Age Concern

Listening to the radio yesterday, I heard two American activists, one Democrat and one Republican, agree that the most likely outcome of this year’s presidential election was civil war.

Last night, Donald Trump said that if NATO member nations did not keep up with American defence spending, he would ‘encourage’ Russia to invade them.

We can agree, then, that the stakes are high, as much of the world holds elections this year. Pakistan, a nuclear state itself, has just held elections during which the most successful party’s leader, Imran Khan, languished in prison.

The UK’s Prime Minister has no public mandate, and neither did his predecessor. At home, our next First Minister is being decided by internal election within the only party ever to provide a holder of the office.

Existential threats

From Europe to the South China Sea, and western Africa, democracy faces existential threats to its continuance.

The health of democracy in the USA should be of concern to anybody who cherishes the institution, and week-by-week we are witnessing its erosion by authoritarian populism on one hand, and ossified complacency on the other.

Democracy is, you’ll remember, something in which we are supposed to participate. However, it’s mightily convenient for entrenched interests if we opt not to, and the disproportionate influence of older voters in democracies is beginning to unravel the fabric of the system.

In the UK, Brexit should have been a wake-up call. Huge voter turnout, and mass engagement with the issues around the referendum have been forgotten as the political class agonises over the unexpected result.

For once, the electorate was offered a democratic lever to pull on which was actually connected to political machinery. People voted and something changed.

Contrast that with our general elections, in which votes count only in marginal constituencies. The closed list system here in Wales is even more overtly undemocratic. ‘Vote for us and we’ll pick someone you’ll probably like,’ is an insult that no voter should tolerate.

With manifestos crafted to appeal to older voters in a handful of constituencies, it is no surprise that engagement is so poor amongst younger citizens. It has brought us to the point where the property market is impoverishing young people who see no electoral route out of a political landscape that explicitly disadvantages them.

Disengagement 

The disengagement of younger voters has created a vacuum into which antidemocratic forces can step. Characters as disparate as Trump, Musk, Putin, MBS, and Xi Jinping all offer ways of doing things that barely pay lip service to public consent.

The perception is that they can, unburdened of constitutional restraint, ‘get things done’ and that is a genuine lure for people who feel effectively disenfranchised by the political establishment.

So, the spectacle of Joe Biden trying to advocate for his own firmity this week is alarming. Biden has, to be fair, ushered in policies that chime with younger American voters. Forgiveness of student debt and investment in green technology are retail offers that cut through.

If progressive America, though, must rely upon an octogenarian with obvious cognitive challenges to deliver these policies, it is in trouble.

Politics is, by necessity, the cruellest human arena. Progressive ideals cannot be advocated for effectively by a politician who personifies decay. To allow this risks associating necessary reforms with decline and obsolescence. In those circumstances, the overtures of hucksters gain credibility, and via them we submit to tyranny.

Democracy must not die of old age. We urgently need the emergence of young leaders who can articulate the requirements of government for the decades ahead.

In that spirit, Joe Biden must stand down from the election. The personal is, indeed, political.