For the foundational economy to survive and thrive, what is required beyond the political economy of national developmentalism is a strategy to take on the monopoly capitalism and the rentier economy.

Pluralism is not a doctrine. It is a disposition, a mentality, an approach. Like most approaches to politics, it is a matter of feeling as well as of belief. Pluralists rejoice in variety. They are sceptical about theories – Marxism, economic liberalism, globalisation – that presuppose uniformity.

Most people are broadly communitarian: small-c conservative in their approach to matters of state and small-s socialist on public services, fair play and hard work. They cherish liberty but value authority too.

Politics is often referred to as the art of the possible, but the category of possibility belongs much more to natural science with its focus on modelling and probability. Politics is not the science of the possible, but the art of the actual.

the deep desire for community that a majority of people expressed through generous acts of social solidarity is yet to be represented by any political party or government.

the use of both old and new media in military-style strategies of deception. To maintain a semblance of democracy, the ruling party combines top-down governance and practices of co-opting anti-regime actors with techniques taken from television, advertising, PR and increasingly the internet in order to generate a managed debate.

But this glosses over the fact that the Polish and Hungarian models are a form of state capitalism largely reliant on fiscal dumping and deregulation to attract foreign capital while sliding into authoritarian nationalism that undermines constitutional freedoms.

Despite their differences, liberal and authoritarian ideologies end up converging around forms of capitalism that divide societies into plutocratic elites and a proletarianized populace – with the middle and working classes ever more eroded.

These new polarities concern variously the globalist versus the nativist, the open society versus the closed society, the technocratic versus the populist, democracy versus authoritarianism and liberalism versus antiliberalism. In electoral terms, they seem to map neatly onto Remain/Leave in the Brexit referendum and Joe Biden against Donald Trump.