The Retreat of Western Liberalism

by Edward Luce

It took a while for the privileged classes to acclimatise to the universal franchise. It took them still longer to think of it as a good thing. The first time the British government publicly championed the country as a democracy was in 1916, in the depths of the First World War, when it was grasping for a large enough cause to justify the deaths of hundreds of thousands of young men in the trenches. Britain’s chief enemy, the Kaiser’s Germany, was autocratic. One of Britain’s main allies, Russia, pulled out of the war after its Tsar was overthrown (and then executed) in the Russian Revolution. After they had seized control, the Bolsheviks instantly became the new – and far more menacing – bête noire in the capitals of Europe. More democracy at home was suddenly an essential tool of survival. Woodrow Wilson, the US president, said America was entering Europe’s great war in order to save democracy. That, too, was a novelty for Americans. It became second nature for the US, Britain and France – and, once the Cold War with the Soviets had begun half a generation later, the rest of western Europe – to hold up democracy as the crown jewel of Western civilisation. By historic standards, a hundred years is comparatively short. Another century might feel like a biblical leap of faith nowadays.