27 February

These 3 populists all came to power by either creating pretend problems, like terrorists killing us all, or by encouraging us to approach real problems as fictions, as ‘fake news’. Now all 3 of them have real problems that won’t be wished away, like pandemics, climate emergencies and economic carnage. And how bloody hopeless do they look? We voted for fantasies about the past, but the future is coming right at us. Old societies in their last desperate gasps.