Yet even the shock of Brexit paled in comparison to events just a few months later when Donald Trump, a well-known businessman and reality TV star, was elected president of the United States. Winning the Republican primary earlier that year had already caused a shock – and with Bernie Sanders pushing Hillary Clinton close for the Democratic nomination, the signs were there for an upset. Which was precisely what ensued as Trump took previously democrat-held ‘Rust Belt’ states on his way to the White House. The President-elect’s victory speech was reminiscent of Farage ’s, as he told ‘the forgotten men and women of our country’ that they would be ‘forgotten no longer’.
The following April, buoyed by the perception of a zeitgeist seemingly to her advantage, Britain’s new Prime Minister Theresa May called a general election to cement her party’s grip on power. An enhanced majority was widely viewed as inevitable, the question being how big a landslide the Conservatives could achieve. And yet, in a manner analogous to both Trump and Brexit, Labour defied the odds with a clear message of a break with the status quo. While they didn’t form a government, they did deprive the Tories of a majority, winning an additional 3.5 million votes in the process and enjoying the biggest increase in vote share – for any party – since 1945. The Tories, significantly to the right of their campaigns in recent years also did well, winning their highest share of the vote since 1987. Britain now displayed both key features of the new political landscape: massively increased polarisation, and uncertainty as to whether the politics of the left or right would ultimately prevail.
The Great Disorder
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