Parallels

Paddy Ashdown is currently researching the 1930s for a book about the German resistance to Hitler. He says he is horrified by the parallels:

The way that we have retreated from internationalism to ugly nationalism in Britain. The way that we have retreated from international trade to protectionism. The sense that somehow or other democracy is failing.

The habit of lying in our public discourse. What was it Goebbels said? Tell it often, tell it big … stick it on the side of a bus perhaps and drive it around the country. I’m not saying Hitler is around the corner, of course I’m not, although you might conclude the conditions for something like that to emerge are there.

I’m always a bit wary of making Nazi comparisons, but it can’t be denied that May is allowing an increasingly jingoistic press to drag her in a direction that is both populist and authoritarian.