Both sides of the Atlantic sense more hope: voters are drawn to the ‘politics of love’ | Alexander Hurst

Trump’s rout could be part of a democratic spring that began in Hungary. But will it extend to the French elections next May?

Hungary, Brazil, Serbia, and now the US. So far this year, when their hand has been held to the stove, voters have chosen what the Texas senator-elect James Talarico, the new face of the US’s Christian left, campaigned on as a “politics of love”: a society where we aren’t at each other’s throats, or a police state at ours.

Is it any surprise that when there is clarity about the choice on offer, voters have started to shrink away from a vision fuelled by billionaire wealth and runaway inequality? Away from oligarchic rule and unapologetic corruption, connivance with aggression, expansion, colonialism and war; environmental degradation and the surrender of the human spirit to a reality mediated by the algorithm.

Alexander Hurst writes for Guardian Europe from Paris. His memoir Generation Desperation is out now

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