We can be optimistic, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to plan for the future

When I listened to the introduction to the face-to-face debate between the Tory leadership candidates, this was the sentence that struck me most, spoken by Liz Truss: the Covid pandemic was ‘a once-in-a-century event’. Her argument is that this is such a rare phenomenon that the massive debt it has caused should not be paid off by raising taxes, but can be spread out over the years.” Thus begins the article by William Hague, former leader of the British Conservatives.

Many major global events – the pandemic, rising inflation, a war, drought, the crisis of American democracy – are treated as exceptional, once-in-a-lifetime occurrences. But in each of these cases, this assumption is mistaken. Take Covid, for example. The last major pandemic was the Spanish flu of 1918–20, a century ago. However, today the global population is four times larger than it was then, people travel much more, there are fewer forests, and the trade in wild animals has grown exponentially: all these factors make the spread of zoonotic diseases – from animals to humans – far more likely. It is therefore not rational to treat this phenomenon as an exceptional event.

And what about energy costs? Optimists will say that the war will soon end, bills will settle back to acceptable levels and inflation will return to two per cent. But energy prices were rising well before the war in Ukraine, and they will remain volatile in the coming years, marked by the transition to clean energy. The same applies to the war. We all hope it will end soon, although the trend suggests otherwise: the conflict is spreading towards Crimea and Belarus. There has never been a ‘normal’ world where everything was fine. The first two decades of the century were marked by 9/11 and the global financial crisis. But until a few years ago, there had been a period of relative stability: no pandemic, low inflation, growth driven by globalisation, and peace amongst the world’s major powers. It was easier for governments around the world to plan for the future.

Hague’s grandfather was born in 1901: in those days, it was reasonable to think that the world would be a better place by the time he died, in 1998. And so it was, if we look at life expectancy, healthcare, peace, freedom and prosperity. But there were also two cataclysmic wars; some concepts have changed forever. “We can be optimistic about the future, and hope that by 2100 we will have learnt to live in harmony with nature, restored peace and developed new medicines and technologies. But there will be turning points, when our assumptions will have to change and the optimist will have to be realistic. This is one of those moments.” This has implications for everyone: for the pensioner who retired early, for the company that imports everything from a single country. And also for governments, which will have to help the most vulnerable citizens adapt to the end of normality.