A political outsider backed by Donald Trump has won the Colombian presidency. The British Foreign Office, ever vigilant, is monitoring the shift. But let us not pretend this is a surprise. It is the natural endpoint of a civilisation that has lost faith in its own institutions.
Forgive me if I invoke the ghost of Gibbon. The fall of Rome was not precipitated by a single barbarian at the gates; it was a slow rot from within, a decay of civic virtue and a proliferation of demagogues who promised salvation to a weary populace. Colombia, with its long history of violence and corruption, now joins the global trend of electing strongmen who speak plain truths to a people exhausted by elites. Trump’s endorsement is merely the seal on a wider malaise.
The British Foreign Office’s careful watchfulness is emblematic of a broader intellectual decadence. We analysts sit in our London cubicles, tapping our keyboards, pretending that monitoring is the same as understanding. But we miss the forest for the trees. This election is not about policy; it is about identity. The Colombian voter, much like the Brexit supporter or the Trump voter, is rejecting a globalist order that has left him behind. He chooses a man who speaks of national pride and order, even if that order comes with a hint of autocracy.
Consider the parallels with the Victorian era. Then, as now, a great power (Britain) watched the periphery with a mixture of condescension and anxiety. We sent missionaries and gunboats; now we send observers and statements. The difference is that the periphery no longer believes in our moral authority. They have their own prophets, and they are not reading from our scripts.
The Colombian outsider promises to fight crime, revive the economy, and restore dignity. He will likely fail, as all such saviours do. But the failure is not his alone; it is a failure of the entire liberal project that thought it could export democracy without first securing the conditions for its survival. Without a shared sense of purpose, without institutions that command respect, the demagogue is merely the symptom of a civilisation that has lost its nerve.
So let the Foreign Office monitor. Let the think tanks issue their reports. But understand that what we are witnessing is not a temporary aberration. It is a historical cycle repeating itself: the fall of empires, the rise of populists, and the slow, agonising death of an old order. The only question is whether we can learn from history before it is too late. Judging by our current intellectual climate, I doubt it.
