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little more than a generation we've gone
from the fall of the Berlin Wall and
Francis Fukuyama's famous assertion that
history had ended with the triumph of
liberal democracy we've gone from that
to the rise around the world of the
three P's of polarization populism and
pessimism in the disaster of brexit with
the basement levels of approval for our
major party leaders unprecedented in
modern times and in the sense that
government is unable to tackle some of
the most important issues we face I
think we in England and in the UK have
our own version of these democratic ills
inequality is entrenched social mobility
has stalled public services are
crumbling and all around us are signs of
social stress from violent crime to high
levels of mental illness and I think
whatever happens now with brexit there
is little evidence that the underlying
anger and resentment that fueled it has
subsided things are bad but with the
effects of brexit still to play out with
the wounds of this appalling lis handled
process still raw with the underlying
causes still untouched and with
right-wing populists sever ready to
exploit the situation i fear that things
could get even worse so there seem to be
two main ways that commentators have
responded to the problems besetting
liberal democracy and the first is to
treat it as little more than a a bump in
the road for liberal warriors like
Steven Pinker who spoke here at the RSA
last year it can seem that we have
nothing to be worried about but worried
itself people are healthier they're
better off they're more tolerant more
peaceful than at any time in our history
to overcome public disillusionment we
merely need to reassert the benefits of
market democracies and stop listening to
self-serving critics and populist s' and
in a way that's not a view that should
be ignored in many ways people today do
have opportunities and a quality of life
that a few generations ago would have
been viewed with
amazement by many if we want to have
hope for the future it's clear that we
do need to acknowledge the progress of
the past in particular I think we should
recall the achievements of the post-war
era when brave governments rebuilt
Nations out of the ashes of war when
they increased living standards they
grew modern welfare states and laid the
foundations for the personal freedoms
and legal rights but we now cherish but
nevertheless I reject the implicit
complacency of that view and its lack of
ambition it misses out the plight of the
world's poorest billion it misses the
way our own and other liberal
democracies have in recent decades and
particularly the period since the credit
crunch been scarred by entrenched
inequality by rising insecurity and the
devastation of our public services but
also I reject it because this story of
continuous progress has a cruel twist
the growing and devastating impact of
market-led economic growth on our
environment and a looming climate crisis
the alternative view is more gloomy it
sees no way back for liberal democracy
it predicts a future which involves ever
greater polarization and social conflict
leading eventually to some kind of
breakdown one perhaps in which the role
of democracy is downgraded and society
is increasingly run by a technocratic
elite who may or may not have benign
intentions a kind of one-party rule by
Google or Facebook if you like and
indeed there are some in the environment
movement itself who watched the growing
commitment of China to tackle
environmental harms and climate change
and then in disparate and their eyes
across the Atlantic at a country that
increasingly accepts the reality of
climate change but has put a proud
denier in office now the evidence used
to suggest that democracies were lower
emitters that they were better at taking
steps on climate change than
authoritarian regimes but recent
research from the University of
Gothenburg argues that that's only the
case in well functioning democracies
free from corruption so the point is
that it's not simply being notionally
democratic that is enough it's also the
quality of that democracy that matters
and that's why I adopt a slightly
different position on the crisis of
liberal democracy I think the way to
save it is to keep its core principles
of course free and fair elections the
rule of law freedom of speech and
Association but fundamentally to change
the way it works
my anxiety here is that the great
success story of liberal representative
constitutional democracy organized
around professional political parties
offering programs using mass
communication and organized around
elections the 20th century success story
of democracy one of its great merits was
that it serves really effectively as a
warning system when things are about to
go wrong so these democracies aren't
always the best at coming up with the
right solution first time around or even
second time around but they're very very
good at hearing the bad news faster than
any rival system famously you do not get
famines under this kind of politics I'm
not sure this challenge the climate
emergency fits that model the
information is all out there we know it
and here we are behaving like this and
like this I mean our politics what if
the warning signals aren't working what
if we could carry on like this long past
the point where we needed to act
I completely recognize the need for all
the things that Caroline talked about
and this system needs all of that but
extinction rebellion poses a different
kind of challenge about other forms of
democratic politics which are much more
radical and much more direct and I think
we have to be open to that possibility
to that as we move forward through the
next generation or more there are points
at which we mustn't think that
democratic reform is all about rescuing
this form of politics we have to be open
to the possibility that the two and a
half thousand year story has still got a
long long way to run and we can be
collectively masters of our own fate but
even the 250 year story and certainly
the 50 hundred year story at some point
will need to be replaced by something
else
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