The political centre isn’t holding. What comes next?

Like I keep saying, we are in for a bumpy ride

Oh my God, he’s definitely dead… That was devastating. America is so absolutely fucked. This is insane, I never thought I would see something like this… I don’t like what is going to happen in the aftermath of this.
Progressive influencer and Kirk sparring partner, Hasan Piker, reacting in real time to Charlie Kirk’s murder, 10/9/25

Tonight feels like some sort of invisible line has been crossed that we didn't even know was there. The last time I felt like this was 9/11 when it was clear, without knowing the how and the what, that the world was about to change forever. Like the rules of the game had been permanently altered and there was simply no going to back to the innocent, peaceful past.
Konstantin Kisin, 11/9/25

The Left is the party of murder.
(Erstwhile Democrat) Elon Musk, X, 11/9/25

Men joined in the glee as well, of course, but what was striking was how many of the loudest celebrations came from left-wing liberal women – the very cohort who have long dominated the “be kind” campaigns, the anti-bullying drives, the calls for civility. On TikTok, young women laughed as they danced on virtual graves. On X, progressives posted “good riddance” and compared the tragedy to poetic justice.
Clare Rowe, AFR, 15/9/25

Let’s recap the last few weeks across three Anglosphere nations, shall we?

Australia, 31/8/25 – Largest anti-mass migration rally in the nation’s history takes place. PM concedes some “good people” are involved, but suggests they’ve been led astray by neo-Nazis.

America, 10/9/25 – Charlie Kirk assassinated. Many on the Left respond with unrestrained, or barely restrained, glee. Those on the Right – the ones who have most of the guns and a disproportionate support from veterans and law enforcement officials – note this. Many vow, in an icy fury, to redouble their efforts to roll back progressive policies to honour the memory of their fallen comrade.

The UK, 13/9/25 – Largest anti-mass migration rally in the nation’s history takes place. PM concedes “people have a right to peaceful protest” but suggests those waving their nation’s flag are using it as a “symbol of violence, fear and division”. That PM’s position is increasingly shaky, with his recently dispatched deputy refusing to deny saying he was “incapable of running a bath”.

Reaping hyperliberalism’s whirlwind
None of the events listed above dropped out of a clear blue sky.

I don’t want to try the patience of long-time readers further, so let me quickly summarise arguments I’ve made in many previous posts about how neoliberalism (i.e. economic hyperliberalism + social hyperliberalism) is now collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions.

Immigration: As Matt Goodwin often notes, a significant majority of Anglosphere voters never asked for, wanted or voted for mass migration. It has been imposed on them by their social betters, not least those kind-hearted progressives who have inexhaustible empathy for sacralised minorities, such as Christ-like migrants, but very little for their nation’s working class. Increasingly, the feeling is mutual.

Wealth inequality: Noted Communist Pope Leo recently sighed, “CEOs that 60 years ago might have been making four to six times more than what the workers are receiving… 600 times more… Elon Musk is going to be the first trillionaire in the world. What does that mean and what’s that about? If that is the only thing that has value anymore, then we’re in big trouble.”

For decades now, the (asset-owning) top quintile of the income distribution has been hoovering money out of the (increasingly non-asset-owning) bottom four quintiles. And nowhere more so than in the US and, to a slightly lesser extent, the UK. (The graph below is from the US.)

One wellspring of this growing inequality has been global labour arbitrage. That is, sending non-location-specific jobs to developing nations with cheap labour while simultaneously importing vast amounts of foreign workers to drive down wages in location-specific jobs in industries like agriculture, construction, hospitality and retail.

AI: I’m not arguing that AI-driven mass automation has yet kicked off in earnest, or that it had anything to do with the events mentioned above. However, AI is making it increasingly difficult for graduates to launch their careers. There’s also mounting evidence that it’s shrinking workforces in industries as diverse as academia, accounting, advertising, auditing, coding, consulting, customer service, film, insurance, journalism, media, marketing, music and television.

That’s contributing to the sense that many people, especially those under 40, have that they will never achieve even a modest level of financial security.

The growing ranks of the disenfranchised
The only thing more destabilising for a society than having a big chunk of its working class out of work is having a big chunk of its upper-middle class either unemployed or, arguably even worse, underemployed.

As my fellow Substacker Professor Peter Turchin has long pointed out, it’s frustrated surplus elites, not the downtrodden masses, that turn societies upside down.

It’s easy to craft a ‘just so’ theory that explains what has happened. It’s rather more challenging to devise one that accurately predicts what will happen.

Turchin is respected because he published a paper in 2010 titled Political instability may be a contributor in the coming decade accurately predicting what would happen.

Here is the paper’s abstract.

The next decade is likely to be a period of growing instability in the United States and Western Europe… Quantitative historical analysis reveals that complex human societies are affected by recurrent — and predictable — waves of political instability… In the United States, we have stagnating or declining real wages, a growing gap between rich and poor, overproduction of young graduates with advanced degrees, and exploding public debt. These seemingly disparate social indicators are actually related to each other dynamically. They all experienced turning points during the 1970s. Historically, such developments have served as leading indicators of looming political instability.

In the actual paper – remember, he’s writing in 2010 in the wake of the hopey-changey election of Obama – Turchin predicts, “In the United States, 50-year instability spikes occurred around 1870, 1920 and 1970, so another could be due around 2020.”

The surplus elite issue that has long been roiling Anglosphere politics is going to get a lot worse once AI-driven automation gains momentum and there is, for instance, a surfeit of lawyers at a loose end. (See John Adams, Fidel Castro, Georges Danton, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Vladimir Lenin and Maximilien Robespierre.)

Is history about to rhyme?
Many literary theorists and professional wordsmiths believe that there are only two narratives – ‘A person goes on a journey’ or ‘A stranger comes to town’.

Many historians, including this armchair one, believe there is only one historical narrative – power consolidates, becomes corrupt, is overthrown, and is renewed.

The podcast bros’ rendering of this dynamic is as follows:

Hard times create strong men
Strong men create good times
Good times create weak men
Weak men create hard times

Intellectuals, such as Spengler, Toynbee, Pareto and the aforequoted Turchin, all have rather more elaborate ‘cycles of history’ theories. But they all sketch out much the same cycle.

Guess what part of the cycle everyone on the populist Right and, for that matter, the Far Left, believe Anglosphere societies are now in?

The Fourth Turning
Almost three decades ago, Neil Howe and William Strauss published an influential tome titled The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy. They argued that history plays out in 80-100-year-long sequences and is forever moving through the following four stages.

1. The High – renewal, strong institutions

2. The Awakening – spiritual upheaval and questioning of authority

3. The Unravelling – institutional decay, rising individualism, fracturing trust

4. The Crisis – collapse and rebirth of order

The post-WWII Keynesian era (1946-1964) was the High.

The Awakening stretched from 1964 to 1984 (i.e. from Beatlemania to Reagan’s 49-state re-election win).

The Unravelling covers 1984-2008. Howe and Strauss predict the Crisis phase, which is now deepening, will conclude in 2033.

As many a Substack pundit has noted, the Boomers grew up during The High, got to enjoy The Awakening and, in most cases, managed to set themselves up financially before The Crisis kicked in.

Post-Boomers have come of age during the Unravelling and Crisis parts of the cycle. While being mocked as feckless, avocado-on-toast-eating snowflakes by their seed corn-devouring elders, no less.

The bad news is that the crisis phase involves widening inequality, (often violent) political polarisation, rampant ‘I got mine’ individualism, collapsing social trust, much-weakened institutions and deeply fragmented societies.

The good news? Well, the only good news is that things that can’t go on don’t. Eventually, the disintegration of the Crisis phase triggers a civilisational autoimmune response that reboots the collapsing society.

If Howe and Strauss’s prediction is correct, there are only another eight years for that ‘High’ part of the cycle to commence.

Curiously insouciant elites
I’ve never lived through a fourth turning before. (I’m old, but not that old.) But I have spent the last decade and a half working in or around a collapsing industry.

You might think those at the coalface of a collapsing industry would (a) recognise that it is collapsing and (b) do something to slow, soften or maybe even prevent the collapse.

If you did think that, you’d be mistaken.

Print journalists specifically and legacy media workers more generally were exceedingly reluctant to acknowledge their industry was collapsing and, as a result, didn’t do much to slow or soften – let alone prevent – the collapse.

When I was foolish enough to point this out – and this was in 2020, at least a decade into the freefall, which continues apace to this day – I was roundly mocked and extravagantly excoriated by my peers.*

Watching incumbent elites, I’m seeing an eerily familiar denial-driven process play out.

It is hard to believe at this juncture, but many smart operators in the media either didn’t see – or refused to see – the reckoning heading their way.

In the same way many magazines thought launching a one-page website would ensure they would thrive in the digital age, lots of mainstream politicians – and much of the professional-managerial class those politicians hail from – seem to imagine they can get things back on track by being a bit more economically populist and a little less insufferably woke.

They have no idea what’s coming.

Or are refusing to see what’s coming.**

So, what does come next?

• Escalating street politics
  Expect the rallies to continue and get bigger and angrier, with governments increasingly struggling to pretend they are lunatic-fringe events attended by Far Right or Far Left nutjobs.

• The radicalisation of incumbent elites automated out of the elite
  Never underestimate the rage of a university-educated professional who’s abruptly gone from enjoying considerable social status and a ‘comfortable’ lifestyle to having the arse hanging out of their trousers. (Even if some kind of UBI is introduced, I don’t imagine it’s going to cover the outgoings of, for instance, the typical management consultant.)

• New or existing political parties arguing the need for a comprehensive reset
  At this juncture, mainstream centre-left and centre-right politicians have given up trying to pretend that everything is tickety-boo. But they are all still on the reform-not-revolution train. Trump 2.0 is already unleashing a revolution, and British voters are flocking to Farage because he promises to do likewise. It remains to be seen whether Trumpy or Faragesque figures will emerge in Australia, Canada or New Zealand.

That seems rather unlikely at this juncture. It might seem a little less unlikely if the unemployment rate gets into double digits.

*Here’s one of the comments that was left under said article: A cheap and disparaging industry headline, Mumbrella. A parochial opinion piece… The global publishers from traditional print mastheads still lead the conversation, breaking news, and have new record audiences across the globe with people seeking them for trusted information news and analysis.

**If you’re part of the incumbent elite, familiarising yourself with Pareto’s circulation of elites theory might help concentrate your mind. (Spoiler alert – erstwhile elites often don’t fare well during major societal convulsions. That’s why there are fewer European monarchies than there were pre-1789.)