In the metropolitan citadels there is a faint glimmering of the reality that has destroyed the cohesive communities that are now so helplessly enraged. But that faint recognition is too mixed up with snobbery and indifference to be any use. On the face of it, this seems to be a cultural dispute between people who need no ties to origins or geographical place, who see such sentiments as limiting and small-minded – and those who have rootedness and community at the centre of their lives.

But the two ways of living have not always been in such open conflict: they managed to coexist in a state of only mild dislike during happier times. The metropolitan lifestyle that put personal liberation and fulfilment at the top of its priorities and sneered quietly at provincial limitations could, until quite recently, go its way without provoking fury (as long as it maintained a paternalistic concern for the oiks in those nowhere places). So why is it being set upon and ripped to pieces now?

Because the old rooted communities were once sustained by the old industries: the coal mines and the steel works, and in the US the Rust Belt manufacturing plants, provided not just jobs, but the bonds that held the families and the generations together.