Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has condemned the election of Donald Trump as a betrayal of "truth" and "decency".

Writing in the New Statesman, Williams argues that Trump's election represents a failure of the politics of mass democracy, which he says has been replaced by "theatrical" politics.

"This delivers people into the hands of another kind of dishonest politics: the fact-free manipulation of emotion by populist adventurers," he writes.

"Trump's theatrical politics are a betrayal of the disenfranchised."

He calls for investment in "local civic activism" as a response.

Williams is sceptical that Trump can be reined in by advisers and bureaucrats, or frustrated by Congress.

He warns that the force of Trump's personality will generate "a hectic climate of plans and half-plans, expenditure and public rhetoric, that will be almost as damaging as the projects themselves." 

He admits that Trump managed to tap into the "discontent of the disenfranchised and insecure" to get elected but says the problem goes much deeper.

"Trump's campaign succeeded in spite of the cast-iron demonstrations of his total indifference to truth (not to mention decency)," writes the former Archbishop.

He accuses Trump of not wanting to do anything as President, but simply of wanting to be President, the most important man in the Western world. "This election represents a divorce between the electoral process and the business of political decision-making. It is the ersatz politics of mass theatre, in which what matters most is the declaration of victory," he says.