His rhetoric was always that the elite would thwart the will of the people, enabling a new movement to rise up amid the anger. ... Brexit was designed by its most passionate supporters to fail: its purpose was to be betrayed, to enable a new movement to rise up, animated by fury and fear.

Enter the disturbing special exhibition that has recently opened in Berlin’s German Historical Museum and you are immediately confronted with a series of bleak statements: “Liberal democracy cannot be taken for granted any longer … Authoritarian parties are even gaining strength in countries with a long democratic tradition ..."