Loading For Trump and Johnson, it really is all about winning. The first achievement of right-wing populism was, through men such as these two, to storm the bastions of the centre-right establishment. The movement's impulses of nationalism, xenophobia, protectionism and populism now inhabit the logistics shell that was left behind when the US Republican and British Conservative parties jettisoned all their principles and policies to make way for the new wave. The second achievement of the right-wing populist movement was to become the party of government in both countries. Third was to extend their initial electoral successes to become entrenched in power. Fourth is that they are now reshaping not only politics but the real world of policy, too. Trump is about to win in the impeachment effort against him. It doesn't matter what the House of Representatives does; the Republican-dominated Senate will do everything it can to protect him. He is odds-on to win another four years in the Oval Office in next year's election. He has not only achieved most of his signature policy promises at home, he has now single-handedly forced major changes in the Chinese government's trade and economic policies. Beijing, suffering an economic slowdown and smarting under the pain of punitive US tariffs, has sued for peace, at least temporarily. Johnson rode Brexit to the leadership of the Tory party and has now won an emphatic electoral endorsement to actually implement it. This will reshape Britain and Europe and energise right-wing populist movements everywhere. Including in Australia, which has so far been largely immune to the movement's allure.

Illustration: Dionne Gain Credit: What caused this powerful wave? According to the Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde, three major convulsions. First was the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the US. Second was the global financial crisis and the Great Recession that it precipitated. Third was the European refugee crisis of 2015. "All the Western democracies were affected, albeit in different ways," he writes in his new book The Far Right Today, "giving rise to an unprecedented wave of Islamophobic and populist protest." Australia was one of the least affected because domestic terrorism was well contained, the financial crisis well managed, and the refugee influx well controlled, if controversially so. But hold on. A great wave of left-wing populism was also unleashed in the last decade. In the US its most prominent face is that of Bernie Sanders. In Britain it was Jeremy Corbyn. Why has right-wing populism prevailed and its left-wing variety struggled? Populism has many definitions but the one I favour is that it's a political style of offering unworkably simplistic solutions to complex problems. This describes populism left and right. They are the same in one other important way, too – both rail against elites.

The big difference? Right-wing populism has one extra feature – it campaigns against an ethnic or religious out-group, or immigrants in general. Trump announced his presidential bid by calling Mexicans "rapists". His "Muslim ban" soon followed. The emotional core of Brexit was not trade protectionism – post-Brexit, London is planning new free-trade agreements with the US and Australia among others. Brexit was a reaction against immigration, seen to be out of control under Britain's EU membership. Loading So is the magic formula for the success of the right-wing populists simply to be nationalist, anti-elite and xenophobic? The former Trump campaign director Steve Bannon says that, at core, America suffered from the widespread unease that its elites were "managing decline". The politician who could best promise an end to the country's "managed decline" would be the victor. The American author and military historian Max Boot wrote in The Washington Post on the weekend: "Right-wing populists like Trump and Johnson have figured out how to mesmerise voters with their simplistic slogans and spellbinding showmanship. "They are political sorcerers – and no opponent has yet figured out how to consistently break their spell. Unless Democrats can crack the code in the next 10 months, the West might never recover."