ORIGINALLY published in 2007 as Dream, this polemic from Stephen Duncombe has been retitled to reflect the recent resurgence of ultra-conservative politics.

Fascinating but flimsily argued, it calls for a reassessment of progressive approaches to campaigning and persuading. Duncombe’s thesis is that the left tends to “uncritically privilege rationality, reason and self-revelatory truth,” while the right has shifted to a more successful approach based on improvisation, spectacle and “dreampolitik” — the creation of political fantasies — and it is argued that we live in an age of fantasy.

During the George W Bush administration, a presidential aide suggested the world was analysed by “the reality-based community” while reality was created and acted upon by conservatives. Duncombe believes the left is drifting into irrelevance due to our preference for “the solace of the known” and reverence for logical evidence.