… The winds of populism are sweeping across the Western world, and there was little reason to suppose that even an ancient and stable democracy such as Britain would develop an immunity to this pandemic. The mad-as-hell populism that in large part inspired the “leave” vote was instinctively nativist and sometimes at least borderline racist. But above all, it was rooted in the suspicion that something, somewhere, had gone badly wrong in British society and politics. If there are echoes of Trump here, there are also echoes of the tea party and, at least on the disillusioned left, the Occupy movement. CONT.
Alex Massie, Washington Post