The enormous shock of that crisis has gone over to ongoing economic sluggishness within which points of sharp crisis have emerged, such as the pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis that followed it and Trump’s turn to protectionism and trade wars. The sense that things are bad but that catastrophe threatens has been engendered at every turn.

This situation has involved increasing hardship for a major impoverished section of the working class that has fostered embittered conclusions and the quest for an enemy within that the far right exploits. A feeling on the part of sections of the middle class that their state of relative privilege is under attack produces similar sentiments. The fact that mainstream conservative parties have pandered to such ideas has only given them more opportunity to take root.

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the right has always opportunistically presented itself as the voice of plebeian outrage in the face of the injustices inflicted by elite elements within society. For agitational purposes, this charade is, along with the promotion of racism, a key strategy for the right. In the present context, a bold right-wing conservative is far more likely to use the term ‘working class’ than a timid social democrat, focused on the politics of respectability.