For just under a quarter of a century, British politics has been dominated by what might be called, paradoxically, a “theology of centrism” – the belief that most people were more concerned with what works than ideology, and that politics should principally be the art of improving the delivery of public goods. It was a theology that, for all their policy differences, united Tony Blair and David Cameron. Anyone who thought electoral success could be won anywhere but from the centre was either naïve or fanatical, or both… but definitely wrong.
Now, populism is on the march across the West. In Britain, as elsewhere, the political class is unnerved and baffled.
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