Soggy liberal democracies are in trouble. The age belongs to the world’s “strongmen”. As mainstream leaders are washed away by rising populism, authoritarians are swimming with the tide. They can act swiftly and decisively in times of global upheaval.

Such is the intellectual fashion. Vast forests are being turned into doom-laden tracts declaring that what Winston Churchill once called the worst of political systems except for all the alternatives has had its day. Scholars are in a race to Armageddon. “Is Democracy Dying?” screams the cover of the august US journal Foreign Affairs. Remember the end of history? Now, it seems, we must endure the end of democracy.

The conceit is neat enough and, during the past few years, has seemed to fit the geopolitical temper of the times. The leaders who have made news — China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for example — do not count themselves liberals. US president Donald Trump, in a category entirely of his own, envies these autocrats their power.