If 2016 was the year of revolt against the global liberal order, 2017 was the year when the supporters of liberal openness — political and economic — regrouped and mobilised, often by doubling down on globalisation. This year and in the foreseeable future, the ideological battle between them will define global and domestic politics.
The weakness of the old order is a function of that fact that, after decades of often mismanaged economic and cultural change, large groups feel they no longer belong to the societies in which they live.
The anti-liberal populists’ chief appeal is to those who feel — or whom they make to feel — that national leaders no longer work for their interest. Hence the rhetoric pitting “real people” against a system or establishment: the “America first” of Donald Trump (as if Democrats are not Americans), the “forgotten French” of Marine Le Pen, the “decent people” of Nigel Farage.