The revolt against elites won’t stop any time soon

Sholto Byrnes on the latest world political developments

Egyptian protestersclash with riot police at Cairo's landmark Tahrir Square on November 19, 2011. Khaled Desouki / AFP

The revolt against the elites is far from over. That is one lesson to be drawn from the most shocking narrowing of the presidential contenders in the history of the French Fifth Republic. Already two presidents and one prime minister are out of the race – and now another former premier, Francois Fillon, has been holed beneath the water by allegations that he paid his family huge sums of money for doing next to no work.

It looks to be between Emanuel Macron, who briefly held ministerial office under Mr Hollande and who has never been elected to any office at all, and the Front National’s Marine Le Pen.

The outsiders, those who boast of being outside the system or want to remake it, still have the wind in their sails. Donald Trump, Rodrigo Duterte and Brexit are not manifestations of a wave that crested in 2016; the tide has yet to turn, if turn it will.

There have been many attempts to explain this phenomenon, and rightly so. Deploring the “deplorables” is no answer at all. Nor, as the Sunday Times columnist Dominic Lawson pointed out, will it do to suggest that “you had to be a thicko to have voted for Brexit” – or for any other unexpected electoral outcomes.

Regular readers will know that I’ve always argued in favour of respecting democratic votes, regardless of whether I like the results. Democracy should be sacrosanct in the countries that practise it. Liberal democracy is but one form of politics, to be accepted or rejected at the ballot box.

And yet there is a price to disruption. Revolutions and fast changes of political systems are often accompanied by great costs.

The sudden imposition of liberal market economies on Eastern Europe and Russia led to the oligarchs, massive corruption and corrosive inequality. In many countries that went on to fuel a backlash of aggressive nationalism that sought to expunge the liberal values that were supposed to come hand in hand with free market reforms, but never truly prospered.

The collapse of General Suharto’s decades-long dictatorship in Indonesia included vicious riots. And the Arab Spring, while in many ways noble in initial intent, has had deleterious consequences for many of the countries involved.

Convention and tradition are there for a reason, much as it may be natural for the young to kick against them. So long as they do allow for change, albeit at a much slower pace, reform is a safer bet than revolution, even if it lacks the romance of the all-or-nothing struggle.

It may be suggested that these ongoing revolts against elites do not constitute revolutions. But the rush to the fringes, embracing political positions hitherto kept out of the mainstream, and the abandonment of established parties (or the hijacking of one, in the case of Mr Trump), are certainly revolutionary in nature.

Again, if the people want change they have every right to get it. But are they prepared for the consequences?

While it is true that the old elites need to do better, and had ignored or patronised large swaths of their electorates, there are also dangers in opting for the untried, for politicians who haven’t had to ascend the greasy pole and who therefore have no relevant record. Even a charitable assessment of the Trump administration so far would have to concede that.

The attitude of “kick ’em all out, they’re all as bad as each other” is frequently understandable, and putting that impulse into practice and finding it becomes a reality is clearly thrilling to those who have longed to bring the temple walls crashing down. But it carries a responsibility too. For what comes next? If electorates face new dangers in the future, it will not be fair to lay the blame entirely on the new outsider-leaders. For who put them there?

In the case of Brexit, the accusation that the leavers had no real plan for what would happen after Britain left the European Union was misplaced, for no one could know precisely under what conditions a post-EU UK would set sail. Honest proponents of Brexit never pretended otherwise.

But it is not clear that the consequences of their passions have sunk in to electorates that have voted, or are tempted to vote, for the new or unknown.

Reformist gradualism doesn’t inspire the same emotions. But it is safer in the long run. The worst-case scenario, however, is when – to paraphrase Yeats – the old established players “lack all conviction”, while the untried outsiders “are full of passionate intensity”.

So it would seem again in France. Mr Fillon, at one time thought a cert, didn’t lack convictions – the problem was when it was discovered he may not have been living up to them. And so France looks set to take a leap into the unknown when it elects its next president. Does that matter? It may be primarily a matter for the French, but the small matter of whether the EU has a future may also be in the balance.

It is up to the elites. For the revolt against them will not stop until they manage to reconnect with their populations. The proud title of “Tribune of the people” must be earned once again. If it is not, it will continue to be bestowed on novices who may turn out well, but could equally be impostors or incompetents.

Sholto Byrnes is a senior fellow at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, Malaysia