This picture is aging badly.
I think what will stay with me about the last two years is the immediate, all-consuming atmosphere of crushing inevitability that descended after November 2024. It was palpable, in real time. Debate was silenced. Everything was framed as compulsory, impenetrable, impossible to question. The obeying in advance beyond anything I expected.
There was also the widespread acceptance that elections can now be bought and sold by a new generation of oligarchs. Not true. Here’s Edward Luce:…