When spring doesn’t turn into summer

A high-ranking member of Hosni Mubarak’s disgraced government, or someone from the Muslim Brotherhood? It’s hardly an enviable choice — but that is the choice facing Egypt in next month’s Presidential election, after the official results of the preliminary vote were released yesterday. For obvious reasons, neither candidate much appeals to the freedom-loving younger generation that set the country’s revolution a-rolling in the first place. So, overnight, we’ve seen a return to protests, anger, fire, etc. This is still an immensely divided polity.

As grim as the situation is, it will come as little surprise to Spectator readers (or to anyone, really). The magazine has carried a number of articles detailing how last year’s Arab Spring has frozen into an Arab Winter, including this one by Douglas Murray, and this by John R Bradley. But I thought a quick recap might be worthwhile, so here are some short summaries for each of the countries whose rulers were forced from power last year:

1) Tunisia.