'Losers' versus 'elites'

Below is an extract from an article in yesterday's Irish Times by Martin Wolf. The piece first appeared in The Financial Times.

"Losers have votes, too. 

"That is what democracy means – and rightly so. If they feel sufficiently cheated and humiliated, they will vote for Donald Trump, a candidate for the Republican party’s presidential nomination in the US, Marine Le Pen of the National Front in France or Nigel Farage of the UK Independence party. 

"There are those, particularly the native working class, who are seduced by the siren song of politicians who combine the nativism of the hard right, the statism of the hard left and the authoritarianism of both.

"Above all, they reject the elites that dominiate the economic and cultural lives of their countries: those assembled last week in Davos for the World Economic Forum.

"The potential consequences are frightening. Elites need to work out intelligent responses.

"It might already be too ate to do so."