Brexit and Trump were explosions. Each was the result of both a revolt against and a breakdown of the existing order. A number of causes were at work. But the detonation came about through what I call ‘combined determination’. This means I don’t accept that there is any one primary determination. I oppose a Marxist view that it was caused by economic factors, although these were essential. Or a Brexiteer or Trumpite view that they were caused by honest rejections of rigged and elitist systems. Certainly, both mattered; both economic forces and freely judged opposition to a rigged system.
But it was the way the forces combined that made the mixture explosive. Forces such as the loss of popular trust in historic states, caused by strategic military defeat and the catastrophe of the financial crash. The elites of Washington and London lied, lost, went bust and then bailed themselves out while everyone else got poorer and more insecure. That was a big cause. So too for Brexit was the undemocratic nature of the EU. So too was the absence of a left-wing, democratic alternative for Europe – an opposition to the EU within the EU. This allowed the right to monopolise and distort criticism of the EU. All these were also essential parts of the explosive mix.
