It’s not just Trump, populist nationalists are gaining power across the world – could it happen here?

In 1935, the American novelist Sinclair Lewis published a political novel entitled It Couldn’t Happen Here. The book was really a warning of what could go wrong depicting the rise of a fascist dictator and society in the US.

Fortunately, it turned out to be unnecessary. America was the leading force establishing the post-war democratic world order and, imperfectly, creating a “great society” and establishing civil rights.

That was then. Now, in defiance of multiple criminal indictments, Donald Trump is the favourite to be re-elected president of the US next year.

He openly espouses many of the “America First” attitudes that are satirised in Lewis’s story.

Meanwhile, It Could Happen Here is the title of a popular critical podcast that, according to promotional blurb, takes “a jaunty walk through the burning ruins of the old world”.

Those who say “only in America” are kidding themselves.

Politicians who can be described as populist nationalists have already entered government through the ballot box in Turkey, Hungary, Poland, Russia and Italy.

In Spain, France and Germany, far-right parties are gaining strength and are already power brokers, driving the policies of mainstream parties in their direction.

In Ireland, a rabble of some 200 blockaded the Dail for an afternoon last week, January 6-style they brought along a mock gallows, decorated with images of members of the traditional parties and the police commissioner.

In Argentina, Javier Milei, an anarcho-capitalist who has called the Pope “a piece of s***”, is current favourite to be the next president.

Meanwhile, rising global powers such as the Peoples’ Republic of China and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are autocratic dictatorships.

It could happen here

Those who see themselves as centrists – whether centre-right or centre-left – in this country still comfort themselves that the UK is not as polarised as the US and that the British have always been moderate. We would never saddle ourselves with an autocratic government.

And yet, in our society, as elsewhere, there is widespread dissatisfaction with the way things are and an urge to seek out others to blame. Opinion polls find that younger adults are increasingly losing faith in representative democracy.

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Small “l” liberalism means entertaining and even encouraging the expression of points of view on all sides of an argument.

This is not the position taken either by populists on the right, who want to coerce and overrule those with whom they disagree or by those on the left embracing “cancel culture”.

The common enemy of the extremes is the centre.

Centrism accepts rules-based order and the operation of checks and balances between what people ask for, the politicians who try to satisfy them and the legal structures that constrain them. As society evolves, we assume democratic systems have the capacity to adjust to them.

Populism rejects this approach. It is intolerant. It denounces the status quo and exaggerates how bad things are, without taking any political responsibility.

Trump talked about “American carnage” and is now belittling fellow Republicans competing for his party’s nomination.

Suella Braverman flies out to a right-wing American thinktank to attack the past 25 years’ immigration policy “too much, too quick, with too little thought” when her Conservative Party has been in government for the past 13 of those years.

Populists talk tough about law and order for others but have little respect for it when they fall foul of it. The “good chap” theory of politics, described by Lord (Peter) Hennessy, would have barred a return by Braverman as home secretary, after she resigned for breaching the ministerial code.

But Rishi Sunak needed to hug her close to shore up his shaky unelected hold on the Conservative Party leadership, so they both looked the other way. Sympathetic Tory politicians and news outlets lauded the vandalism on ULEZ enforcement devices.

Trump views any legal curb on his behaviour as unjustified and politically motivated. Trump and the Republican Senate have successfully politicised the Supreme Court in their image.

In Israel, Trump’s friend Benjamin Netanyahu is attempting much the same, apparently to save himself from prosecutions for corruption.

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Targeting checks and balances

Would-be autocrats try to undermine any independent authorities they cannot dominate. Boris Johnson’s challenge to the monarchy, the courts and parliament was an overt attempt to break them as regulating forces.

A similar approach is evident where this country is a participant, voluntarily and with a voice, in international organisations concerned with multi-lateral issues.

The Take Back Control slogan from Leave EU was a pure expression of this destructive and deluded impulse.

Now the government is floating leaving the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) as “a warning shot” to the Strasbourg court.

Any government should argue its case vigorously, attempts to coerce justice with threats are a different matter. The ECHR was established after 1945 to prevent authoritarians persecuting minorities again.

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Evidently, such angry political posturing attracts support, especially when times are as hard and as globally competitive as they are now.

But even when, as at present, the majority do not go along blaming others – whether migrants or mainstream media and politicians – mobilising core voters can yield big dividends.

In the United States, skewed constitutional arrangements have resulted in the Republicans winning control in the White House and Congress, when significantly defeated in the popular vote.

Johnson and Truss owed their prime ministership to Conservative Party activists, not the electorate. Sunak was installed by the passive aggression of Tory MPs.

In continental Europe, populists have broken through by founding new parties, such as Vox and Alternative für Deutschland. In the US and UK, they have risen on the inside of existing parties, which command automatic, unthinking, legacy loyalty from some voters.

Trump was elected because he was able to take over the Republicans, the Grand Old Party, even though he had no track record within it.

What if the Tories win?

In this country, some voters, and much of the media, will accommodate the Conservative Party and give it their backing, irrespective of where its leaders are taking it.

The Tories could win the next election, more likely obeying the pendulum theory of politics beloved of centrists, at a subsequent contest. What will they stand for when they get into power again?

In anticipation of possible defeat at the approaching election, the Conservative Party is already in a state of civil war about where it goes next.

Following the purges conducted by Johnson, and the despairing retirements precipitated by Truss, the centre-right of the party is in a weakened state.

Braverman and Kemi Badenoch are favourites to contest the party leadership, assuming that Sunak does not pre-empt them by continuing to stampede in their rightward, negativist, policy direction.

There are a lot of ifs, which would have to be made real. It would then, of course, be what people voted for. It would kill off the centrist consensus, which has prevailed in this country for centuries.

But, more possible than ever, it could happen here.

Watch Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips at 8.30am on Sky News – live from the Conservative Party conference. He will be joined by Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove, former home secretary Dame Priti Patel, and Labour’s shadow Scotland secretary Ian Murray.