So a populist wins in Colombia, and the pundits wring their hands about UK-Colombia trade ties. As if trade were the only thing at stake. Let us consider the deeper rot.
The man is a Trump acolyte, a creature of the same global wave that has already crashed against the shores of Britain, America, and Hungary. But Colombia? That is a different beast.
Here, the liberal establishment has been propped up by decades of American aid, by the narcotics war, by a peace process that left the countryside bleeding. And now the people have spoken. They have chosen a strongman, a nationalist, a man who promises order over freedom, sovereignty over globalism.
The parallels to the Weimar Republic are not exact, but they are instructive. The liberal centre, having failed to deliver prosperity or security, is now despised. The UK, bound by a trade agreement that assumed a stable, pro-Western Colombia, must now deal with a government that may nationalise, that may reject the Paris Accord, that may cosy up to Putin.
But here is the rub: the UK’s own flirtation with populism, with Brexit, has disarmed it ideologically. How can London preach liberal values when it has itself rejected the European project? The decadence is mutual.
Intellectuals like me have long warned that the post-1990 consensus was a house of cards. Now the wind blows, and the cards scatter. The real test is not trade; it is whether the West can survive its own contradictions.