The divided West is enfeebled by declinism and despair

Lucky people in the Western world who belong to the so-called “boomer” generation have lived through one of the most benign periods in history. No global wars, no revolutions, no uncontrollable economic disasters, no epidemics that could not be treated, but rising wealth and life expectancy. Softer values and looser morals suited this age of safety, as sterner virtues seemed outdated. That time is over.

The West is confronted with a new type of predatory enemy, combining criminality with ideology. We see this in Russia and China. If we were only facing corrupt regimes, we could intimidate or buy them off. As for ideological contests, we have won them before. But today’s enemies combine the ruthlessness of the mafia with a bitter ideological resentment of the West. And they command technological tools that in Orwell’s 1984 were mere fantasy.

At least we are not burying our heads in the sand, as in the 1920s and 30s, when dogmatically pursuing disarmament, sticking to the Gold Standard, and trusting in the League of Nations and “appeasement” hastened the very disasters they were meant to avoid. Today Britain, the United States, and some European and Pacific allies are hastily facing up to the violence of Russia and the looming danger of China. But we don’t have to look far to find 1930s-style wishful thinking in countries dependent on Russia for energy, and economically hobbled by the Euro, which like the Gold Standard creates a façade of stability through austerity – but which, unlike the Gold Standard, cannot be jettisoned.

Yet if we look frankly at ourselves we have little reason to be confident. In the USA, Canada, Australasia and not least Britain we see a political class that has lost its bearings. We are floundering economically and have little idea of how to provide the energy that is the basis of all modern civilisation. Do we still offer the hopeful vision that brought millions of ordinary people to thrust aside the Iron Curtain in the 1980s?

Some brave people in Hong Kong and Russia still look to us. But intellectuals and universities across the Western world lead a chorus of denigration of our history and values. In their own version of Newspeak, rationality is imperialism, equality is oppression, and free speech is persecution. This is not an entirely new phenomenon, but its extent is new. So above all is the capitulation of those in authority.

Deep down, all this stems from what seemed until recently our greatest success: economic globalisation. The starry-eyed utopianism, in which trade and prosperity would bring the world together and “end history”, has collapsed. But we cannot painlessly wean ourselves off the cheap energy, cheap imports and cheap labour that globalisation brought.

A parallel attempt to globalise government, transferring decision making to international bodies, such as the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, the World Health Organisation, or the European Central Bank, opened a gulf between governments and electorates even in democracies. Instead of a “vertical” pattern, in which power went from national voters to their elected governments, a “horizontal” pattern emerged, in which politicians made fundamental decisions by secretive diplomacy with other politicians. Many intellectuals cheered them on with vacuous internationalism and denunciation of the nation state.

The response, sooner or later inevitable, was that frustrated voters rebelled against the bland and opaque paternalism which neglected their interests and despised their values. Perhaps fittingly, we see this most clearly in France, where Emmanuel Macron, the champion of “sovereign Europe”, confronts a Eurosceptic parliament dominated by extremes of Right and Left.

We voted in 2016 to extricate ourselves from this morass, and are still struggling. The main problem has come not from the EU, which has merely taken opportunistic advantage of our dithering, but from the Remainer/ Rejoiner mentality that existed in the political world, the civil service and parts of the media, and is now reviving. Rejoiners are trying to pave the way back to the Single Market by reinflating “Project Fear” with another blast of fake economics.

At the cost of years of bitter political division, rejoining would put us in a worse position than before the Referendum, tied to a failing system with no say in its decisions. Our true course – the boldest and yet the safest – is to diversify our economic links and cultivate our political alliances. We know our friends and our foes, even if the former are facing their own political divisions. It is Britain’s pressing interest to foster a democratic alliance; an “Anglosphere Plus”.

The Rejoiner mentality is based on the ingrained belief that Britain is a diminished and declining power that can only survive by clinging at all costs to the threadbare EU. “Declinism” is a very old belief but it has revived since the 1960s, triggered by the end of the British Empire. But the Empire, a brontosaurus with huge vulnerable limbs, did not make us a superpower. It could last only as long as its peoples – including the British – accepted it, and as long as its neighbours left it alone. Just imagine if it still existed. We would be struggling to restrain religious conflicts in India, Burma and the Middle East, worrying about grain supplies to Africa, and having nightmares about the Russians and Chinese marching across the Indus.

Its end relieved us of an impossible burden, while bequeathing precious global links. We have to ensure that leaving the EU is similarly relief from a burden. We are today what we have been for centuries: not diminished and negligible, but one of the half-dozen leading states in the world; the smallest but necessarily the most enterprising.

In a newly dangerous world, we need realistic reassessment of our strengths, weaknesses, obligations and interests. We can save ourselves by our exertions and encourage others by our example. For that we need leadership.

If we look frankly at ourselves, there is precious little to feel confident about

‘We don’t have to look far to find 1930s-style wishful thinking in places dependent on Russia for their energy’