Considering all the problems and difficulties the world has, it would have been a far better place had two terrible mistakes not been committed by two peoples who should be the most democratic peoples around.

In November the people of the United States chose Donald Trump. Actually they did not choose him because his rival, Hillary Clinton, got more votes than he did. But because the US electoral system is what it is, Trump got the electoral vote and was elected President.

Since then, the United States has been in a race to the bottom. Donald Trump has become in quite a short time the most reviled US President of all time. Maybe only Richard Nixon on the eve of his enforced sacking was worse in the polls.

In the months since he has been President, not one of his electoral commitments has been implemented. He has not rolled back immigration, he has not built a wall on the frontier of Mexico. He has not rolled back Obamacare. He has not improved the economy for all his posturing with leaders of industry.

He has become a figure of fun, the latest episode being the sacking of the communications director and within days that of his successor.

It is also clear that the electoral wave that swept him to the White House is no longer there. The anger of the lower class white voters has not led to any substantial changes. It was a campaign based on spin and sustained throughout the long months of the campaign that has since disintegrated.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the British people are ruing the decision they made when they chose Brexit and find themselves in the situation where anywhere they go, they stand to lose. They will lose if they keep following Brexit as their policy. They will also lose if they renounce Brexit.

According to recent polls, the main reason why they chose Brexit – immigration – is now no longer the prime fear of the British. Instead, their prime fear today is the financial consequences of Brexit.

Now the British electorate and the American one are among the most mature electorates in the free world. That they could get it so wrong is a sobering thought for all the other democracies in the world, ours included. Democracies can be influenced by spin. They can be persuaded of choices that later on will appear as irrelevant.

Another lesson is that once a choice is made, it is very difficult, not to say impossible, to undo it. We shall see this in the coming months. At least in the US, a reviled president may become a one-term president. It is far more difficult in Britain to undo Brexit, notwithstanding what Prime Minister Muscat has been reported as saying – that a second referendum may undo the first. The British people has chosen Brexit, and Brexit is Brexit, as Theresa May often says.

In this the UK is not alone – it is faced with the 27 other member states who, while having quite a few differences between them, become united when offering a strong wall against Britain.

It should not have ended like this: Donald Trump could have lost and the Brexit referendum was purposefully designed to deliver a No vote rather than a Yes one.

There, in a nutshell, is a conundrum future historians will ponder about.