We’ve seen some absurdly-named political parties over the years: America’s ‘Guns and Dope Party’; Russia’s ‘Party of the Dead’; Britain’s ‘Fancy Dress Party’; or Hungary’s ‘Two-Tailed Dog Party’.

But Clive Palmer’s ‘Trumpet of Patriots Party’ is surely up there with the dopiest.

In essence, it seems to be a vague Oz version of Trumpism: ‘Make Australia Great Again’. At the shambolic party launch this week, it was hard to detect a single original thought, just some mumbled recycling of Trumpian tweets.

Now Clive is no mug. He made millions, then billions, from real estate and mining leases, almost always shrouded in controversy.

And he’s been fiddling around the edge of politics since his time as State Director of the Queensland National Party at the feet of the old Flim-Flam man himself, Joh Bjelke-Petersen, in the 1980s.

His own political manifesto is a jumble of hand-picked beliefs and policies that has changed and morphed with the prevailing winds. The only thing that seems to tie them together is their ultimate benefit to old Clive.

Down the years he’s become a master of the half-truth, an accomplished press conference tap dancer and a prolific, but bewildering, creator of low-rent TV commercials.

He’s also a serial litigant. In fact, he named litigation as his hobby in Who’s Who.

But his achievements, aside from lining his own pockets, are harder to find. His Coolum Dinosaur park lies in ruins, Qld Nickel went into voluntary administration in 2016, he’s on the third iteration of his project to rebuild the Titanic, now due to set sail in 2027. And his last foray into politics saw him secure a single seat, at a cost of more than $120 million.

And this time, the Trumpet of Patriots Party, with its bizarre logo/crest of a Lion blowing a horn (certainly not a trumpet) above a motto of ‘honor omnia’ does not fill us with confidence. Clive reckons the motto means ‘honour above all’. Latin scholars say it actually translates as ‘honour everything’.

One thing is certain: Clive has shown himself to be a virtuoso when it comes to blowing his own trumpet!