The Brexit vote and Trump's election a couple of years ago sent Orwell's books, particularly 1984, rocketing back up the bestseller lists on both sides of the Atlantic. With those two years of hindsight, I think that Animal Farm might be the more accurate analogy for the current British situation at least and, despite writing about a very different historical time, Orwell is scarily prescient! People really don't change!

Animal Farm tells the story of a farmyard's descent into authoritarian horror after its animals decide to Take Back Control of themselves and their land. The intelligent pigs set themselves up as leaders, inventing inspiring slogans to appeal to the daftest of the other animals - a ploy which is so successful that any attempt at rational discussion of the finer points of policy is frequently drowned out by a deafening sheep chorus of Brexit Means Exit 'Four legs good, Two legs bad'. One of the most chilling aspects for me was the inability of anyone to trust what had initially been Commandments written in stone (or on stone at least). As memories fade, words are altered or added warping the initial rules into very different ideas. And manipulative persuasion even convinces animals to doubt the truth of events they witnessed first-hand. With a convenient immigrants Snowball scapegoat to take the blame for everything from lost keys to collapsing windmills, Animal Farm's inhabitants blindly walk themselves right back around to where they started with the only consolation, I suppose, being at least that the cruel treatment they endure is now being meted out by leaders of their own kind. Or leaders who once claimed to be of their own kind anyway.

Brilliant.