In 1994, when Berlusconi launched his political party Forza Italia, I was 12 years old. At the time, the last thing I was interested in was politics, and yet Il Cavaliere, as he was known, soon became a part of …
Germany’s self-destructive Greens
The Greens were supposed to be Europe’s new hope. At the twilight of the Trump era, their champions on both sides of the Atlantic argued that they would be the perfect antidote to the far-Right. Back then, the largest and …
RFK Jr could learn from his father
An insurgent Democrat with a famous last name announces a primary challenge against his party’s sitting president. He infuriates the establishment, who accuse him of running a vanity campaign and helping the other side to win. Amid widespread dissatisfaction with …
The performative emptiness of the Venice Biennale
There wasn’t much architecture at this year’s Venice International Architecture Biennale. The German pavilion, for instance, contains nothing more than the leftover components from last year’s Art Biennale stacked in the centre; the floorboards ripped up. The Israelis have closed …
How Marine Le Pen can win
Le Havre, France
At a political rally in the Normandy port town of Le Havre, an elderly man with flowing white hair and beard waves a tricolour gently in my face. On it is written “Ni Fascio, ni BoBo [bourgeois …
Why it feels like 1848 again
“We are on a stormy sea, without a shore”, wrote Alexis de Tocqueville to a childhood friend in the midst of the 1848 revolutions. “The shore is so far away, so unknown,” he added, “that our lives and perhaps the …
Tucker Carlson’s fake populism
I shudder whenever I see Tucker Carlson trending in the news. Not because I think he’s a fascist or white supremacist, but because I once held him up as the harbinger of a new kind of politics. It wasn’t too …
The rise of Ireland’s anti-migrant protests
Ireland has an immigration problem. Almost a year after refugees started to arrive from Ukraine, leaving state capacity buckled and local communities unnerved, two very different expressions of civic disorder have emerged. In one, migrants are housed in cubicle dorms …
This was not Brazil’s January 6
Will Brazil have its own “January 6”? The question has been posed repeatedly over the past year in speculation as to what might happen should Bolsonaro lose the October 2022 election. Brazil’s moment finally arrived: two days late and two …
Should Martin Lewis be Prime Minister?
What are the largest challenges for UK politics in 2023? Inflation? Climate change? Vladimir Putin? You’d be a fool to dismiss them. But if we are to get the country into a better place, then here’s another big one: the …
All the populist’s men
All The King’s Men is the 1947 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about an enormously vulgar, crudely powerful and grossly corrupt Southern politician loosely inspired by Louisiana Democrat Huey P. Long. It is an epic portrait of a demagogue who is, by …
Denmark is a Right-wing paradise
The Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier probes the darkest depths of modern society, often with a deranged, comical touch. When I moved to Denmark a year and a half ago, it was reassuring for me that Lars was there, lurking …
The revenge of the technocrats
John Gray was the prophet of the postliberal age, describing global capitalism as a false utopia as early as 1998. In his most recent writing, he has returned to geopolitics, and has described the populist moment, the pandemic, and the …
Ohio and the battle for populist America
This midterm year, in which many states have to choose between non-entities and the certifiably insane, Ohio is blessed by a real political dogfight. The Senate battle between representative Tim Ryan and Hillbilly Elegy author, JD Vance, is becoming one …
Can the nation survive Elizabeth?
I was camping by a lake when I heard the news. My son and I were off fishing and hiking in Connemara in the Irish west, hunting down pollock and wrasse and trout, and plunging into bogs on the slopes …