![]() ![]() So our new liberalism has to look both backward and forward, inward and outward. The third prong requires us to meet, by liberal means, the daunting global challenges of our era, including climate change, pandemics and the rise of China. ![]() We must, then, be tough on populism and tough on the causes of populism. These failings have driven millions of voters to the populists. The second is to address the major failings of what passed for liberalism over the last 30 years-a one-dimensional economic liberalism, at worst a dogmatic market fundamentalism that had as little purchase on human reality as the dogmas of dialectical materialism or papal infallibility. The first is the defence of traditional liberal values and institutions, such as free speech and an independent judiciary, against threats from both populists and outright authoritarians. Like Neptune’s trident, a renewed liberalism will have three prongs. For the first time this century, among countries with more than one million people, there are now fewer democracies than there are non-democratic regimes. Its model of developmental authoritarianism is challenging liberal democratic capitalism. China, already a superpower, is emerging strengthened from the crisis. The likely economic consequences of the pandemic-unemployment, insecurity, soaring public debt and perhaps inflation-will probably feed a second wave of populism. In Hungary, the EU has an increasingly illiberal and undemocratic member state. In France, Marine Le Pen remains a serious threat to Europe’s leading liberal renewer, Emmanuel Macron. In Britain, a populist Conservative government faces a Labour Party with a new, left-liberal leader, Keir Starmer. The victory of Joe Biden in the US presidential election gives a fragile opening for liberal renewal, but more than 70m Americans voted for Donald Trump. But now we must move from analysis to prescription. The very fact that there are already so many books diagnosing the death of liberalism proves that liberalism is still alive. Writers have interpreted the failings of liberalism in different ways the point, however, is to change it. ![]()
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