29 June

Populism is a relative status movement. It’s people who used to be part of a dominant social group, now feeling threatened by the rise of other social groups. What gets the punters through the door is to appeal to the sense that their status is threatened, by other social groups. ‘Taking back our country’. All of it is full of symbolism of that loss of dominant status, and the rivals to it. It’s a population-level mid-life crisis. That stage of life where people move from being cool and hip, to suddenly feeling on the outer. That’s all Trump, and his franchises like Pauline, are.