There was much discussion, in the wake of Donald Trump’s shock election win a year ago this week, of the risk of normalisation: a fear that America would become so inured to extreme opinions or encroachments on democratic norms, that a climate of authoritarian nationalism could gradually take hold – and that everyone would simply accept it, like the boiling of the proverbial frog.
There have been times, on reading some of the more excitable front pages in the pro-Brexit press, that I’ve worried about a similar escalation here – but now I think I was worrying about the wrong thing. It’s not authoritarian nationalism that the May government has successfully normalised. It’s total fucking incompetence.
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