BILL EMMOTT : T H E F A T E O F T H E W E S T
Bill Emmott was the editor-in-chief of The Economist from 1993 to 2006 , and is now a writer and consultant on international affairs . He is a regular contributor to The Financial Times , La Stampa and Nikkei Business . His latest book is The Fate of the West : The Battle to Save the World ' s Most Successful Political Idea .
T he surprise should be that the political earthquakes that hit America , Britain , France and other western countries in 2016 / 17 took such a long time to come . For the fault lines of politics had been created long before by rising inequality inside those societies , and then deep rifts had appeared thanks to the 2008 global financial crisis . We should marvel more at voters ’ patience and resilience than at the shock results of Trump , Brexit and Macron .
After all , the financial meltdown of 2008 was the worst in 80 years , and to avoid a repeat of the 1930s Great Depression that had followed the 1929-31 crashes governments in Europe and America had to go deeply into debt , starving themselves of the resources for virtually all other public policies . Meanwhile real household incomes fell in most western countries and were still barely recovering nearly a decade later . The recipe for political volatility and for shock electoral outcomes can be summed up quite simply : faith in mainstream , traditional parties needs to have declined , sharply , and new political figures need to come along offering alternatives . Often those alternatives will be characterised by appeals to nationalism and by various forms of the demonization of outsiders , be they immigrants or foreign countries .
This was true above all of Donald Trump ’ s success , although that had one added ingredient . This was that in reality the United States had already elected a populist president in reaction against rising inequality and the discrediting of mainstream politicians : Barack Obama , a man who won the White House in 2008 with barely any political experience , defeating the much more established Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination , and then the veteran Senator John McCain for the presidency .
Obama , however , had the misfortune to enter office just as the global financial
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