Well, almost

I share much of his diagnosis, but none of his glee.

If "liberal identity politics" means constant white-bashing then, yes, that is what has driven the alienation of the working and poor whites from the political center left, both in Europe and in America.

And those folks never did have much truck with the outright, anti-capitalist left.

The prioritizing of tribal identities by liberalism has buried class identity and class politics, greatly to the advantage of the classes defended by the right and to the harm of those defended by the left, very notably including those working and poor whites who have been led to see themselves as embattled whites rather than embattled working and poor folks.

In Europe, the reaction is ethno-nationalist in a more or less traditional sense.

Sweden for the Swedes and traditional Swedish identity, France for the French, Italy for the Italians.

That sort of thing.

In the US, the target of PC loathing, abuse, and constant blame is not German, Irish, Italian, or other subsets of white Americans but all of them (us) lumped together.

Hence the reaction in the US is one of whites in general, of what the press has dubbed "white nationalism."

Blame the identity apostles – they led us down this path to populism

Jenkins brushes against but does not explicitly address another aspect of the reaction, a re-affirmation of traditional, defining traits of the Occident in general and one's own little piece of it in particular.

"Hey, hey. Ho, ho. Western Civ has got to go," say both the idiot children of the ultra-left and the radical Imams fomenting terrorism in the basements of European mosques.

And identity liberalism has been for decades far too publicly indulgent to that sort of thing, too.

Consider the role of the historic Catholicity of France in the coming French presidentials.

The Guardian view on France: Fillon v Le Pen is the wrong contest

Fillon