Trump could have easily survived the groping allegations, but refusing to accept the election result is a different matter.

Until a few days ago I was part of a small minority of people that were absolutely sure Donald Trump would win the US election. No ifs, no buts, it’s President Trump and you’d better get used to it.

Whatever advantage Hillary Clinton’s campaign could have gained from the Washington Post’s tape of Trump’s lewd comments about women and the mass Republican defections that followed were, in reality, offset by his strong second debate performance and the media’s hysterical and disproportionate response to the tape.

Most ridiculous of all were the athletes who, after Trump referred to his comments as ‘locker room talk’, made out that they had never heard anything like what Trump said from team-mates.

Come on, Americans aren’t stupid. Most of them have played in sports teams and know damn well that comments like Trump’s are commonplace. They also know that people say things in private that they’d never want to be seen saying in public – horror of horrors!

If anything, he might have got more votes as Americans rebelled en masse against these liars and hypocrites.

In the third debate, Trump just had to play it cool and show a shred of policy knowledge then watch the massive, Brexit-style ‘shy’ vote propel him to victory.

For the most part he did exactly that. He pretty much perfectly summed up the situation in Syria and gave Hillary Clinton such a hammering on immigration that she changed the subject to Vladimir Putin to see out the allotted 15 minutes and avoid total humiliation.

But then, when asked, he couldn’t confirm he would accept the result. That, alone, would not be a catastrophe, but in recent weeks he has also been consistently tweeting all the most biased right-wing polls to show him in the lead and illustrate a so-called media conspiracy.

This is not only a disaster with undecided voters, but also goes against everything Trump’s campaign has been about. It is making him look like a loser when the message used to be that Trump is a winner and the losers are the Hillary Clinton supporters who will be in the streets crying on November 9th when he is elected.

The best answer to the debate question would have been to bring up the under-reported arson attack on a Republican Party office in North Carolina and say, ‘yet you’re asking ME if I will accept the result?’

So, can Trump still pull off a Brexit?

Well, there are similarities between the two campaigns but also differences.

The main similarity is that the Hillary Clinton campaign is exactly like the Remain campaign. The same sneering, bullying and negativity towards anyone with a different view, coming out of the giant PC safe-spaces that are London and New York (I’m aware of the irony of Donald Trump being a proud New Yorker).

The difference is the reaction. The Leave campaign always remained calm in the face of provocation. For example when the pro-Remain government took the unprecedented move of extending the voter registration deadline for two days to drive up the number of young voters who they expected to vote their way.

Everyone could see this was a dirty trick but Leave campaign leaders such as Boris Johnson and Michael Gove remained calm and left it to grassroots members and MPs to have their say. The public are smart enough to work out for themselves if the establishment are playing tricks.

Trump needs to show thicker skin when the media jump on his back and prematurely declare a Clinton victory.

He’s bounced back time and time again from setbacks and it hasn’t been through sulking.

It’ll be the last thing Republicans want to hear right now, but he would do well to follow Barack Obama’s advice.

“I’d invite Mr. Trump to stop whining and go try to make his case to get votes,” said the president.