The Conservative Party didn’t “win” last month’s election in Britain. They barely even ran a campaign, except for making “woo, scary” noises about the Scottish National Party (SNP). But the Right did. And the dynamic force in 2015 was the UK Independence Party (UKIP).

This is not because UKIP parked its tanks on Labour’s lawn. Like previously successful parties of the radical right, it has achieved some limited degree of cross-class, cross-party support, but the fable about UKIP being the party of the “white working class” cheated by globalization is not supported by the figures. UKIP’s base is overwhelmingly right-wing, disproportionately middle class, and its support includes a significant minority of the capitalist class.

UKIP succeeded because it recognized that the political center was and is in crisis, that the power bloc’s traditional means of maintaining its control of the political process was in some crisis, and that there was a chance for realignment.