At the next general election, British voters will return either a centre-right government or a centre-left one. For comparison, the spread of plausible outcomes in the US includes a second term of Donald Trump. In France? A Rassemblement National president. The Netherlands? After last week’s election, power for the hardline Geert Wilders. As for the Italian far right, power is theirs already, while the German equivalents threaten to break through in the federal elections of 2025.
And so, as difficult as this is for some liberals to hear, Britain is now a relative haven from populism. Brexit set that cause back by allowing voters to release much of their pent-up anger, and by flopping badly enough to put them off another rightwing experiment. When enough time has passed, even some Remainers might decide that the hit to national output was worth the period of domestic civic peace. As bad as Britain is at high-speed rail and IPOs, I’d rather take my chances here than in many western democracies over the coming years, thanks.
Another thing about the UK: it is a good place from which to compare American and European populism. So often conflated with each other, it is the differences between them that stand out ever more to an observer in this in-between place.