America’s retreat

Donald Trump predicted that his election would be ‘Brexit times ten’ — which, as far as the stockmarket reaction was concerned, had some merit. The dollar plunged, and the Dow Jones along with it. Once again, the pollsters have been confounded. Once again, political analysts have been left asking whether they know their country at all. And once again we can see the same group of voters at the forefront: the older, poorer ones who are concerned about demographic change and angry about being ignored for too long. In Britain, and now in America, they are the new revolutionary class.

This is where the analogies with Brexit end. Vote Leave, the campaign for Britain to leave the European Union, was led by people who were liberal, globally minded and optimistic. There certainly was anger at a failed status quo among many of those who voted for Brexit, but the prospectus put in front of people was about a global Britain rather than a Little England.