A Battle to Define Democracy

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/30/world/europe/a-battle-to-define-democra.html

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LONDON — At one point during their first television debate, Donald J. Trump repeated his suggestion that Hillary Clinton lacked the “stamina” to lead the world’s greatest superpower. In Britain, the question found its echoes in an equally acrid discussion of leadership and power.

As in the United States, the very notion of what qualifies would-be leaders to lead in Britain is open to unparalleled scrutiny.

Democracy seems ensnared in a battle to redefine itself in a time of dislocation that threatens to leave voters in limbo. If you are a Briton living in this country and believe in democracy, these are days of confusion.

The nation is led by a Conservative prime minister, Theresa May, who inherited the job after her predecessor, David Cameron, had no choice but to step down after the voters backed a withdrawal from the European Union in a referendum that he had called.

The opposition Labour Party is headed by the hard-left Jeremy Corbyn, reconfirmed last week as its leader by a majority within the party, despite the opposition of most of its members of Parliament.

The two parties are driven by very different dynamics, but they share one strand of destiny: In both the “Brexit” vote and the Labour leadership election, the venerable tradition of Parliament as the repository of national sentiment was sidelined.

Instead, victory was attributed to an inner core of activists who possessed a greater passion for their cause and the zeal to marshal support behind it.

That may be a lesson in advance for American voters as Mr. Trump, an upstart reality TV star and business tycoon, challenges a deep-rooted political dynasty.

The malaise is not limited to Britain. In France and Germany, a catalog of woes inspired by the civil war in Syria — the refugee crisis, terrorism and Europe’s fraught relationship with radical Islam — has corroded the authority of elected elites.

Whether to the left or right, this is a time for insurgents who are threatening traditional structures — including the anti-Islamic Pegida in Germany on the right and the populist Podemos in Spain on the left.

And, looking further, to Russia or Turkey, it is a time, too, of wild-card autocrats maneuvering ruthlessly for power in perpetuity.

If Mr. Trump prevails, the columnist Martin Wolf wrote in The Financial Times, his victory “would mark the end of a U.S.-led West as the central force in global affairs. The result would not be a new order. It would be perilous disorder.”

In Britain, there is another consequence. The math that dictated victory in the Brexit vote left many people frustrated in defeat, facing the riddle of how the popular will, expressed by the 52 percent in favor of leaving the European Union, will translate into nuts-and-bolts departure from a bloc that has come to define Europe’s identity.

For Labour, the party members who lifted Mr. Corbyn to office insist, as the columnist Polly Toynbee wrote in The Guardian, “that they are ready to sweep the country off its feet, a Podemos, part of a great global shift.”

Yet, she wrote, for many traditional Labourites, Mr. Corbyn and his lieutenant, John McDonnell, “burdened by their history, will never ever earn the trust of enough voters to make any plans happen.”

Democracies set the nation’s compass through votes that offer the losers the hope of a second chance. After World War II, Britons booted Winston Churchill out of office only to invite him back a few years later. But no one is talking about new elections now to clear the political murk.

Brexit, Ms. May has said, means Brexit. The only issue, politicians argue, is to decide is whether this will be “hard” Brexit or “soft” Brexit — shorthand that seems incomprehensible to voters, even as it offers a hiding-place in obfuscation for leaders unrestrained by any cast-iron mandate to lead.