“It is clear then that the best partnership in a state is the one which operates through the middle people, and also that those states in which the middle element is large, and stronger if possible than the other two together, or at any rate stronger than either of them alone, have every chance of having a well-run constitution.” Aristotle, Politics

Covid-19 has been a global shock. But will it be a transformative one? The answer is that it might be a transformative event for a number of western societies, notably the US and UK.

For western liberal democracies, the era after the second world war can be divided into two sub-periods. The first, running roughly from 1945 to 1970 was the era of a “social democratic” or, as Americans might say, a “New Deal” consensus. The second, starting around 1980, was that of the “global free market”, or the “Thatcher-Reagan consensus”.