Strictly speaking, democracy can be squared with dictatorship if the demos is choosing its dictators for itself. That – for those of us who wouldn’t welcome this outcome – is the great danger of the ‘populism’ which is gripping so many countries today. If every four or five years the people are allowed to elect a leader who thereafter will decide everything for them, then the most simple and basic requirement of democracy is met.

Russia probably fits this pattern today, even allowing for the undoubted electoral chicanery there; China too, and North Korea; and possibly next year’s USA, if Donald Trump gets in again. (That’s judging by some of his recent pronouncements, and the foreign leaders he most admires.) In Britain the political Right is displaying similarly authoritarian tendencies; and in other European countries too. Many people – possibly a majority – don’t really want to have collective ‘control’ over their lives, beyond a certain limit; or even to think deeply about politics. It’s too hard; and easier to treat ‘democratic’ elections  simply as personality contests, or as games. Other sorts of ‘democrat’ – the ‘Social’ kind, for example – need to keep this in mind. The Right does, to its great electoral advantage; and to the detriment of the rest of us.

Sadly, I’ve discovered that we can’t necessarily rely – as I have tended to do until recently – on Social democratic Sweden to keep us more liberal democrats on track. It has an unpleasant Right-wing tendency too, organised as the Sverigedemokraterna, rooted historically in Sweden’s old Nazi party; and although not formally a part of the governing centre-right coalition government clearly exerting influence on it. I’m told the SD is currently debating whether to come out in favour of a ‘Swexit’ of its own; which would put it in the company of Britain’s UKIP, and of UKIP’s toxic successors.

The main factor behind this shift to what is now increasingly being called out as ‘Fascism’ – down there beneath the right-wing propaganda, Britain’s awful popular press, Boris Johnson, desperate late-stage capitalism and all the rest – could simply be a large number of people’s basic desire to be led, rather than to have to take decisions for themselves. In other words, to want daddy – or mummy – back in their lives again. Daddy Putin must be a comfort.