The Fate of the West: The Battle to Save the World’s Most Successful Political Idea

by Bill Emmott

To achieve revival, liberalising policies and movements are always necessary. Obstacles to innovation, enterprise and ideas have to be removed; barriers and privileges that reward and enrich some groups at the expense of the wider public interest have to be dismantled. There is no other way to treat the scleroses and rigidities that are sapping the energies of Western societies, that are fulfilling the predictions of Mancur Olson in his book The Rise and Decline of Nations. For they are the natural yet also debilitating consequences of democracy and liberty themselves. But liberalisation alone is not sufficient. It needs to be done in harmony with equality, in ways that preserve a sense of fairness, a belief in the equality of voice and rights that makes citizens feel they belong, that they are indeed citizens and not subjects or victims.