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“MARK my words. Within a year she’ll be gone. She’s stuffed.” Thus a senior Cameroon surveyed the landscape almost exactly a year—and what feels like many political ages—ago over dinner. He was talking of Angela Merkel, whose handling of the refugee crisis 10 Downing Street considered suicidal. Surely, the thinking went, no leader could accept the arrival and settlement of so many newcomers and survive? The bafflement betrayed the British government’s poor grasp of the differences between its electorate and political system, and those of Germany. Indeed, today it is Mr Cameron who is “stuffed” and “gone” while Angela Merkel cruises, albeit through choppy waters, to a fourth term as chancellor.

The incident underlines one of the sad if perennial features of Anglo-German relations: mutual incomprehension. Sad, because the two countries share so much, in interests and outlook. And perennial because their political cultures are so alien to one another.

The German establishment simply does not understand Britain’s island mentality, and the complex, post-imperial blend of arrogance and insecurity that defines its stance towards the outside world (which I discuss in my latest column, on the transatlantic relationship). Britons, meanwhile, struggle with Germany’s equally distinctive sense of belonging and duty as the linchpin of the European order. The gap is even borne out in the architectures of the two polities. Westminster is a festival of Victoriana, a neo-Gothic reminder of Britain’s past hegemony and Blitz-era defiance. Berlin’s government quarter around the Reichstag has mostly risen in the past twenty years; all buildings rebuilt from, or built on, the ruins of extremism. Its very streets are studded with Stolpersteine, or brass cobblestones marking the victims of Nazism at the addresses where they once lived.

The context of Theresa May’s meeting with Mrs Merkel today in Berlin illustrated how little has changed since that dinner in London some 12 months ago. Britain may have voted to leave the EU and acquired a new prime minister, but still that mutual incomprehension reigns. Many German leaders suspect that the British political class is looking for excuses to kill Brexit. They fret that opening Europe’s patchy “four freedoms” (people, capital, services, goods) to negotiation could bring down the union; “cherry picking” (or “raisin picking” as they say here) being the ultimate crime. Meanwhile their British counterparts have long treated the vote to leave the EU as unquestionable. And they consider that very patchiness a case for a chacun-à-son-goût sort of European future; not only do they want to pick the cherries/raisins, but they think the act of doing so good for Europe.

This gulf is reflected in recent headlines. Wolfgang Schäuble’s recent interview with the Financial Times—in which the German finance minister rejected talk of an à-la-carte Brexit, appears in today’s German press as a moderating intervention in pursuit of a European consensus. In the British press it is claimed that he is spoiling for a fight (“READY TO PLAY HARD BALL” reads one headline). Meanwhile, Britain’s recent appearances in the German media are not flattering. Boris Johnson is mocked for suggesting that Italy’s prosecco sales could suffer if Italy does not back a generous Brexit deal. Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister, is widely quoted calling Britain’s demands “intellectually impossible”.

Many in London are fatalistic about this sort of thing. Some pro-Europeans believe Britain will get a terrible deal that will do it much harm. Some Brexiteers reckon Europe has no choice but to fall at Britain’s feet. While the former group is closer to the truth, neither has it quite right: there is plenty to fight for. In Brussels a tug-of-war is taking place between federalists who want a hermetic Brexit agreement and Anglophiles who want one incorporating a transitional deal that might guide Britain towards some sort of associate membership. Which prevails—and thus what role Britain plays in Europe’s future—partly depends on the expansion of the pool of mutual assumptions, hopes and priorities uniting London and Berlin. Today’s encounter between Mrs Merkel and Mrs May was awkward and stilted, which may be natural at a time when the latter is new and the former more concerned with America. But it must not remain that way.

IN A year of grim defeats for internationalists in Britain and abroad, a morsel of relief. The Liberal Democrats pitched yesterday’s by-election in Richmond Park as a chance for voters to voice scepticism about Brexit. The gambit worked: Sarah Olney took the south-west London seat with an increased vote-share of 30.4 points. Zac Goldsmith, the languidly aristocratic Brexiteer who fought a dog-whistle campaign for the London mayoralty in May, had triggered the vote in October by resigning from the Conservatives in protest at plans to build a third runway at nearby Heathrow Airport. By covering off this issue (the greenish Lib Dems are also opposed) and making the choice about Europe, his opponents pulled the rug from under him.

It is tempting to see this primarily as a blow for the Tories. As I wrote in my column in September, the Lib Dems have been doing strikingly well in those prosperous but relatively liberal parts of the country that voted Conservative at the last election but for Remain in the Brexit referendum. First came a series of triumphs in council by-elections in such places, then a strong showing at the election to replace David Cameron as MP for Witney. Richmond Park, a posh, metropolitan place where 75% of voters were for staying in the EU, could hardly be a better test of the trend. Indeed, the line on our chart plotting the change in the Lib Dem vote share against support for Remain in Tory areas predicted yesterday’s result to within a couple of points of accuracy.

All of which will give some Conservative MPs the jitters. It was a surge of wins in Lib Dem seats that gave the party its majority last year. That vote is soft: in many of these places voters switched at the last minute, spooked by Tory warnings about the influence Scottish nationalists would have on a Labour government. Especially in those that voted Remain—think Bath, Cheltenham, Kingston & Surbiton, Twickenham—the Lib Dems look newly threatening.

Yet nor should Conservatives panic. Richmond Park voted unusually strongly for Remain. Standing as an independent (even if the Tories did not run a candidate against him) Mr Goldsmith did not have a party machine behind him. It being a single by-election, the Lib Dems could concentrate their limited resources—Richmondites will be relieved now to be able to go to the shops without being buttonholed by Tim Farron on the way—and deny their opponents the chance to talk about national leadership. The next general election will be different: however badly Brexit is going in 2020, the inevitable Conservative “vote Farron, get Corbyn” scare campaign will make last year’s “vote Clegg, get Miliband and Salmond” onslaught look like a picnic.

Which points to the real message from Richmond. The outgoing MP may be a Conservative (until recently, at least). But the loser was Labour. The party took 3.7% of votes, down from 12.3% last year, and lost its deposit. It obtained fewer votes (1,515) than it has members in the seat (it claims over 1,600). That may reflect tactical voting: left-wing voters lending support to Ms Olney. But it also speaks to Labour’s lacklustre voice on Europe (notwithstanding the wise appointment of Sir Keir Starmer as its Brexit spokesman) and general funk.

And it speaks to a wider structural evolution. Three or four years ago, with UKIP on the rise and the Lib Dems in power with the Tories, the talk was of the fragmentation of the right of British politics. That period seems to have passed. The 2015 election saw the Conservatives consume the Lib Dems’ centrist flank. The Brexit vote and Theresa May’s nationalist tilt has attracted back some Tory defectors to UKIP (hence her party now routinely exceeds 40% in polls).

Today the fragmentation is more on the left. Particularly under Paul Nuttall, its statist new leader, UKIP is now overwhelmingly a problem for Labour; especially in the sort of post-industrial areas that have long voted for the party but strongly supported Brexit. In Scotland, Labour support has been gobbled up by the SNP: the latest ICM poll puts the Conservatives (the Conservatives!) there on double Labour’s vote share, 22% to 11%. And the Lib Dems are clearly loosening Labour’s grip on Remain-voting progressive types in the comfortable parts of the big cities and in university towns (think Cambridge, Manchester Withington, Cardiff Central). And that’s without going into the fragmentation taking place within the party itself, among its moderates, the Corbynites and the spectrum of shades in between.

Confronted with this fragmentation, an open-minded Labour Party might start thinking about a more federal approach to politics; alliances, electoral pacts and semi-detached regional branches together enabling the British left-of-centre to build a coalition that could one day win power under first-past-the-post. Cross-party initiatives like Paddy Ashdown’s “More United”, which helped rally support for Ms Olney in Richmond, are sprouting up. But only a few in Labour evince an appetite for such pluralism. Take this typical tweet last night from a moderate MP: “Off to bed, hope to wake to news of Labour victory in #RichmondPark. If not, really don't care who wins.”

This giant conundrum—fighting multiple battles on multiple fronts, defending a metropolitan flank and a nativist one simultaneously, resisting an instinctive tribalism—could be beyond the abilities even of a charismatic, collegiate and persuasive Labour leader. But landing on the desk of Jeremy Corbyn, the full scale of whose electoral toxicity is yet to emerge, it could reshape the political landscape over the next decades: think the Lib Dems, Labour and UKIP all on around 15-20%, the SNP dominant in Scotland, and the Tories taking the rest. All of which, under first-past-the-post, is a recipe for a succession of Conservative landslides. Making predictions in these volatile times is a risky business: a chaotic, disorderly Brexit (a possibility Lord Kerr, a top former diplomat, on Monday put at above 50%) could reshape the landscape in other ways hard to imagine now. But if you think the Richmond Park result was a straightforward blow to the Tories, think again.

A PATTERN is emerging in political journalism. Whenever something can be construed as a rejection of the establishment, or a win for authoritarianism, or a triumph for swaggering, braces-twanging bombast—or some other shift the writer does not like—the subject is ascribed to a global Trump-ite revolution. Often this comes without nuance.

Take this week. On Monday responses to the election of a statist, pro-death-penalty MEP as UKIP leader obeyed the trend. “Paul Nuttall: Poundshop Trump” ran one much-shared tweet; “Trump minus the wig” was another. Today Tim Farron, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, called his centrist party’s victory in the Richmond Park by-election a “repudiation” of Mr Trump. On Sunday Italians may reject their government’s proposed constitutional reforms: “Italy has a Trump of its own” claimed a Haaretz headline of the leader of the “No” campaign. Also on Sunday a presidential election in Austria could produce Europe’s first far-right head of state since 1945. “Austrian nationalists hope for a ‘Trump bump’” fretted today's Washington Post. Barely a day goes by without politics somewhere being related to the president elect’s shock victory.

Enough. It’s not that the comparisons are fundamentally wrong. A populist, nationalist wave is sweeping the West. It has to do with the economic crisis, globalisation, automation, immigration, stagnant wages, social media and a less deferential culture; albeit in drastically varying proportions in different countries. Each instance of this shift spurs on the next. So to draw comparisons is fair. Important ideological and demographic traits unite Mr Trump’s election, Britain’s vote for Brexit, Mr Nuttall’s prospects in northern England, Norbert Hofer’s in Austria and those of the “No” campaign in Italy. There is also the Dutch vote in April against the EU-Ukraine association agreement, the rise of hard-right parties like the Sweden Democrats and Alternative for Germany, authoritarian leaders like those of Hungary and Poland, movements like Pegida and the Tea Party.

The problem is that talking about the similarities between these forces is all the rage, but talking about their differences is not. And that matters. For the similarities tell a flattering story: one of ordinary folk everywhere losing patience with their self-serving rulers; the private-jet-bound Davos crowd, the Clintons and Blairs, the Goldman Sachs bosses and their silky lobbyists. The similarities narrate a 1989 for the 21st century. The overlooked differences, however, are just as striking, and all-together less flattering.

They tell local tales that give the populists less credit. Tales of Hillary Clinton’s failings and those of her campaign, of David Cameron’s endless use of Brussels as a punch bag, of the organisational weaknesses of Britain’s anti-Brexit campaign, of the liberal arguments against Mr Renzi’s constitutional reforms, of UKIP’s dysfunction and Nigel Farage’s inability to win even a favourable parliamentary seat last year. Each of these sagas is specific and rooted. Each, too, suggests that the populists in question are not quite the dynamic heralds of an unstoppable change that the similarities between them might imply.

The differences complicate the story of a sudden wave of change. They reveal that while Ms Le Pen may make the second round in the French election next year, her more overtly right-wing father pulled off the same feat in 2002. They reveal that while Mr Hofer could win the (mostly ceremonial) Austrian presidency on Sunday, his party has been an established force in his country for decades and became the larger part of a coalition government as long ago as 2000. They ascribe Italy’s “Trump of its own” to an anarchic Italian tradition that predates not just Mr Trump’s election win but also his birth. They reveal that the post-communist nationalism thriving in central European countries like Hungary and Poland has its roots not before the turn of the decade but before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Most importantly, the differences belie the simple solutions proffered by some. It is widely said that the “liberal elite” cannot possibly understand the changes through which it is living because it does not understand the hard-up strivers driving them. Never mind that this sort of thinking cedes the designation of “elites” to the likes of Mr Trump, a billionaire, and Nigel Farage, a privately educated former stockbroker. It also fails to explain why Mr Trump’s success in neglected, rust-belt America is supposedly contiguous with that of his counterparts in, say, Sweden; a country with a gleaming welfare state and a former steel welder for a prime minister. Nor does it explain why Germany, pace most of the English-language press, still broadly likes Angela Merkel as it approaches 2m mostly Muslim incomers in a matter of years. Nor does it explain why the vast majority of hard-up strivers in America who happen not to be white voted for Hillary Clinton (or even acknowledge that she won the popular vote by over 2.5m votes). As a theory of the times we are in, the simplistic, undifferentiated “global Trumpism” narrative sucks.

Most telling of all is how the populists cling to the comparisons. In his victory speech on Monday, Mr Nuttall vowed to “put the great back in Great Britain”, a limp echo of Mr Trump’s “make America great again”. Meanwhile the president elect has called himself “Mr Brexit” and given Mr Farage a high-profile ride in his golden elevator. Ms Le Pen and Mr Hofer celebrated both Britain’s vote to leave the EU and the American election outcome. The morning after the Brexit vote Breitbart, the in-house journal of the populist right, ran an editorial claiming: “It’s not just Britain, you see. The revolution against globalism is, well, global. Britain may be leading the charge, but insurgents and rebels from D.C. to Berlin are also hard at work tormenting their elitist overlords.” Wonder why these people revel in such arguments?

The answer is simple: unburdened by nuance, the comparisons tend to obscure messy local circumstances, beg fewer difficult questions and risk implying that any given populist force automatically has its finger on the pulse of international events. Commentators who reach for the “X is our country’s Trump” line without acknowledging the differences are abetting the forces of authoritarianism on whom they may believe they are helpfully shedding light.

Plenty of similarities do exist. The evidence of the past months is that populist success in one country can “embolden, enlighten and maybe even detoxify” populists in other places (as I, hands up, wrote yesterday about Mr Hofer’s presidential run). This process and especially its channels of communication and mobilisation (like the identitarian movement, which I profiled here) deserve extensive scrutiny. My point however, is that if these accounts of the similarities, of the trend, are not complemented by accounts of the differences, then that imbalance strengthens the populists. By all means spot and explain the trend. But describe its limits, too.

FOR the past few months Theresa May and her ministers have allowed some ambiguities to swirl around Britain’s future relationship with the European Union. Yes, she confirmed in her conference speech in October, Brexit would take it beyond the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice and the EU’s free movement regime. Some found this hard to square with reports that special arrangements would be sought for parts of the British economy (like the City of London and carmaking) or with Mrs May’s assurance to businesses that she would seek to avoid a “cliff edge” on Britain’s exit from the club. Many in other European capitals questioned whether Britain would leave at all.

To the extent that such uncertainties persisted despite her endless choruses of “Brexit means Brexit”, at a speech to EU ambassadors in London on January 17th Mrs May put them to the sword. Britain will leave the single market and the customs union, and will thus be able to negotiate its own trade deals with third-party economies. It will not pay “huge sums” to secure sectoral access (a phrase whose precise meaning now matters a lot). She wants this all wrapped up within the two years permitted by Article 50, the exit process she will launch by the end of March; ideally with a “phased process of implementation” afterwards covering things like immigration controls and financial regulation. In other words there will be no formal transitional period. There will, in fact, be a cliff edge of sorts.

This reflects two realities to which policymakers in Britain and on the continent must now get accustomed. First, Mrs May unequivocally interprets the vote for Brexit as a vote for lower immigration even at the cost of some prosperity. Never mind that the polling evidence supporting this assumption is limited: such is now the transaction at the heart of the new government’s political strategy. Second, even allowing for a certain amount of expectation-management, it seems Mrs May is not placing huge importance on the outcome of the talks. She wants a comprehensive free-trade agreement (FTA) based on the one recently signed between the EU and Canada; but where “CETA” took about seven years to negotiate, she has permitted herself two. She said that this might cover finance and cars, but also recognised the importance the EU places on the “four freedoms” (making freedom of movement a condition of market membership), suggesting a realism about the extent of any such FTA in the narrow time constraints available. Mrs May also wants some associate membership of the customs union but declared herself relaxed about the details. In short: she will do her best, but if the talks come to little or nothing, so be it.

Of course, they will be tough. The prime minister will want firstly to maximise the scope of the FTA, secondly to maximise the benefits of any associate relationship with the customs union and thirdly to minimise the precipitousness of the cliff off which British firms will fly in 2019. She hinted at how she intended to do so, characterising the country’s current defence and security co-operation with the continent as a possible negotiating chip and warning that her government could “change the basis of Britain’s economic model” (i.e. turn it into a tax haven) if the EU does not play nice. She also said that she would be willing to walk out on the talks: “no deal…is better than a bad deal.”

So Britain’s economy is in for a rough ride and, though the government will try to smooth it out, the priority is getting the country out of the EU in the most complete and rapid way possible. If the price of this priority is economic pain, then pay Britain must. All of which gives firms some of the certainty they have craved since June 23rd: those fundamentally reliant on continental supply chains or the EU “passport” for financial services, say, now have the green light to plan their total or partial relocation. It also means the Brexit talks will be simpler and perhaps even less fractious than they might have been had Britain tried to “have its cake and eat it”. The country will eat its cake and live with an empty plate afterwards. Brexit really does mean Brexit.