In France, the National Front won the recent European elections, taking a quarter of the vote. As the results came in, its leader Marine Le Pen told supporters at National Front headquarters in Paris that voters were in revolt against the European project. She said: "They no longer want to be led by those outside our borders, by EU commissioners and technocrats who are unelected. They want to be protected from globalisation and take back the reins of their destiny." Farage will have nothing to do with Le Pen in the European parliament, of course, because of the toxic reputation of her neo-fascist father, who led the National Front before her. 

However, in other European countries parties from outside the mainstream also scored highly in the recent elections. In Greece, the far-left Syriza defeated the established parties. In Denmark, the Danish People's Party won 27 per cent of the vote demanding border controls and curbs on the benefits of EU migrants. The Austrian far-Right has prospered too.

The response of the EU establishment to this unseemly rebellion against the orthodoxy was to force through — via the centrist bloc of MEPs — the elevation of Jean-Claude Juncker as President of the European Commission. Juncker is a fanatical supporter of deeper union. It was as though those who are most in favour of creating a federal Europe, or a European state, had concluded that the best response to a rebellion by millions of voters in the nations of Europe was to put the foot on the accelerator and speed towards even more integration.

Their expectation appears to be that the rebellion and discontent will fade. It is tempting — comforting even — to think of the rise of such parties in Europe as a populist flash in the pan produced by public anger over the impact of the financial crisis and the Eurozone's troubles. But although declining living standards and economic insecurity triggered by the crisis have played their part, the roots seem deeper than that. While globalisation brought cheaper goods, it also made crossing the planet in search of a better life much easier for millions of people.

That worry over uncontrolled migration is the strongest feature in the emergence of populist parties. The permeability of Europe's southern borders — coupled with the endless expansion of air travel — raise perfectly legitimate concerns in the minds of many voters about pressure on public services, potential terrorism and the erosion of cultural norms. The overwhelming sense is of insecurity and fear of the future on behalf of the next generation. 

But any hope that this will somehow dissipate magically, with the populists fading away, looks to set to be dashed. The process of alienation is likely to intensify as existing technological trends accelerate. There will be more for voters to disputatious about, not less. If anything, Farage's UKIP and other such parties are outliers for what happens next, when huge swathes of the lower middle classes and aspirational members of the working class discover what awaits. On top of migration, there is about to be more economic disruption, supercharged by the coming wave of automation and machine learning.

Already the early stages of this digital revolution of recent decades have brought enormous improvements that are often take for granted. The ease with which we can communicate instantaneously with friends and loved ones wherever they are on the planet is a wonder of globalisation. Advances in many types of production and in medical research have also been powered by epic amounts of computing power unavailable only a few decades ago.