A reader referred to as Ellie Comber wrote this touch upon the weblog in a single day:

I admit to being very frightened that democracy can be annihilated and that evil and greed will get the higher hand. Democracy is our safeguard in opposition to ruthless, amoral, uber-wealthy teams trampling on the remainder of us and bringing in a brand new Darkish Age. Please might you write about the place you see any glimmerings of hope within the UK?

It’s a truthful query. Actually, it is one of many questions of our age. When politics feels hole, when wealth and energy focus ever extra tightly, and when public companies crumble below the burden of neglect, it isn’t alarmist to concern for democracy; it’s sensible. So the place, amid that darkness, can any gentle nonetheless be discovered?

Individuals nonetheless care

The obvious, and most simply neglected, supply of hope is in actual fact in Ellie Comber, who wrote that message. She cares. Different individuals care. They write, argue, protest, volunteer, and switch up. They haven’t switched off. Even those that have given up on democracy because it now continues to be argue what ought to be executed about it.

Essentially the most harmful second for democracy is just not when persons are indignant, however when they’re detached. That time has not but arrived. Each letter written, each native marketing campaign fought, each act of solidarity, from meals banks to local weather activism, is democracy in its dwelling type. It isn’t present in Westminster, however within the communities and streets of this nation.

The financial story is being rewritten

For many years, we have been advised there was no various to neoliberalism: that markets knew finest, that authorities was the issue, and that inequality was by some means an indication of success. That phantasm is breaking down. What’s extra, politicians are noticing.

Even throughout the institution, there’s a rising recognition that the financial system doesn’t work. Suppose-tanks, enterprise teams, and even central banks now speak about well-being, resilience, and public funding. That mental shift issues. Each political change begins with an concept, and the outdated concepts are collapsing below their very own contradictions.

Some politicians are additionally on this group. The Greens and Plaid Cymru look to be so. Your Celebration is perhaps in the end. The SNP management dithers, however its membership doesn’t. There are indicators of hope and consciousness in politics, then.

The younger should not captured by outdated ideologies

It additionally appears that the youthful generations should not wedded to the myths of the free market or the empire. I do know there’s a downside with some younger males discovering fascism interesting, however that isn’t typical. Most younger individuals see by means of the housing con, the debt lure, and the local weather disaster. Many could not but be politically organised, however the values they categorical on equity, sustainability, and cooperation are essentially democratic.

When the demographic tide turns, because it should, these values will matter greater than any outdated political slogan.

Communities haven’t given up

What staggers me is simply how a lot resistance there may be to the failing neoliberal state inside our communities. From group pubs to native power initiatives, meals banks, group curiosity firms, and native social media, all are re-emerging throughout the nation. These should not simply sensible initiatives. They’re additionally acts of self-government that reject the failure of neoliberal authorities and its denial of the significance of individuals and the locations the place they stay.

Each is a small however actual act of resistance to centralisation and company management, and every proves that folks can govern themselves higher than distant elites can.

The cracks within the edifice are widening

Energy at all times appears impregnable till the day it collapses. Empires, markets, and ideologies all fall after they lose legitimacy. The neoliberal state is now in that part — unable to unravel issues, unwilling to confess failure, clinging to narratives nobody nonetheless believes.

That’s harmful, however it is usually the precondition for renewal. Historical past reveals that when the outdated order loses coherence, creativeness all of a sudden finds the area to interrupt by means of.

We’re studying to care once more

Lastly, hope lies within the rediscovery of care as a political precept. The pandemic, the local weather disaster, and the collapse of public companies have reminded tens of millions that we rely on one another and that care, not competitors, sustains life.

That understanding is seeping again into public consciousness. As soon as it takes root, it adjustments all the pieces.

Hope is just not a sense. It’s an act and a option to imagine that what we do nonetheless issues. It lives wherever individuals refuse to surrender on reality, kindness, and solidarity.

Simply go searching you, and you will note individuals do care. Some do of their skilled lives. Others do of their social lives. Some volunteer. Others lend help. However wherever you look, you’ll find individuals who clearly nonetheless do care, and know that we’re essentially interdependent beings, needing one another greater than the rest, and that {our relationships} with others, together with these we have no idea effectively or in any respect, and who’re totally different to us, actually do matter.

Democracy could look fragile, however it survives by means of these quiet refusals to succumb to the indifference that neoliberalism calls for and to insist as an alternative that life shouldn’t be dominated by greed or concern. So long as that insistence continues, there may be hope sufficient to work with.

Taking additional motion

If you wish to write a letter to your MP on the problems raised on this weblog publish, there’s a ChatGPT immediate to help you in doing so, with full directions, right here.

One phrase of warning, although: please guarantee you might have the proper MP. ChatGPT can get it incorrect.

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