The economic and political storm for which we have been waiting for decades is upon us, battering the causes for which the left historically cares. Inequality, precarious and insecure work, communities ripped apart, xenophobia, the continual despoliation of our environment – all are its consequences. The storm threatens to engulf not only the left but something bigger, something which the left, the centre and the right have all held dear since the Second World War. It threatens the proper functioning of our democracy itself.
The threat begins with political economy. The system that we have lived under since the late 1970s has created huge inequalities of income and wealth and also of power, and these inequalities have undermined the essence of our democracy. Back in another time of democratic crisis, in the 1930s, E M Forster summed up the fundamental advantage of a democratic system as its refusal to “divide its citizens into the bosses and the bossed”. But who thinks this is true of the world in which we live? Who believes that the giant corporations, the wealthy and the well connected don’t enjoy political power that is denied to those who live in forgotten communities or those just starting out in life?
Content from our partners
