As we approach the end of our second year struggling with the pandemic, there are times when it feels like politics has been paused. Media and parliamentary debates continue to be saturated by Covid-19 coverage. Public health restrictions have limited street politics to an enormous degree. While there is no clear exit from the pandemic in sight, debate is gradually turning to the post-pandemic moment. What will politics look like after Covid? Two recent books, one from the political right and the other from the left, address this intriguing question.
The central thesis of Paolo Gerbaudo’s The Great Recoil: Politics After Populism and Pandemic (Verso, 288pp, £16.99) is that the rise of both left- and right-wing populism is part of a great recoil against the inequities and limitations of neoliberalism.
