Europe’s supposedly ‘sensible’, self-described ‘centrist’ leaders have resorted to ever-more authoritarian means to keep their grip on power

Romanian Supreme Court took the unprecedented step of cancelling a presidential election after the first round of voting gave a clear lead to an outsider, anti-establishment (and incredibly oddball) candidate.

Strikingly, this brazenly anti-democratic power grab elicited barely a shrug from the European Union or from Europe ’s national leaders.

In France , National Rally , formerly the National Front , was founded by Marine Le Pen’s late father, Jean-Marie Le Pen , a notorious anti-Semite and Holocaust denier (who died this week ) The AfD may not have a fascist history, having only been founded in 2013 , but some of its leading figures seem weirdly preoccupied with relativising Germany 's historical crimes.

The threat to European democracy this year will come not from the populists, but from an elite desperate to crush them.