The easiest way to win votes these days is by selling the past. “Nostalgic nationalism”, as my FT colleague Gideon Rachman writes, unites Brexit’s “Take Back Control”, Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” and Vladimir Putin’s reassertion of Russian power. There’s only one viable counter-strategy, and French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron is trying it in this spring’s election: he is selling the future.

The one guaranteed losing strategy nowadays is selling the present. Hillary Clinton and the UK’s Remain campaign against Brexit went down defending the status quo. Selling the present now probably works only in Germany, a country inoculated by its history against both nostalgic nationalism and utopianism. So Angela Merkel will run this autumn as the most reassuringly unchangeable figure imaginable: “Mutti” (Mummy). Everywhere else, you run either as the past or the future.

Selling the past is an age-old political strategy. Even in ancient Greece, radicals routinely promised a return to a golden age, the classicist Mary Beard writes in The Times Literary Supplement. Nostalgic nationalism always distorts history, but its appeal is visceral: we adults yearn to rewind the gruesome ageing process and go back in time. Nostalgic nationalism is also appealingly optimistic. Contrary to what pundits said, Trump’s campaign never lapsed into pessimism. He claimed that the present sucked but guaranteed a painless return to the good old days.