For the liberal optimism that has been under assault since 11 September, 2001, the coronavirus pandemic is another rattling blow. The late-1990s vision of a world progressing steadily towards global harmony, towards sunlit uplands of universal democracy and technological wonder, has long since given way to pessimism, anxiety and crisis. But even more than terrorism and the Iraq War, the financial crisis of 2008 and the eurozone stalemate, Brexit and the election of Donald Trump in 2016, the pandemic of 2020 promises to stall globalisation, harden borders, freeze economies, and push the dream of liberal progress ever further into history’s rear-view mirror.
Twenty-five years ago the liberal establishment was embodied by youthful politicians, by Bill Clinton and Tony Blair in their pre-Iraq, pre-Jeffrey Epstein flower. Even 12 years ago it was embodied by Barack Obama, the soaring orator and handsome post-racial technocrat. But in 2020, even if the coronavirus dooms Trump’s populist presidency and allows some sort of establishment restoration in the United States, it will be personified by Joe Biden – a reassuringly normal politician in certain ways, but also the physical embodiment of political sclerosis, exhaustion and old age.
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