The new world is changing too fast
We live in turbulent times, if you'll pardon the obvious. A new empire, China, threatens the hegemony of another, the United States. New technologies like artificial intelligence propel us into the unknown. Mass migrations alter societies' self-perception. The basest popular passions (racism, xenophobia, classism) are unleashed, the middle class is sinking, and truth and lies are becoming blurred. And not even the most robust democratic mechanisms seem capable of surviving the chaos.
Let's take the example of the United Kingdom. It is a former imperial power that, unlike others of roughly comparable size and economic volume (France, Germany), sails alone, without the protection or constraints of the European Union. Its electoral system, based on single-member constituencies, constitutes one of the most direct democracies, sensitive to shifts in public sentiment. Paradoxically, this democratic sensitivity has translated into chronic instability for years.
Every member of the House of Commons is accountable to their constituents. There are no party lists with guaranteed seats: MPs risk their political careers with each election. And, therefore, there are no MPs in the world so willing to rebel when they perceive their own party's unpopularity. Margaret Thatcher didn't leave because of an electoral defeat: she was brought down by her MPs, those rebellious "backbenchers" who occupy the back benches of the House.
Everything accelerated after the referendum on leaving the European Union. On June 23, 2016, the British people voted for Brexit. The prime minister who had called the referendum, the Conservative David Cameron, resigned days later. The Conservative parliamentary majority elected Theresa May (opposed to Brexit) as the new prime minister. May called an election in 2017 with a disappointing result: she had to form a coalition with the Northern Irish unionists to stay in power. In 2019, after a series of parliamentary defeats regarding how to negotiate the UK's departure from the European Union (May had hoped for an amicable divorce), she resigned. She had lasted three years. Conservative MPs this time elected Boris Johnson, a supporter of a "hard Brexit," who called a snap election and won a comfortable majority of 80 seats. After three years of lies, scandals, and improvisation, his own party forced him to resign. The parliamentary group then promoted the Thatcherite Liz Truss, who in just 50 days and with a simple draft budget wreaked havoc on the British economy. Out with Liz Truss! Inside was Rishi Sunak, a banker of Indian origin who lasted less than two years as head of government. In the 2024 elections, Labour won a landslide victory: 411 seats to the Conservatives' 121. But the political landscape was beginning to fragment: the Liberal Democrats, the Eurosceptic Reform Party, and the Greens all performed well.
The new prime minister, Labour's Keir Starmer, promised to distinguish himself from his predecessors with a serious, predictable, even boring, approach to governance. His parliamentary majority was similar to that obtained by Tony Blair in 1997, and stability seemed assured.
Two years later, Starmer is the most hated politician in the country. Partly because he was, as promised, predictable and boring. Partly because they granted the ambassadorship to Peter Mandelson in Washington, a man who did the government's dirty work during Blair's time and who, once in Washington, dedicated himself to passing on state secrets and comments about the size of this or that penis to the billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. And partly because the British don't really know what they want.
The rebellion of the Labour "backbenchers" has already begun.
According to the polls, if there were new elections, the Reform Party of Nigel Farage, the Brexit campaigner, Donald Trump's emulator, and possessor of prodigious cynicism, would win. Both Labour and the Conservatives would fall below 20 percent.
Almost half of London's inhabitants were born in a foreign country: 1.3 million in Europe (mainly Poland and Romania), 1.2 million in Asia, 600,000 in Africa, and 400,000 in the Americas. British society is changing rapidly, and collective moods are volatile. This phenomenon, similar in the rest of Western Europe and the United States, has done away with the long cycles that representative democracy required to be effective.
It doesn't seem reasonable to blame migration, which is economically and culturally beneficial, or democratic mechanisms. Not even (though partly) the incompetence of politicians.
The new world is simply changing too fast. And, as history loves paradoxes, this fosters authoritarian regimes that promise a return to a supposedly glorious past while, amidst displays of antiquated thinking, they create the techno-dictatorships of the future.