The world’s attention fixes on Colombia’s presidential runoff, where a leftist firebrand faces a pro-Trump businessman. The United Kingdom, ever the voyeur of Latin American stability, sends observers. But let us not pretend this is about democracy. This is about the same intellectual decadence that rotted Rome and now poisons our own discourse. The leftist, Gustavo Petro, offers a tired script of redistribution and grievance. His rival, Rodolfo Hernández, peddles the politics of the outsider, the man who speaks plainly and shatters norms. One is a climate alarmist, the other a climate sceptic. Both are symptoms of a deeper malady: the collapse of liberal centrism.
Consider the parallels. In the late Roman Republic, the optimates and populares tore at each other while the Senate fiddled. Today, Colombia’s elites watch as the electorate turns to extremes. Petro evokes the populist left of Chávez and Morales. Hernández channels the Trumpian revolt against the establishment. The UK, with its own Brexit wounds and regional separatisms, should recognise this dance. We too have our Petros and Hernándezes: Corbyn, Farage, the SNP. The difference is we dress them in tweed and call them ‘populist’.
But the real story is the failure of the centre. The Colombian establishment backed a bland conservative, Federico Gutiérrez, who came third. Sound familiar? The British centre, from Cameron to May to Starmer, offers managerial competence with no vision. The people smell fear and hypocrisy. They turn to the prophets, the strong men, the bullshitters.
The UK monitors stability? What a joke. We cannot keep our own Union intact. We obsess over Latin American drug wars while our own cities seethe with knife crime and our political class cycles through scandals. Colombia faces violence from guerrilla groups and paramilitaries. We face a slow burn of anaemic growth and cultural despair. The difference is that Colombians at least vote with passion. Here, we vote with a sigh.
Petro promises land reform, free university, and a shift away from oil. Hernández vows to clean up corruption, cut taxes, and return to traditional values. Both are fantasies. Oil revenues fuel Colombia’s economy. Land reform without property rights is a recipe for chaos. And cleaning up corruption in a country where drug money lubricates politics is like drying the sea with a sponge. Yet the people believe. They have to. The alternative is despair.
The British establishment tuts and dispatches observers. But what observers should we send to ourselves? A commission to study why our politics is so tepid? A mission to investigate why our young are so anxious and our old so resentful? Colombia’s election is a mirror. It shows us that when institutions fail, the demagogues rise. When the centre cannot hold, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
Do not look at Bogotá with condescension. Look with horror. That could be us. That might be us soon.
