Bagehot: Suspicious minds

摘要

BRITAIN IS SEETHING with rumours of treason and plot. Hardcore Brexiteers speculate that Theresa May is preparing to betray the 17.4m people who voted Leave, at the behest of a Machiavellian establishment. Hard-core supporters of Jeremy Corbyn believe that the same establishment is co-ordinating a vast campaign to sabotage their hero. And a growing Yellow Jacket movement feeds on far-fetched theories of secret-service plots and police cover-ups. Richard Hofstadter, a great American historian, once posited that American politics was vulnerable to a "paranoid style" that is defined by "heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy". That style has now found a home in Britain.