It has been a bad week for democracy. In fact it has been a bad year for democracy. The only exception is the UK. But don’t worry Britain’s time will come.
Now, however, the rise of the populist far-right just about everywhere else is dominating the world’s headlines. Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally is knocking on France’s gates to power. A conservative-dominated US Supreme Court has granted serial law breaker and liar Donald Trump immunity from prosecution. A cognitively-impaired Joe Biden is endangering democracy by clinging to power. A far-right anti-immigrant government has been formed in the Netherlands.
And those are only the most recent examples. In Israel, Hungary, India, Slovakia, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Austria, and Germany the far-right is either in government or growing in power and influence.
So how did we get here and where are we going?
Back in the naughty nineties everything looked so different. The collapse of the Soviet Empire appeared to be a great victory for liberal democracy, globalism, free markets and capitalism. We won, and countries around the world flocked to democracy’s banner.
First in the queue were the members of the old Soviet system, with Russia right at the front. That was the first problem. The transition from a Soviet-style command economy and from dictatorship to democracy was more difficult than envisaged.
A broken system was replaced not with capitalist prosperity but with hyper-inflation, economic breakdown and mass unemployment. Life expectancy in Russia fell with up to five million excess adult deaths between 1991 and 2001. Birth rates collapsed and organized crime grabbed the levers of power.









