Politics on its head

Democrats are embracing openly socialist policies for the first time in their history and support almost open borders.

In Germany, the old order is imploding: the centre-Right CDU and the centre-Left SPD are in terminal crisis, replaced by the neo-communist Linke, the hardLeft Greens and the antiimmigration AfD. In France, Emmanuel Macron isn’t a real centrist, and in any case his popularity is in freefall, with extremists on the rise.

In Britain, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party is the most extreme Left-wing opposition in the country’s history. The Tories are the odd ones out, with little discernible ideology apart from on Brexit, where they stand disastrously divided.

Fourthly, passion is back. Voter turnout surged in the US midterms, with both sides desperate to stop the other. Politics matters again, and some observers are beginning to feel nostalgia for the apathy of the post-Cold War, pre-financial crisis interlude.

Last but not least, both sides increasingly hate the other. What was once rivalry has turned into loathing and opponents no longer believe in the other side’s legitimacy.

Almost all of the changes triggered by the rise of identity politics are bad for liberal democracy; but the rise of the politics of personal destruction, the belief that those with whom we disagree must be evil, is undoubtedly the worst. It goes hand-in-hand with a rejection of the mainstream media and of the idea that policies should be judged on the basis of facts, not merely ideology.

International politics is in a state of flux, and no party can afford to cling to the old norms.

– Telegraph Group