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Can it be that it was all so simple then, or has time rewritten every line? Was it only this spring we were all being told that populist nationalism, Trump style, was the wave of the future, that “the people” were fed up with [your pet grievance here] and the elite media just didn’t get it? How long ago it all seems.

Since then we have had the elections in the Netherlands and France, as well as the Conservative leadership race. In none did the populist candidate or party succeed or even seriously challenge. The floundering example of the Trump presidency — what it actually looks like when you put someone in power who hasn’t the first clue what to do — has helped enormously. But it was predictable enough that a movement fuelled only by resentment, fear and leader-worship would sooner or later collapse of its own weight.

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Still, the rush for the exits over the last week or two, after the Charlottesville debacle, has been breathtaking. Donald Trump may have been unable or unwilling to disown the “alt-right” — the neo-Nazis, maybe, but not the “very fine people” marching by night chanting the “Jews will not replace us” — but many in the Republican party have begun edging away from him. Ezra Levant’s belated attempts to distance his Rebel Media website from the alt-right it had so aggressively championed has likewise done little to stanch the flow of departing staff or Conservative leaders distancing themselves from him.