Tide turning? - Hard-right Orbán defeated

The suggestion that Europe’s slightly left-of-centre liberalism is in retreat is easier to argue than dismiss.

Versions of rightwing intolerance and authoritarianism are in the ascent, in a way that cannot but stir the ghosts that remind us all of Europe’s appallingly divided and violent past. Brexit, the renewal of the right in Austria, France, Germany, Poland and, if the polls are accurate, Italy, too, all suggest that human nature is always susceptible to fear and strongman promises to neutralise that fear.