Bannon has just spent another day presenting himself as the liberator of the “little guy” and is sitting pleased. He is wearing sturdy brown hiking boots, beige chinos and his trademark two button-up black shirts — “an old prep school habit”, he reveals. His message — like his attire — is full of contradictions, and although clear, clashes with our opulent surroundings.

We are sitting on plush cream leather armchairs on the 26th floor of one of the swankiest hotels in Kazakhstan, a Central Asian country marinated in oil and corruption. A huge flat-screen TV shimmers behind him. Two books, Bully of Asia: Why China’s Dream is the New Threat to World Order by Steven W. Mosher and French Revolution by Ian Davidson are out on an adjacent desk. Revolution is very much on Bannon’s mind, and he says it’s inevitable. He predicts — for the most part correctly — a victory of the far-right in the European elections already underway.

“Literally by Sunday night or Monday, you could have Farage, Salvini, Le Pen heading the three largest individual nation groupings in the European Parliament,” Bannon says. “It is so sweeping what’s happened in two years, that it’s stunning.”

As anticipated, the 2019 EU elections saw far-right and far-left parties making big gains across Europe, in what was the highest voter turnout in 20 years. For the first time in 40 years, the EU’s centrist coalition of the European People’s Party and the Socialists and Democrats lost its majority in Brussels, with pro-EU parties now holding a fragmented majority over eurosceptics. On the far-left, Europe’s Greens increased their number of seats from 51 to 69, thanks to healthy support in western and northern Europe, with Green parties finishing second in Finland and Germany. Meanwhile, Farage’s Brexit Party in Britain and Salvini’s Northern League in Italy scored sizeable wins with 32% and 34% of the vote respectively, while in France Marine Le Pen’s far-right party National Rally pipped Macron’s En Marche by less than 1%.