In the first test of her leadership of the Liberal Democrats, Jo Swinson has placed herself at odds with most Lib Dem voters, some of her own MPs, and much of the liberal press – but perhaps there's more to her strategy than meets the eye.

Both Labour and Lib Dems have floated the idea of a national unity government, comprising opposition parties and a handful of moderate Tories, to revoke Article 50 before immediately calling a general election. While Labour insists that Jeremy Corbyn should be first to attempt any such alternative emergency government, Swinson has refused to work with the Labour leader, calling instead for a more moderate and unifying figure such as Harriet Harman or Ken Clarke.

A national unity government – a misnomer "unifying" only the half of the country that is especially opposed to a no-deal Brexit – is an unlikely prospect, whoever it is led by. If the Johnson government is as committed to no-deal as it claims, that outcome is more likely to be avoided by a kind of mundane legislative trial and error from backbenchers already performed with near-success by Yvette Cooper and Oliver Letwin earlier this year.

For Labour, the attempt at unity government nonetheless makes sense given the party's conference policy of exhausting every possibility to prevent no-deal while keeping all other options on the table. As Sky’s Lewis Goodall remarked, insisting that Corbyn must lead such a project also at least had the virtue of being constitutionally conventional.

So what does Swinson have to gain by allowing it look like there are limits to the lengths she’ll go to prevent Brexit – the reason for her party's recent better fortune? The answer lies in a comparison that might surprise even Swinson herself.

Donald Trump was universally predicted to lose the 2016 election, partly as a result of his transgressing too many liberal norms assumed to be red lines for ordinary American voters. Trump used the campaign to pursue his personal vendettas, even against those nominally on his own side; he cultivated implausible conspiracy theories about his rivals; he called into doubt the liberal principles of constitutional convention and due process. And his campaign gave unseemly prominence to social media – which, as all sensible liberals knew, is not "the real world".

The result was a campaign of unremitting negativity, demotivating undecided voters but firing up the hardcore, who welcomed the irrational and antagonistic side of Trump’s politics.

Faced with the identical tactics of the Leave campaign in 2016, Britain’s liberals did not have the option of calling on a base of violently excitable Remainers to tip the balance for their own side. On both shores of the Atlantic, liberals have been slow to find their own version of the libidinal politics of a triumphant hard right and a renascent radical left. But this may no longer be the case.

The online subculture of "FBPE" Europhiles that has grown since the referendum mixes a well-heeled tweeness with (in its wilder reaches, at least) a conspiracism and hostility to compromise currently found across the political spectrum. Like the populists they revile, much of this milieu regards any institution or constitutional measure (from the BBC to the EU referendum itself) which dissents from its view as automatically illegitimate. And, conspicuously for some, Corbyn is a greater hate figure within this world than Boris Johnson.

Could it be that Swinson – unlike her awkward and somnolent predecessors – represents liberalism seeking to adapt Trumpism for its own side?

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According to YouGov, around 70 per cent of Lib Dem voters would welcome a Corbyn government if it meant averting no-deal and delivered a second referendum with remain as an option. Yet they also report a remarkable near 20 per cent who would accept no-deal to keep Corbyn from power. Perhaps Swinson has this recalcitrant core, along with the FBPE online army, in mind when she needlessly muddies constitutional norms; when she foregrounds her rivalry with Corbyn in the face of scolding from her own supporters and the press; or when she invokes – as she did on Twitter yesterday – the red meat of conspiracy theories about Corbyn sabotaging the Remain campaign or being a secret hard Brexiteer?

If Swinson is experimenting with Trump’s tactics, then it will not be without danger: her fellow Remainers, Change UK’s Mike Gapes and Chris Leslie paint Corbyn is a Leninist Disaster Socialist hoping to capitalise on no-deal, and seek to claim parity between the economic risks of no-deal and a social democratic Labour government under Corbyn. Their reward for that approach? They are polling at 0 per cent. Even more troubling is the potential that Swinson's position could lend credence to populist centrist memes about moral parity between the policies of Johnson and Corbyn, or the relative economic effects of no-deal or a Labour government.