Dani Rodrik explains what has “stopped” Democrats in the US and centre-left parties in Western Europe from gaining popular support among voters – their inability to reverse what their predecessors failed to deliver. On both sides of the Atlantic, leaders like Bill Clinton and Tony Blair embraced neoliberalism, which worked well in the boom years of the turn of the century. But they could not contain the disruptive force of globalisation, and the decline of traditional employment.

Today’s mainstream leftwingers seem to have little to offer to their vulnerable core voters and lose out to right-wing populists or nationalists. The fallout from the 2008 financial crash – high unemployment, lower living standards, public spending cuts due to austerity measures – had been too overwhelming. For too long they had been complacent about long-term challenges, such as globalisation, automation, immigration, changing class identities, declining union membership etc.

Failing to address the fears of the working class, moderate left leaders leave a niche behind only to be filled by far-right populist parties, that have attracted the support of many who traditionally supported the centre-left. These voters feel neglected by mainstream politicians who pay more attention to “identity politics” revolving around racial equality and LGBT rights etc. than to their “bread-and-butter issues of incomes and jobs.” The rise of a new anti-capitalist, anti-globalisation, anti-establishment far left has proved equally hapless, as it was the case in the 2017 presidential election in France. The far-right candidate, Marine Le Pen fared much better among France’s poor than the far-left candidate, Jean-Luc Mélanchon.

The author says left-wing parties have been “increasingly captured” by liberals and the “well-educated elite,” who are being called the “Brahmin Left” by Thomas Ppiketty. This category of left-leaning liberals – unlike the “Merchant” class whose members still vote for right-wing parties – is “not friendly to redistribution, because it believes in meritocracy – a world in which effort gets rewarded and low incomes are more likely to be the result of insufficient effort than poor luck.”

The problem is that many ordinary American voters are not particularly responsive to the grievances of their poor compatriots. They fight to defend their middle class living standards, yet “do not seem to be very interested in raising top marginal tax rates or in greater social transfers. This seems to be true even when they are aware of – and concerned by – the sharp rise in inequality.” The author points out an “apparent paradox” – these voters have “very low levels of trust in government’s ability to address inequality.” Equally low are the “levels of support for anti-poverty policies.” Working class voters resent their government for bailing out big banks and corporations, while not households. They want access to universal health care, an increaded minimum wage and higher taxes on their wealthiest citizens.

Democrats are marginally better than Republicans at responding to the desires of the middle class. However they also pander to rich donors for campaign finances. It is wealth, not education or political activism, what makes politicians respond. Perhaps young people on both sides of the Atlantic might be able to revive the centre-left. Polls show that they have a slightly positive view of socialism and a slightly negative view of capitalism. In America they are fed up with a political system driven by big money, and they want to address issues that matter to them: environmental degradation, rampant inequality, the rise of greed and the lack of empathy in today’s modern society, apart from economics and politics.