Over there Donald Trump fumes his crooked head off about the FBI searching his Mar-a-Lago home, apparently in search of documents he may have lost or tampered with in contravention of the Presidential Records Act.

Over here, on our small Trumpian island, the Daily Mail and other diehard supporters of Boris Johnson obsessively attack the Commons parliamentary privileges committee investigating the prime minister for having possibly deliberately misled parliament – which could constitute a contempt of parliament.

This is a “kangaroo court” according to the Mail and a “Boris witch-hunt’, even though the committee has a Tory majority.

Tories on that committee are damned as traitors by the Boris-besotted Mail – much in the way that judges were slammed as “Enemies of the people.”

Nadine Dorries, that mouth-frothing member of the Johnsonian cult, calls the investigation “the most egregious abuse of power witnessed in Westminster”.

All of this to subvert the usual rules and procedures to protect one deeply unseemly man.

Whether over there or over here, what this teaches us is that rule-bending leaders sell us their colourful non-conformity while seeking power, bend the rules when elected, then bend them again to cover up the pile of bent rules they leave behind.

Talking of which, I do hope you are keeping up with the twists and turns in the Tory leadership contest. As gruesome as it is interminable, this tussle involves two of Johnson’s Cabinet ministers, one still active in her role, squabbling over tax.

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, that unstable nuclear reactor of ambition on wobbly legs, says she will cut taxes immediately.

Don’t go looking to these two for answers to our real problems – or, honestly, just don’t go at all…

Former chancellor Rishi Sunak, that shifty shapeshifter lifting right-wing memes from the culture wars drawer, says he will cut taxes later. Now or later, it matters little: tax cuts benefit the better off and do nothing to help low earners.

Don’t go looking to these two for answers to our real problems – or, honestly, just don’t go at all, as neither has anything to say to anyone beyond the tiny constituency of Tory members allowed to take part in the crazy gameshow that chooses the next prime minister.

Don’t go looking for answers to the NHS crisis or the planet overheating madly, as these issues don’t appeal to the cruddy cabal who decides. So, naturally, Truss and Sunak have nothing much to say here.

A recent YouGov poll of Tory party members indicated no inclination to help the NHS, with 67% of respondents saying the NHS “has enough funds already, and just needs to spend current funds more efficiently”.

Don’t go looking for answers to the energy crisis or the water crisis, both of which have their roots in a Thatcherite obsession with privatisation.

As that singer turned environmental campaigner, and all-round top person, Feargal Sharkey said on BBC breakfast: “What you are actually looking at is nothing to do with droughts, it’s decades of under-investment and mismanagement.”

To mix the utilities metaphor here, we are being gaslit over water. All those leaks, all those huge profits, all the payments to shareholders, all the shit being pumped into our rivers, all the chronic underinvestment in infrastructure – this isn’t our fault, it’s down to the way the privatised industry is run.

As for the frankly terrifying way our energy bills are rising, both candidates offer nothing substantial. And now we all lose our shirts for foolishly playing energy poker. Not that we had any choice; these are the free-market rules, and we’re not free to do anything about it.

The financial expert Martin Lewis made a shocking observation on the BBC Today programme this morning. He pointed out that the new energy cap will amount to 45% of the state pension, adding that if Sunak and Truss only offer tax cuts and abolishing the green levy on energy bills, “we’re going to leave millions destitute and in danger this winter”.

Back over there, Trump went into hyperbolic overdrive, saying: “Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries. Sadly, America has now become one of those Countries, corrupt at a level not seen before. They even broke into my safe!”

“Corrupt at a level not seen before…” – That’s certainly one way to write your own political obit. Over there and over here.