The most interesting and ultimately revealing aspect of the comparison concerns religion. Formally, Corbyn is a non-believer while Trump is a Presbyterian who collects bibles. But it would be difficult to claim that Donald Trump is a particularly religious man as he has behaved as something of a libertine by the standards of many of his followers. However, everybody is aware that Trump has to be nominally religious in his political position, whereas Corbyn does not; in fact one of Corbyn's predecessors, George Lansbury, was an avowed believer whereas Michael Foot was not. The comparison is a little like the one made during the 1983 General Election when earnest vicars wrote to the Guardian to say that Michael Foot was a true Christian whereas the (occasionally) church-attending Margaret Thatcher was not. (It was an argument heard in my own household.) Exactly the same argument could be applied to Corbyn and Trump. Indeed, it is obvious that you could only sustain Corbyn's degree of egalitarianism and pacifism as, at least, religiose beliefs because there is no way you could derive them from logic, reason or empirical observation. To be fair to Corbyn, he seems well aware of that; not only is he less hostile to Christianity than many of his New Labour contemporaries, but he has acknowledged his debt to the "Judeo-Christian tradition". Meanwhile, when Trump claims he would be the most Christian of presidents he only seems to mean that he would be the most anti-anti-Christian in giving Muslims and atheists a hard time.

If all this seems paradoxical, the resolution is in the history of ideas. We never really had the Enlightenment. Instead of dumping the Judeo-Christian tradition we revived it in new forms: man in the image of God and God in the image of man are not so far apart. Thus the importance of what Bertrand Russell called "Sunday truths" in our culture. We may spend all week assuming that people are profoundly unequal and trying to make ourselves as unequal as possible, but at some level we believe in equality. We may also normally believe in a wicked world in which it is essential to defend yourself, but we also want to indulge in fantasies about world peace. Thus a politician of the fundamentalist ilk is able to carry some of the moral high ground. Thus, too, some interesting electoral phenomena such as the "shy Tory" in England and "heart and head" voter in France, both of which involve voters expressing their self-interest through the ballot box while believing at some level that it's wrong to do so.

Finally, as a betting man, I must choose between which of these two fundamentalists is most likely to become a national leader. Corbyn could win if he can hold the moral high ground and there is a certain kind of crisis. But the obstacles to his victory seem (even) more formidable than those to a Trump victory. Crucially, the powerful forces of patriotism could work in Trump's favour, but against Corbyn. Bearing in mind also the Tory majority, our fixed-term parliaments and Corbyn's age, I put Corbyn at 25/1 with Trump 12/1. But no large bets, please!