As warm spring weather and effusions of greenery spread across our disordered continent, Americans are understandably mesmerized by the widening chaos, unresolved conflict and bottomless corruption of Donald Trump’s second presidency. The world is watching too, and in broad strokes the news from abroad reads like a rejection of Trumpism: As I and others have observed, the MAGA-sphere’s clumsy efforts to boost overseas far-right parties seem to have backfired, fueling victories for “centrist” mainstream forces in Canada, Australia, Germany and elsewhere.
Yeah, not so fast: The new dawn of global democracy may be less glorious than advertised, not to mention a lot more confusing. While we were preoccupied with Trump’s paramilitary forces of masked kidnappers, his will-he-or-won’t-he dance with the federal courts (eventually you know he will) and Qatar’s so-called gift of a $400 million jumbo jet — is it a Trojan horse or a white elephant? — the storied and deeply weird democracy of the United Kingdom has been quietly sliding into the abyss.
