To understand the sensational outcome of the British election, one must ask a basic question. What happens when phony populism collides with the real thing?
Last year’s triumph for Brexit has often been paired with the rise of Donald Trump as evidence of a populist surge. But most of those joining in with the ecstasies of English nationalist self-assertion were imposters. Brexit is an elite project dressed up in rough attire. When its Oxbridge-educated champions coined the appealing slogan “Take back control,” they cleverly neglected to add that they really meant control by and for the elite. …
But what do you do when your crowd-pleasing applause lines have to become public policy? CONT.
Fintan O’Toole, New York Review of Books