His warning is more associated with totalitarianism and dictatorships, than modern democracies, but the statist attitudes he warned about still apply today and lead to the same loss of personal freedom and increase of state control. In the main, the serfs are patient and tolerant of their masters, but in a democracy, the establishment behind the state risks being challenged. And that has happened twice this year, first with Brexit and now with Trump in America.

We can be certain that the establishment in Britain and America will reinvent itself. Theresa May is not out to change the world, but is adapting to the new realities. Donald Trump is still mostly an unknown quantity, but the initial impression is one of appalling economic ignorance, dressed up as the new Reaganomics.