Calls for a second referendum on EU membership have been growing louder without, however, properly making the case for it. They fail to address the heart of the matter: how to show adequate respect for the democratic result of the 2016 referendum on EU membership whilst making the case for a new referendum. Ultimately, the case for a second referendum requires a compelling justification for challenging the first. The real question that the proponents of a people’s vote must confront is whether the democratic process can be suspended without undermining its legitimacy. They need to be able to square the circle, because a democracy worth the name depends on the consistent application of its rules. The risk of violating consistency …

What Trump may not realise, however, is that he is in fact dealing the deadliest blow so far to the neoliberal order that he feeds on. In electing Donald Trump the forty-fifth president of the United States on 8 November 2016, the American people have in fact voted against Trump and the predatory system he embodies. He may have masterfully exploited the despair of the precariat to his own advantage, yet it is the precariat, the working class struggling with chronic and manifold precarity, that is using him as a weapon against the invisible oppressive hand of neoliberalism that has ravaged the middle class since the late 1970s. Seeing this momentous vote as a motley mix of racism, ignorance and …