ON FACEBOOK, Brendan O’Neill has this to say about Austria’s election: “Extraordinary: 72% of working-class voters in Austria voted for Hofer, the far-right candidate, and only 5% of them voted for Van der Bellen, the green. This is the real story of the Austrian election: the left in Europe, and the European Union, now have no connection whatsoever with working-class people. The left is celebrating Hofer’s defeat, seemingly unaware that the more profound defeat is theirs. The rupture between the left and the working class in Europe is now complete.”

As in the United States, the Left is the party of the apparatchiks, not the workers.