Foreword
Watching Donald Trump’s progression towards the Republican nomination and possibly the White House (see Sam Tanenhaus’s almost affectionate portrait, p26), many have asked whether this is a failure of democracy. Many ask the same about the UK government’s decision to hand the question of membership of the European Union to people in a referendum. At a Prospect “In Conversation” with Philip Hammond in January, Richard Dawkins, the scientist, challenged the Foreign Secretary to defend giving “such an important question to people like me.” Hammond’s retort was that this was democracy; Dawkins’s, in turn, that he voted for MPs to represent him precisely on technical issues such as these.