The Telegram
Centrists crying “Wolf!”
The wrong way to beat populists who deny the existence of hard problems
Illustration: Chloe CushmanAN UNDEREXPLORED ASPECT of Aesop’s fable, “The Shepherd’s Boy and the Wolf”, is that there was a wolf.
For moralists, this is a tale about lying.
Three times a boy cries “Wolf!” and laughs at villagers who run to help.
His screams are disbelieved when a real predator attacks his sheep.
Woolly carnage ensues.
Read as a parable about national security, Aesop’s fable is more complicated.
True, the boy tells fibs.
But his village clearly underinvested in its defences.
No countermeasures are triggered by an actual attack, even as the urchin’s shrieks are joined (readers assume) by the piteous bleats and gurgles of dying sheep.
Instead, the wolf destroys the entire flock “at his leisure”, Aesop writes.
Tell Aesop’s tale to modern presidents or prime ministers, and they might shudder with recognition.
This is a ghastly moment to lead a liberal democracy.
From Australia to Britain, France, Germany and beyond, centre-left and centre-right incumbents are breaking records for voter disapproval.
At the same time, this despised cohort is confronted with huge problems that could, if left unsolved, lead to catastrophe.
Examples include the need to boost European defence budgets to deter aggression by Russia’s wolfish president, Vladimir Putin.
American allies in Asia and Europe must spend more to replace security previously provided by Uncle Sam.
That is complicated by fears of over-reliance on superpower bullies.
When buying new kit, governments must avoid dangerous dependencies on America, a country that limits supplies of scarce armaments and controls access to sensitive technologies when it sees fit.
As for China, that country has a record of weaponising its dominance of vital industries.
Germany or Japan, for instance, will struggle to upgrade their armed forces in the teeth of Chinese opposition, as long as China controls exports of critical minerals and components.
Similar fears apply to green technologies that are needed to slow climate change, another costly problem.
Chinese firms so dominate the trade in solar panels, batteries, long-distance electricity-transmission kit and wind turbines, that there is, for now, no way to go green affordably and rapidly without China.
So far, so miserable for such objects of hooting derision as Britain’s Sir Keir Starmer (approval rating 20%), France’s Emmanuel Macron (22% approval), Germany’s Friedrich Merz (16% of voters “somewhat satisfied”).
To that list can be added Anthony Albanese in Australia, whose centre-left coalition enjoys a mighty 41% approval.
Unfortunately for centrists, his rival Pauline Hanson, the leader of the anti-immigration party One Nation, recently earned the approval of a majority of Australians for the first time.
Addressing big problems costs money, at a moment when some eloquent advocates of action (hello, Britain and France) are broke.
Just as unhelpfully, centrists face populists claiming that hard problems need no fixing because they do not exist.
Populists have long promised simple solutions to voters’ grievances, whether that involves hard-right pledges to send unwanted foreigners packing, or leftist slogans about taxing billionaires.
It turns out they have another superpower: wishing away policy trade-offs.
In Aesopian terms, liberal democracies resemble villages belatedly realising that it was not smart to outsource their wolf surveillance to a serially dishonest child.
But just as village leaders ponder burdensome, full-time predator patrols, noisy sceptics are urging neighbours to “reject the wolf hoax”.
Take the challenge of deterring Russia from attacking members of the European Union or NATO.
Piffle, says the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
Its co-leader, Alice Weidel, calls Ukraine a greater risk to Germany than Russia.
AfD promises to “advocate for peace with Russia” and buy Russian gas.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a hard-left dinosaur admired by many French youngsters, says France should return Russia to “the family of Europe”, leave NATO and—without explaining how this might work—stop using American defence and intelligence technologies.
Britain’s surging Reform UK party promises to scrap “net-zero” policies crafted by previous Conservative and Labour governments to curb carbon emissions.
(The Conservatives last year disavowed net-zero, too.)
In Germany, the AfD opposes policies that claim to protect the climate.
In Australia, One Nation questions the scientific evidence that man-made climate change exists.
To explain why governments would plough on with costly and often unpopular green policies built atop an alleged hoax, One Nation offers a conspiracy theory: mainstream politicians are part of “a global movement” scheming to “use the excuse of reducing emissions” to control how people move around, eat, work and live.
Pick your battles, centrists
The most convincing moderates admit that they cannot eliminate all risks or please all voters.
They talk of focusing limited resources on urgent vulnerabilities.
Complete independence from Chinese green tech is not possible, for instance.
A senior EU official calls for Europe to control the most sensitive technologies, such as the interfaces that let data flow between an electric vehicle or a power grid and their manufacturers.
Voters will not get all that they want: balance is all.
Less happily, some centrists try to rival populists in their alarmism.
To overcome public inertia and rally voters behind expensive policies, they say that catastrophes are at hand.
They declare that the world is in a “climate emergency”, or that Russia may attack Europe’s eastern flank in “months”, as Poland’s prime minister recently suggested.
That is counterproductive if voters doubt leaders’ warnings.
The unenviable task of responsible politicians is to invest prudently today, to avoid potential disasters that will cost more to fix tomorrow.
That requires hard choices and patient coalition-building.
Yelling “Wolf!” will not solve the puzzle.
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