I was talking to a friend about my post on Donald Trump, and his attack on European civilisation, made earlier today. The thought that kept recurring was this: why are none of our political leaders standing up and telling Donald Trump where he can get off?

If I am right in suggesting that this is one of the defining questions of our era – if not the defining question – then what we are getting from our supposed leaders in all our major political parties is a resounding absence of leadership on the issue. They are, it would seem, totally silent.

I admit that, at various points in time, Labour has defended Sadiq Khan from attack – although often far too half-heartedly for my liking – but this attack is not just on him. It is on Europe as a whole - and so on all of us.  It exists almost entirely because, according to the far-right in the USA, who are deliberately creating a pincer movement in alliance with Putin to squeeze Europe out of existence, our failure to uphold a white, male, “Christian” (in name only) elite and their imagined eugenic right to govern is what is leading us into terminal decline. Nothing could be further from the truth than their worldview.

Wisdom is not reserved for white people.

There is no evidence that men have any unique ability to govern, or that they are better at it than women.

The Christianity to which these people claim allegiance bears no resemblance to any form of Christian belief that I can recognise in the gospels of the Bible.

Most especially, the promotion of a society based on hatred of minorities – whether defined by race, belief, gender, orientation, skin colour, physical location, supposed ability, or any other criterion one might imagine – is totally contrary to every wisdom tradition ever known to humankind. All of them embrace one simple idea: that we should love our neighbour as ourselves. The language may vary slightly from tradition to tradition, but the core idea remains the same, and it is utterly alien to everything said by Trump and those who mimic him.

But there is no condemnation.

Not from Starmer.

Not from Badenoch.

Not from Davey.

And of course, not from Farage.

In that complicity of silence there are three messages.

The first is that they are too frightened to stand up for minorities, whoever they might be.

The second is that they are too frightened to defend this country, making all of their talk about the need to do so utterly pointless.

The third message is clear: there is a moral bankruptcy common to the lot of them which is truly frightening.

We really are living in dangerous times. We desperately need a politics of care. We are living with a politics of cowardice.