Donald Trump is a dangerous yahoo who may well destroy what is left of the USA’s constitutional government before he is finished. I do not in any way defend him. But there is something almost comically hypocritical about the establishment’s shocked reaction to the January 2021 failed putsch which he is accused of inciting.

Once again I must point out that the same liberal elite types happily condone a much worse putsch, one which succeeded and which has helped to drag Europe into its worst war for more than 70 years.

Mr Trump is alleged to have sought to prevent the democratic outcome of the 2020 Presidential election. If he and his allies did so, this was a disgraceful thing. If you believe that power in free societies is decided by votes, then you cannot support such a thing. Your own politics cease to matter. It goes to the very root of law and power.

So why did major Western nations accept without protest the violent, lawless overthrow of Ukraine’s elected President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014? This shameful event, achieved by a yelling mob, was led by people who make Mr Trump’s supporters look like Greenpeace and who openly threatened violence if they did not get their way. Yanukovych is not very nice either. Few Ukrainian politicians are. But the fairness of his victory in the 2010 election is grudgingly accepted even by his opponents.

What is more, at the time of his overthrow, he had made a clear offer of early elections to test his mandate. The offer was endorsed and put to the Ukrainian opposition by a group of EU Foreign Ministers who had taken part in drawing it up and would have guaranteed it. Did the protesters think their faction would lose those early elections? Who can say? But it is beyond doubt that the Kiev parliament voted illegally to remove him. It clearly lacked the votes needed to do so under the constitution. It also failed to follow the procedures set out in that constitution.

Those who condone the removal have tried to excuse this blatantly lawless act on the grounds (among others) that Yanukovych had fled the country. But recent research has exploded this claim, too.

At the time of the Kiev putsch, Barack Obama’s White House did not condemn the violent removal of another elected President, or the Ukrainian parliament’s blatant defiance of its own constitution.

Instead it released a statement that praised the ‘constructive work’ done by the Ukrainian parliament. The US Ambassador in Kiev tweeted merrily that it was ‘a day for the history books’, which doesn’t seem very disapproving. Our own Foreign Secretary William Hague misled Parliament, saying incorrectly that Yanukovych had been removed ‘by the very large majorities required under the constitution’, and adding, quite unjustifiably: ‘It is wrong to question the legitimacy of the new authorities.’ There is, as yet, no sign of the Commons Privileges Committee taking this matter up. Lord Hague (as he now is) broke off contact with me after I drew his mistake to his attention.

The terrible eruption of large-scale violence in Ukraine, the growing danger of long-term European war, Russia’s illegal seizure of Crimea, the splitting of the country and the terrible toll of death and destruction all began with the putsch against Yanukovych.

It is one of the most significant events in European history since the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914. It is time we were honest about it, and time it received proper attention. It is at least as important as Donald Trump.