pinching some of the We Build The Wall money. Looks like his disrupter manual may have a shelf life after all.

Perhaps Trump’s right-wing populism has a shelf life too? Perhaps the swamp is getting too crowded. Even if this was definitely the case, we can’t be complacent. The far right and its trailing arm of intolerance and ignorance has punched through into much of our lives and will take a lot of fixing even if the Trump empire and their enablers are given their marching orders by “We the People” next month.

We’re certainly dealing with the fallout in the UK. Just a few days ago, just as Home Secretary Patel’s henchmen were getting full macho and talking about throwing nets over small boats full of frightened refugees in the Channel, Labour peer Lord West was on Radio 4 discussing just what to do with these asylum seekers. His exact words were: “I can see we might need to concentrate them whether it be in a camp or something ...”

In other words, put them in concentration camps? Is that what he meant? Can it possibly be what he meant? It’s shocking beyond belief, although West has since apologised for his “choice of words”.

Unfortunately this kind of rhetoric is now everywhere, emboldened and encouraged by leaders at the very top of the tree who are quite happy to treat certain humans as inhuman if it feeds their power base. This verification for racism from the top only delights the bigoted bottom feeders and spurs them on to violence and intimidation. I can’t help wondering if, all along, Johnson and this UK Government have suspected that Trump might not be voted back in, that they had to make hay while the sun shone on the less than righteous, rushing through Brexit without a transition extension, upping the ante on their hostile immigration policy, breaking international law, throwing as much Farage-esque bigotry at the wall to see what would stick.

Now, here they are, in the last days of the fall of Rome, all their plots and plans undone by a pandemic beyond their control, a virus which they refused to take seriously and have failed to prepare for once again as the new wave makes its devastating way across our nation. Tick tock.

Meanwhile, president super-spreader himself, Donald Trump, euphoric on a cocktail of expensive virus treatments is still watching his slippery hold on America run through his fingers like sand.

His endless tirade of unscientific mumbo jumbo mixed with emotive fake news is running out of steam – after all, catching a virus you claimed was not as bad as the flu, giving it to all your collaborators, spreading it about some more in the confined space of an SUV and now the presidential wing of the White House. This is the dying hell of the penultimate episode in the lack of reality show that is Trump Towers.

At least when its over we’ll still have the last episode in the Westminster House of Cards to watch. Get the kettle on.