Liberal democracy is dying as the world converges on authoritarian beigeness

This is not happening in the way predicted 29 years ago, when America was the uncontested hegemon and much of the world was still classified as “underdeveloped”. Emerging economies today may be in love with Apple and McDonald’s, and are often more pro-capitalist than us, but they – or at least their ruling classes – have proved immune to our political values. In fact, we no longer believe in many of them ourselves, such has been the extent of our philosophical decay.

The shocking reality is that the great democracies, including, tragically, Britain, are becoming steadily less libertarian and less democratic; at the same time, the rising Asian powers are becoming less oppressive overall, primarily thanks to their partial embrace of economic freedoms.

The two models are meeting in the middle, and the result is terrifying. Political systems are becoming less distinct and the old ideological power blocs (such as “the West”) are blurring or even gradually merging into one uniform mush (Bruno Maçães, a former Portuguese minister, talks of the rise of a “Eurasia” dominated by the EU, China and Russia, three entities that share a distrust of liberal democracy).

In a brilliant article for Quillette, the political scientist Clay Fuller calls this new consensus “authoritarian liberalism”. He predicts that, if it continues, it will encourage some to push for a nightmarish world superstate on the basis that “effective global governance would be possible for the first time in world history”.

I prefer to call this emergent global political model “managerialism”. If you want to find some of its more vocal proponents, look no further than the pro-EU “rebel” MPs slowly but surely killing off Brexit: their contempt for real democracy is matched only by their preposterous self-regard. They are typical card-carrying authoritarian liberals, convinced that they know better than we do what is good for us.

Managerialism is now the dominant ideology among the educated classes around the world. It is based on the idea that popular voting is fine as long as it doesn’t change anything, of heavy government intervention in a nominally private economy, extensive social control and a move away from traditional, liberal individualism to an obsession with groups.

There is no one managerialist model: it exists on a broad continuum which ranges from semi-liberal democratic to outright dictatorial. It’s not a new concept either, merely the triumph of Thomas Hobbes’s vision for top-down, “enlightened” authoritarianism and the defeat of John Locke’s rights-based, individualistic liberalism. In Britain’s case, this implies undoing many of the political gains of the past few hundred years.

For other nations, managerialism is a vast improvement, and the averaging out of political models across the world a gain for them. North Korea could soon become the perfect poster child: if Donald Trump’s gamble pays off, it will remain a dictatorship but embrace tourism and trade. Dissidents will still be persecuted but the public will no longer live in the Stone Age. Saudi Arabia is another example: it will still be an absolute monarchy but it will treat women less appallingly.

What makes this convergence so striking is that the West is changing just as much as the developing nations. We are giving up on Enlightenment values, largely because we no longer believe in them; bizarrely, some in the West now even look kindly upon Vladimir Putin’s kleptocratic state.

In Europe and America, the changes have included a massive increase in the power of judges, unelected central banks that egregiously manipulate the economy, the post-9/11 surveillance states and ever-creeping paternalism and social control.

Even more remarkably, previously defunct ideas are back: there is once again an offence of blasphemy, punishable through Twitterstorms. Free speech is outmoded, seen as a form of oppression. Cultural Marxism is running rampant. Right and Left are embracing identity politics. But it is the EU that has done more than any other institution to undermine genuine liberal democracy. Its nomenklatura has deprived the public of any say in the biggest questions, from immigration to economic policy.

There are two problems with all of this. The first is that managerialism isn’t an efficient form of governance: at some point, the eurozone will collapse, China will undergo a catastrophic financial and economic crisis and Russia will go bust.

Elite rule doesn’t work: it is over-exuberant, detached from reality and lacks an error-correcting mechanism. William Buckley, the conservative sage, was spot on when he said that he “would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2,000 people on the faculty of Harvard University”.

The second is that managerialism is unpopular. Brexit is being overturned but it won an astonishing victory against a Remain side that massively outspent it. Emmanuel Macron has admitted that the French would vote for Frexit if given half a chance.

There is huge, pent-up populist anger across the EU, and the rage of the Brexiteers when they find out they have been conned will be something else. The Italians could detonate the entire edifice and if they don’t somebody else will. Many voters in Asia would love to adopt full fat liberal democracy if only they were given the choice.

It will take time, but countries that refuse to succumb to authoritarian liberalism will be proved right. They will emerge as havens of free-thinking, innovation and stability, and attract capital and talent. I suspect that those that choose to resist the managerialist onslaught will include Switzerland, Australia, Israel and some Scandinavian countries. It is unclear which way America will go.

Britain almost broke away; but it seems that the tide of history was too strong for Theresa May’s hapless government. Still, history never ends, and supporters of liberal democracy will live to fight another day, in Britain and across the world.