The year of the demagogue: how 2016 changed democracy

[Commentary] Something profound is happening in advanced democracies. The forces at work are cultural, economic, social and political, driven in part by rapid technological change. In political terms, Brexit and the Trump triumph highlight the decline of the party system and the end of the old left/right divide. There is a widespread disillusion among western democracies with globalisation. The progressive abandonment of controls on capital, goods, services and labour, epitomised by the launch of the single European market and the single currency, reached its apogee in the summer of 2007. In 2016, we saw, finally, that this period — call it Globalisation 2.0 — is over. Free trade has become ever harder to sell to a public worried about job security and the competitive threat from developing countries.

Free movement is also in question. Trump’s winner-takes-all approach and his lack of respect for minority rights violates a cornerstone of democracy and free society, as set out in the 10th of the Federalist Papers written by James Madison, one of the founding fathers. His position mirrors the more extreme Brexiter demands that the “will of the people” be respected at all costs. Anyone who raises objections — the media, the opposition or, indeed, the judiciary — risks being branded “enemies of the people”. This is not merely populism run rampant. It is a denial of politics itself, which, as the late scholar Bernard Crick reminds us, is the only alternative to government by coercion and the tyranny of the majority. We have been warned.

[Lionel Barber is the FT’s editor]