A changing world - Warnings from failing societies

THOUGH replacing one profoundly conservative, middle of the road, Christian democrat, pro-business political party with another, as we will this week, may represent a shift of the tectonic plates in terms of domestic politics it hardly even registers as change when compared with the great upheavals around the world.

Authorities — as often as not dictatorships — in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Iran, Bahrain, Yemen, Algeria, Jordan, Sudan and China are trying to hold back the demands of brutalised and impoverished populations.

Right across the Levant — to use that dusty old phrase — and even in the world’s second largest economy, a great mass of people are encouraging each other to confront the autocracies that control their lives and keep them in poverty.