Are tariffs harmful to global prosperity? Undoubtedly. Is it ludicrous when Donald Trump casually floats buying Greenland, Canada or Panama like he’s playing a late-night round of Risk? Quite. And is it unsettling when he treats an ailing autocratic Russia as a respected peer, effectively rewarding territorial theft before peace talks even begin? Absolutely.
Some might propose that the solution to return the keys of power to the technocratic old guard – think Kamala Harris or Ursula von der Leyen. Naturally, they would be emphatically in favour of such an outcome.
Yet in their enthusiasm to have the pendulum swing back the other way, the guardians of institutionalised thought miss a rather inconvenient truth: Trump is their own creation. Their ‘Frankenstein monster’ was cobbled together from decades of top-down political excess: unchecked immigration, gang violence, energy policies warped by lobbyists, cancellation of deviating thoughts and the quiet sidelining of voter influence in favour of global unelected committees. Without such policies – the key legacy of the old guard – we would not even know names like Trump, Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen, Alice Weidel or Jimmie Åkesson.
The old guard’s mistake is as old as politics itself: drawing comfort from the fashionable opinions swirling within their own powerful circles, instead of tuning in to what real people are really saying. So, when voters raise their concerns, they’re often met not with real answers but with a gentle pat on the head and that timeless classic: ‘You’re simply too uneducated to understand.’ It’s less a conversation, more a masterclass in polite condescension.
Today’s political chaos? Far from a random blip. It’s a classic transition, a pattern as familiar as a rerun – just with new actors. And, as ever, the main players fall into four well-worn categories.
- The Ivory Tower Technocrats
These are the folks still humming the old establishment tunes, convinced that a little more of the same will do the trick. Incrementalism is their comfort food, and they’re blissfully unaware that their ‘steady as she goes’ approach has sometimes led to both (unintentional) radicalism and outright silliness. For them, democratic erosion isn’t a problem, as long as they’re the ones in charge. Critics? Just children who need more ‘information’. It is considered bad taste to point out that this would typically mean, in practice, something cooked up by taxpayer-funded PR firms. Their vision is lofty, their implementation… well, that’s for the little people. It’s a blend of good intentions and self-importance to some, unelectable to many.
- The Streetfighter Disruptors
Here we find the Trumps, Farages and their anti-establishment kin, thriving on voter discontent by doing the exact opposite of the old guard. They’re often doers, but sometimes a bit too focused on one or two key issues and light on the overall plan. Typically not of the shyish persuasion since modest people do not punch through the establishment wall. Their ‘populist’ label is used by their opponents as a smear label which reflects the establishment’s democratic blind spot. All politicians are tribal mouthpieces, per definition, so why would it be worse to represent the tribe most in need of representation? On the one hand the streetfighters offer vital course corrections by for example standing up to bureaucratic sprawl and cancel culture. On the other hand they can serve up trade wars and questionable alliances with authoritarians. The latter rather muddies their ‘people’s champion’ credentials. The overall offer in short: stability where the establishment offers chaos, chaos where the establishment offers stability.
- The Minimalist Reformers
These are the leaders who talk a big game about reform, just enough to clinch the top job. Once in power, however, ‘change’ becomes a matter for indefinite review: please respect the ‘come back later’ sign in the window. Translation: stall, delay, and tweak as little as possible; wait to see which way the wind blows before the next election, then adjust your rhetoric accordingly. Never rock the old boats unless absolutely forced. Behind the scenes, the old guard still steers the ship, with the corporatist legislators, regulators and lobbyists firmly at the helm. The only real difference? New PR, same old vessel.
Minimalist reform works just fine in calm weather and offers those at the top a very comfortable existence. Glamorous donor dinners, no need for original thought, PR firms on standby to supply slogans. Occasionally, a TV sofa appearance to parrot the latest catchphrase. The allure of this easy life may explain why so many traditional parties drift along as if the party headquarters coffee is laced with morphine. In times of transition, this culture of complacency in a big way helps usurper parties to, well, usurp.
- The Bridge-Building Realist-Optimists
The rarest breed of all: leaders with both a big-picture vision and real-world common sense. Think Abraham Lincoln, Clement Attlee, Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan – politicians who genuinely respected the people they served and often had little problem rising above tribal groupthink. They knew that ‘real people’ emerge from all walks of life, and that good governance means moving beyond tribal stereotypes. Their secret sauce? A scientific and therefore optimistic mindset which knows enough about the past to see that today’s problems are not more difficult to overcome than problems in the past.
They also do not see society as irredeemably broken; as long as much needed change is embraced rather than resisted. Institutional inertia, and the alarmism peddled to stop change, are seen as top challenges necessary to overcome to improve society. Lincoln did not accept slavery, Attlee did not accept Dickensian labour laws, Thatcher did not accept the crippling trade unions and Reagan did not accept Soviet despotism just because people were saying ‘difficult to change’. They embraced goals which they knew served society and had the backbone not to waver until those goals had been achieved.
The realist-optimists are the best bridge-builders not only between political tribes, but also between new and old.
Is there any such statesman or stateswoman among us today? Maybe. During an era of tribal mudslinging, these cannot be expected to be clearly visible to the naked eye. But there’s always one reliable grown-up in the political room: the electorate. When politicians stop listening, people push back. When they still don’t listen, people get louder, or elect someone who will shout on their behalf.
That’s why figures like Trump and Farage continue to haunt the main parties like a ghost of Christmas future. They are not there because they are everyone’s idea of ideal company at teatime; they are there because voters, frustrated by the old guard’s ‘more-of-the-same’ routine, sometimes feel their only option is to send in the disruptor. And when that disruptor overshoots in the form of tariff wars, Ukraine policy or a never-ending stream of unfiltered commentary, the pendulum swings back. Not only Trump, but also Farage, despite being the man of the hour, is self-sabotaging by offering too much of the mainstream mistakes – just in an inverted way.
Voters get this and are nudging even the most stubborn parties toward the authentic balance voters have requested all along. It is hardly the fault of the latter that so few politicians listened in the first place. Those parties stubbornly failing to listen to voters will find themselves replaced.
So Trump, Biden, Harris, Farage, Liz Truss, Boris Johnson, Jeremy Corbyn – with all their pros and cons – are part of the democratic learning curve during today’s fascinating transition period. Not just for voters, but for the next generation of leaders in all major parties. The system’s messiness is not a bug, but a feature: democracy’s trial-and-error superpower.
Sure, recalibration always takes time. During the turmoil, the agents of doom and gloom will have a field day. Still, peak nonsense has already passed. A new equilibrium is forming. The credit, ultimately, goes to the supposedly ‘uneducated’ electorate which, one step at a time, is educating politicians of all stripes.
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