Ben Sixsmith

Winston Churchill can be blamed for many things. He was an essential figure behind the disastrous landings at Gallipoli. It was on his word that the thuggish 'Black and Tans' were sent into Ireland. His racial animus towards Indian people did not help Britain to formulate an effective response to the Bengal Famine. He was insultingly quick to abandon our Polish allies to the Soviet Union. Yes, Churchill can be blamed for many things. Many British writers and politicians, in an effort to retain their national pride as Britain declined on the world stage, have tended to deify the old bulldog. As Peter Hitchens wrote: 'As a child, I studied many patriotic accounts of the war, my favourite being a cartoon strip produced by the boys’ weekly The Eagle, called The Happy Warrior.

Americans are not obliged to take the advice of a meddling Brit but nonetheless I feel compelled to offer a polite suggestion to my conservative cousins: do not underestimate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Conservatives are in danger of misreading the 2016 election. Americans were not dubious about Hillary Clinton because they disliked the Democratic party half as much as because they disliked Hillary Clinton. The Democrats’ 2016 candidate was extraordinarily shady, extraordinarily inept and extraordinary uncharismatic. Voters had no such qualms with Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 and might have no such qualms with future Democratic candidates. These could well include Ocasio-Cortez.

Single issue campaigns are often built around whimsy. The Polish Beer Lovers’ Party springs deliciously to mind, as do Jimmy McMillan’s tireless efforts to remind New Yorkers that the rent was too damn high. Andrew Yang’s attempt to become the Democratic Party candidate for the 2020 elections is based on an idea that might seem whimsical and yet he is a deeply serious man. His campaign is to address the problem of automation: how, in other words, to make the best of a future where machines have rendered millions of jobs redundant. The first thing to be said is that Yang has about as much of a chance of becoming the Democrat nominee as this author has of becoming the UFC heavyweight champion.

Ron Unz is a curious man, both in the sense of being curious about things and in the sense of inspiring curiosity. Born in California into a Jewish family, Unz studied at Cambridge and Stanford before making millions through a financial-software firm. Some of us would have retired at that point to enjoy life with no more arduous pursuits than the occasional swim but not Unz. He began to involve himself with politics. In the 1990s, Unz was best known for the humble cause of promoting California Proposition 227, which attempted to promote monolingual education in Californian schools to advance immigrant assimilation. A somewhat bewildered CNN profile made note of his resourcefulness, intelligence and ambition — or, as they characterised it, his hubris.