Since June 2016, all those lifetimes ago, when the results of the Brexit referendum were finally announced, it seems that the intellectual classes have made delving into ‘Trumpland’, the stagnating world of those left-behind by an increasingly unequal distribution of  income and wealth, patches of which exist not only in the United States, but all over Europe, their new favourite political past-time.

Many a respected scholar has shed light on the causes of the frankly unexpected oucome of the Brexit referendum, correctly pointing to important economic causes and socio-cultural factors. Sadly, though, there has been a decidely patronising air about many of these ‘travels in trumpland’,  including Ed Balls’ BBC 2 attempt, which depicts such voters as backwards, uneducated and ‘otherly’. Despite the wide array of attempts to explain  the result, some more successful than others, many have ommitted what I believe to be an important psychological aspect of the…