Quotes from Edward Luce

The more unequal societies become, the more likely we are to hear from the demophobes. This would strike a chord with my great-grandparents' generation. It would also sound familiar to America's Founding Fathers. 'The newfound aversion to democratic institutions among rich citizens in the West may be no more than a return to the historical norm,' write Yascha Mounk and Roberto Stefan Foa.53 To put it more bluntly: when inequality is high, the rich fear the mob.

Since the turn of the millennium, and particularly over the last decade, no fewer than twenty-five democracies have failed around the world, three of them in Europe (Russia, Turkey and Hungary).

History does not end. It is a timeless repetition of human folly and correction. It follows that there is no single model of how to organise society. Who, barring those of religious faith, can say that view is wrong?

Writing in the 1950s, Daniel Bell, the great American sociologist, said, 'economic growth has become the secular religion of advancing industrial societies'.

The West's median income, meanwhile, has barely shifted in the last half-century.

Émile Durkheim, the father of modern sociology, said that when societies hit a civilisational break the suicide rate soars.