“It’s the end of the world as we know it” sang R.E.M. in 1987. The American rock band was pondering the many disasters they were supposedly facing at the end of the cold war, but the world that did end back then was the communist eastern bloc, whose systems either collapsed or were radically reformed as irresistible winds of change swept over them. Today, however, the prospect of the end of the world as we have known it is much more real in western democracies.
The overarching theme of the changes the West is going through is that our already big governments are going to get bigger. In the UK, the tax burden is forecast to hit 35% in the 2025/26 fiscal year, the highest level for half a century, but even then, there is a huge gap to what the government actually spends: in 2020/21, the state was responsible for 54.4p of every £1 spent in the kingdom. Granted, this had everything to do with the lockdowns that suspended the private economy and placed huge burdens on the state (the 2019/20 level was just shy of 40%), but there are few signs that the current direction of travel is set to be reversed.
Of course, lockdown wasn’t just a huge expansion in the remit of the state with respect to the economy, where continued attempts to avoid a reckoning with mistakes of the past threaten a showdown with free market capitalism itself. An equally profound change has happened with respect to the nature of the government’s relationship with the people themselves. When China reacted to the Covid outbreak with a heavy-handed lockdown, we watched from the other side of the planet and swore it could not happen here: the people would not have it. But then Italy copied the policy when they became the first western country to see the virus spread, and within weeks lockdown was the go-to approach to dealing with Covid across the world. The unthinkable had been normalised and politicians marvelled at levels of compliance they would never have thought possible. And here we are, a year later, and lockdown has gone from being a tool of oppressive dictatorships to a policy mainstream western politicians refuse to abandon, even as the virus has been effectively eliminated by vaccines. With vaccine passports and biometric security high on the agenda and with a new tradition of technocracy having been invoked with scientists dictating policy, the legacy of Covid will be with us long after the last patient has left hospital. All in the name of protecting us from ourselves, under the direction of benevolent rulers. And it isn’t just with respect to Covid that paternalism is in fashion: from minimum alcohol pricing in Scotland to an upcoming ban on “junk food” advertising in Britain, the government is poised to “nudge” the citizenry towards what they see as more appropriate lifestyle choices.
But perhaps the worst legacy of the Covid pandemic will be the normalisation of authoritarian methods to deal with the world’s biggest problems. And, in the realm of mainstream politics, what problem is seen as bigger than climate change? Whether it is the Paris Accord, the UK’s commitment to emit net zero carbon by 2050, or the various versions of a “Green New Deal” being mooted across the world, politicians have policy aims in mind that cannot possibly be achieved by “nudging”, simply because while people are generally in favour of the climate change goals, they have yet to sign up to the massive sacrifices they will have to make to achieve them. It doesn’t take a conspiratorial mind to imagine politicians contemplating how effective brute force was in dealing with Covid and wonder how it may be applied to making people give up their cars, reduce international travel or stop eating meat.
In fact, the conspiracy is already under way. Supra-national initiatives like The World Economic Forum’s Great Reset and the UN’s Agenda 2030 seek to exploit what they see as fertile ground to “build back better” after the lockdowns, to engineer a world where ordinary citizens are cared for by the state (the WEF has a vision of a private property free society) in exchange for compliance with the directions of a technocratic leadership.
One reason why all this is a realistic possibility is that the media, which has of course always been biased, has now almost entirely ceased to function as a tool for holding power to account. After a century where technology enabled the citizenry to become increasingly more informed, the mainstream media (the so-called “Fourth Estate” which we traditionally envisage as a watchdog over those in power) has largely abandoned journalism in favour of activism, perhaps most obviously so in the US. Changing society is much easier for politicians and the elites when it is only the fringes who seriously question their motives and methods.
And it isn’t just the media that is facilitating major change. Throughout our institutions, from corporations to universities, cultural upheaval is upon us. The social justice agenda has infiltrated most of our so-called elites, resurrecting race as a defining division between us (Critical Race Theory has made its triumphant way through university faculties, government departments, and corporate board rooms) and giving prominence to fringe issues such as transgender activism. Victimhood, predominantly by way of group identity, has replaced personal achievement as a key source of social status.
This all adds up to an avalanche of change that threatens to engulf us: a super-charged progressive agenda of new, radical ideas and an opportunity set of events – Covid, climate change, race and gender conflict – which provides the political platform to force though reforms. It’s the end of the world as we know it. Against it stands conservatism’s belief in traditional institutions and culture and classical liberalism’s ideas of individualism and personal responsibility. But the momentum is against us.