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 …
Why the populists failed
If you want to feel a certain sense of dread, look around you, at the accumulating challenges facing Western societies, and at the leaders chosen to manage them. The archetypal, boringly competent, technocratic politician of the past 40 years stands …
How populist is Liz Truss?
The contest to decide who enters Downing Street and then goes on to win the next election will be decided by a candidate who can reach both populist and fiscal conservatives. This is because the Conservative Party’s voter base is …
How dangerous are the MAGA mavericks?
The Republican House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, is a political lifer who has represented the most conservative district in California for the past 15 years. He has every reason to feel confident about his party’s future. According to most polls, …
Boris Johnson broke Britain
Pity the poor columnist attempting to write The Case for Boris: a blank screen sits before him, the cursor blinking helplessly. There simply is no case for Boris, no justification for any continued role in public life. None of the …