Re: maybe a couple of reasons

Thanks for this thoughtful post, and apologies for the somewhat Anglophobic rant I posted at around the same time. But Diogenes does get on my nerves with his insistence that us Yanks invented imperialism, when it was really only dumped on us by you guys who have ever since gotten all self-righteous about it. There's a good reason Anglophone includes "Anglo," and Anglo-American puts Anglo first and American second. (Atlanticism is a term that deserves far more emphasis among those few here -- there's you, Diogenes, me and I think Chuck, though I don't always quite get Chuck -- who share the anti-imperialist perspective. The EU is a conspiracy against democracy, as Fazi and Streeck keep pointing out.) I have been skeptical that Burnham provides the UK with any immunity to the rightward drift that has spread through three continents. You are right that the French election will happen first, and that matters. (The French do things differently, as you point out, but the imminence of the vote perhaps helps to explain why politics there is at the moment more confrontational.) In the US, it is common to claim that Trump is sui generis, and the same thing is sometimes said of Farage. Laclau does stress the dependency of populist movements on a charismatic leader. The next UK and US elections will test that theory. Will Trumpism fall with Trump, and Reform with Farage? I was young then, but I do remember 1968. Nothing is more characteristic of movements for change than overconfidence that the forces of reaction are doomed. hugzu ;-p