The success in New Hampshire of the populist and reckless Donald Trump for the Republican nomination and Bernie Sanders, the socialist candidate for the Democrats, underlines the growing disillusionment among American voters with the Washington and New York establishments. Disillusionment with the political "establishment" is not unique to the United States.

In Britain, the U.K. Independence Party began as an anti-establishment anti-European Union organization. It also adopted a populist anti-immigration stance. Its espousal of populist prejudices was soon taken up by the strident voices of the Euroskeptic right in the Tory (Conservative) party.

The Labour Party, now in opposition, had become part of the establishment but has been hijacked by left-wing anti-establishment activists who engineered the election of Jeremy Corbyn, a serial rebel against the party establishment, as leader.