When Alexis de Tocqueville studied America’s fledgling democracy in 1831, says Jonathan Sumption in UnHerd, he hoped his native France could learn from what he saw. Today, the United States is a “laboratory of democratic decline”. De Tocqueville thought there was no real risk of despotism in the US because the executive had little say over domestic affairs – that was the job of Congress. But since then the federal government in America, in common with all modern democracies, has vastly expanded. The president has become all-powerful and – in Donald Trump’s case – largely immune to congressional checks and balances. Latin American countries, where presidential systems have long been the norm, show what can happen. Every one of them has at some point experienced “the subversion of its democracy by its president or the usurpation of presidential powers by a military dictator”.

It was the left that kickstarted our current era of polarisation, with their intolerance and disdain for alternative viewpoints. Just think of Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables”. But the right-wing backlash has been much worse: the refusal to accept election results; the ruthless use of voter suppression and gerrymandering to disenfranchise Democrats. This has destroyed the political culture that made the US Constitution workable. Britain is insulated from some of these dangers by its parliamentary system: judge appointments are non-political, election expenses are limited by law, and so on. But our defences against despots still have some “serious weaknesses”. The statutory provisions on electoral boundaries and election spending could be swept away in parliament with “a majority of one”. Party leaders are chosen not by MPs but by members, who tend to be on the fringe of the political spectrum. Democracy in the West is relatively young – 150 years, give or take – and fragile. “We cannot take it for granted.”

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India Sutra
Jaipur & Kolkata with author Abir Mukherjee
12-22 January 2027

India Sutra traces the literary and historical currents that have influenced modern India – in the company of bestselling novelist Abir Mukherjee. On this 11-day journey we will embark upon urban explorations, deep dives into literature, and kick-back in luxurious surroundings. We begin in Delhi from where we will travel to Jaipur for two full days at the Jaipur Literature Festival. From Rajasthan we fly east to Kolkata: first metropolis of the British Raj, the city of Abir’s parents and the setting for his Wyndham & Banerjee series of novels. Our final chapter unfolds in Odisha on India’s eastern coast.

Contact Bertie for more details: [email protected].

THE FLAT This two-bedroom flat sits in Villa Fontaine, a new block of nine apartments between Sydenham and Dulwich Wood in southeast London, says The Guardian. Built from a Danish brick-and-tile system, it has solid wood floors with underfloor heating, timber doors and window frames, and handmade joinery throughout. An open-plan kitchen, dining and living room runs along one side, its east-facing bay of eight sliding glass doors framing views of the treetops. Two bedrooms sit at the rear, one with an en-suite, and each with built-in cupboards and a desk. Residents share a communal roof garden and secure bike storage. Sydenham Hill station is a nine-minute walk, with trains to Victoria in 13 minutes. £585,000. Click on the image to see the listing.

One of this year’s “few pleasant surprises”, says Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times, is that people are going back to the cinema. American box office sales are on track to be higher than any year since 2019. And for all the talk of phone addiction and waning attention spans, it is young people – presumably “eager for communal experiences” – who are the most active moviegoers. That, surely, bodes well for the future of the big screen. All those gloomy forecasts during Covid that the age of streaming would wipe out cinemas now look overwrought.

Perhaps more striking is the sort of films people are watching. Movies that look artificial – like the generic superhero instalment Supergirl, Disney’s live-action version of Moana, and Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu – have flopped. By contrast, low-budget horrors that rely on scary premises rather than otherworldly imagery, such as Obsession and Backrooms, have been hits. And the biggest blockbuster of all is, of course, Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, which is notably sparing in its use of CGI. The Cyclops Polyphemus was depicted not through AI, but with a 60-foot animatronic puppet. One seafaring scene was filmed on a wooden ship in the middle of a real-life storm, which had extras “clutching the sides and vomiting”. Nolan, a champion of “hands-on” filmmaking who doesn’t even own a smartphone, has hailed young people’s rejection of AI fakeness. “After years of driving toward heavily virtual environments,” he told The Telegraph, “we’re seeing a renewed interest in more tactile, more real forms of storytelling.” In a world of endless AI slop, that’s something to celebrate.

“How pleasant is the day when we give up striving to be young – or slender.”
American philosopher William James

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