Authority- The Key Issue Of Our Time The Loss Of Elite Legitimacy Reframed As The People’s Lack Of Trust In Democracy
No doubt you have come across commentators and legacy politicians whining about the public’s loss of trust in democracy and in the key institutions of society.
‘France is not alone in its crisis of political faith – belief in a democratic world is vanishing’ commented Simon Tisdall last week in The Guardian[i]. He noted that ‘belief that democracy is the form of governance best suited to the modern world is dwindling, especially among younger people’.
The tendentious claim that the current era of political malaise is an outcome of a loss of commitment to democracy is regularly echoed by mainstream commentators. This was the message of a recent Politico headline that stated that ‘Europe’s democracies are in danger, warn Merz and Macron’[ii]. It cited the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz stating that these ‘threats dwarf anything seen since the Cold War. He noted that ‘the radiance of what we in the West call liberal democracy is noticeably diminishing’, adding: ‘it is no longer a given that the world will orient itself towards us, that it will follow our values of liberal democracy’.
If anything, the French President Macron was even more pessimistic than Merz. He warns that Europe is undergoing a ‘degeneration of democracy due to attacks from without and from within. He was particularly concerned about the loss of faith in democracy within France. ‘On the inside we are turning on ourselves; we doubt our own democracy’, he noted, before adding, ‘we see everywhere that something is happening to our democratic fabric. Democratic debate is turning into a debate of hatred’. This statement coming from a man, whose presidency lacks a genuine mandate and relies on bureaucratic maneuvering exposes the cynicism of his concern for the ‘degeneration of democracy’.
In the United Kingdom, The Financial Times observed that Prime Minister Starmer’s strategy runs the risk of making him the latest casualty of the UK’s downward spiral of democracy’[iii]. The former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner wrote in a Ministerial Statement that ‘declining trust in our institutions and democracy itself has become critical’ and added that ‘it is the responsibility of government to turn this around and renew our democracy’[iv]. Her statement, titled Restoring Trust in Our Democracy — Government strategy document (2025) comes across as a meaningless promissory note that offers nothing.
Anxious statements about the state of democracy are regularly recycled by the denizens of the World Economic Forum. It is paradoxical that these globalist oligarchs who are instinctively suspicious of popular democracy should be so concerned about it. ‘We are witnessing a backsliding in democracy everywhere in the world, even in the most advanced democracy, It is a movement into the bad — in the wrong direction’ noted Alain Berset, a former Swiss president who heads the Council of Europe[v].
Typically, expressions of democracy-anxiety are followed by alarmist warning about the advance of populist movements. As the leftist Left Foot Forward explained, “The damage done to trust in our democracy is a seriously big problem. Almost everywhere, we see a steady rise in authoritarian populism, often fueled by dissatisfaction with how democracy is working today’.[vi] Evidently the real problem is not so much the loss of trust in democracy but the forward march of populism. Le Monde shares this analysis. Its correspondent Alain Duhamel contends that ‘“we are facing both a crisis of government and a crisis of society’— with disillusionment toward political institutions and a preference rising for governance by public opinion rather than representative democracy[vii].
The association of democratic malaise with the rise of populism has acquired the character of an incontrovertible truth amongst establishment figures and their lackeys in the media. In this way populism is cast into the role of being a beneficiary of the supposed exhaustion of democracy. But is it really the case that the public has become turned off by democracy and that populism is the natural inheritor of the legacy of this anti-authoritarian turn?
Loss of elite authority
In reality the crisis of democracy narrative serves to mystify the real issues at stake. This narrative offers a misdiagnosis of the very real loss of legitimacy of the ruling elites as a loss of belief in democracy. As far as this dominant narrative is concerned every time people vote against the representatives of the legacy political establishment democracy is in trouble. So long as they win elections and populists aspirations are confined to the margins of society democracy is represented as a big success. But the very minute people vote the ‘wrong way’ the mainstream commentators craft alarmist accounts about democratic backsliding. That is why the Remainer lobby often represents the outcome of the Brexit Referendum as an expression of ‘democratic backsliding’.
In theory, the term democratic backsliding refers to the declining integrity of democratic values. In practice it means the estrangement of significant sections of the public from their political institutions. The term democratic backsliding serves to mystify a very significant development, which is the legitimacy crisis of the legacy political establishment. Once understood from this perspective it becomes evident that it is not democracy that people no longer trust but the people and the institutions that rule over society.
As it happens the narrative of ‘democracy is in trouble’ smacks of pure hypocrisy. Those who communicate this narrative are not so much interested in the integrity of democracy but in ensuring that people vote the right way. From their perspective if people vote the wrong way than democracy becomes dispensable. That is why more and more we hear the refrain that there is ‘too much democracy’. ‘Democracy Works Better when there is less of it’ warned Financial Times commentator, Janan Ganesh[viii]. As far he is concerned, ‘no global trend is better documented than the crisis of democracy’, by which he means that too often people vote against the advice of the elites.
Ganesh joins the ranks of a small army of leader writers in the mainstream media who condemn democracy and the supposed stupidity of the electorate. ‘Too Much Democracy Is Bad For Democracy’ warns a headline in The Atlantic[ix]. The Economist concurred and warned that ‘too much democracy threatens freedom[x].
What these warnings about ‘too much democracy’ really mean is that what’s needed is a form of democracy that makes it difficult if not impossible for people to vote for candidates they label as populists. Arguing in this vein, Ganesh states that if there were ‘curbs on direct democracy’ than British public life ‘would now be less poisoned’[xi].
When you examine the real meaning of the ‘democracy is in trouble’ lament, it becomes evident that it is animated by an insecure but unambiguous anti-democratic impulse. As far as the elites are concerned the real problem is that they are no longer trusted and that they have become bereft of the last shred of their pre-existing legitimacy. This point was well put by one commentator who asserted in The Atlantic that ‘our most pressing political problem today is that the country abandoned the establishment, not the other way around’[xii].
When, as the Journal of Democracy notes that ‘citizens have lost faith in democracy’ what they really mean is that the legacy political establishment and its institutions have lost the capacity to dominate the electoral process[xiii].
By pointing the finger at the threat posed by authoritarian populists, representatives of the legacy elites seek to scapegoat their opponents for the problem of their own making. They also create a climate of fear that is hospitable for the promotion of policies that can be used to repress their political opponents. Hysterical claims about about disinformation by foreign agents serve as a justification for attempts to delegitimate democratic decision making.
That why what we need is more and not less democracy.
[i] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/12/france-crisis-political-faith-belief-democratic-world-vanishing
[ii] https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-democracies-danger-warn-friedrich-merz-emmanuel-macron/
[iii] https://www.ft.com/content/3daf7366-fe7f-4b6b-9e23-652499082b34
[iv] chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://data.parliament.uk/DepositedPapers/Files/DEP2025-0503/STRATEGY_FOR_ELECTIONS.pdf?utm
[v] https://srnnews.com/davos-2025-some-notable-quotes-from-the-world-economic-forum-meeting/
[vi] https://leftfootforward.org/2025/04/make-democracy-great-again-heres-how-we-can-restore-trust-in-politics/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
[vii] 13 October – 2025 https://www.lemonde.fr/en/politics/article/2025/09/08/french-journalist-alain-duhamel-we-are-facing-both-a-crisis-of-government-and-a-crisis-of-society_6745137_5.html?utm_
[viii] https://www.ft.com/content/f68c13a4-1130-49d5-b3c6-2270711d819e
[ix] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/too-much-democracy-is-bad-for-democracy/600766/
[x] https://www.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2009/12/17/when-too-much-democracy-threatens-freedom
[xi] https://www.ft.com/content/f68c13a4-1130-49d5-b3c6-2270711d819e
[xii] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/how-american-politics-went-insane/485570/
[xiii] https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/news-and-updates/why-have-people-stopped-trusting-democracy/
Quite. It is indeed a crisis of authority and trust. The reason ought to be obvious, the state of the economy and society they have mismanaged for several decades, the litany of betrayed promises, and the increasingly brazen sneering in response to dissent. In Britain politicians need to leave the subsidised bars and restaurants and see, and see properly, what life is like for an electorate whose votes they can no longer take for granted. It's nothing to do with misinformation and everything to do with with what we see and experience in our daily lives. No memes have affected my view, no dodgy tweets, no foreign interference is manipulating me. I've just become immune, along with many others, to manipulation (and nudging etc) by own goverment.
The grooming gang scandal - what enquiry? - rapid, large scale immigration all too often from cultures with values inimical to our own, men pretending to be women venerated above sex based rights for real women, and a lot more are what we ordinary voters see. When our sense of belonging is undermined and is no longer a shared feeling or experience we no longer belong to our elites. No amount of blather from them wil change that no matter the digital noose they plan to put around our necks.
A great piece describing exactly the state of affairs we find ourselves in, in the west.
Governments are elected by a few and they think they have a mandate to cancel women, fill our lands with solar panels, wind turbines and transmission lines, spy on us, allow barbarian migration and riots but lock up the citizens, fly any flag but our own, trash the economy and spend like there is no tomorrow. I could go on.
For these governments democracy only works when they are returned anything else is not a reason that democracy is not working. As you so eloquently stated in your piece, Mr Furedi.
So