Bernard Ingham: Why the West is no longer full of eastern promise

That is partly why, in this television age, North Africa and the Middle East are erupting against authoritarian, cruel or corrupt régimes and too often, like Gaddafi’s, all three.

It is a repeat of the age-old story: “How do you keep them down on the farm when they’ve seen Paree?”

It isn’t, of course, just pictures. Another branch of technology, in the form of the jet engine, has so cheapened international travel that many – especially the more intelligent professional class – have seen the West for themselves. They might not like all they see – who does? – but they know there is something better to be had out of life, and not least a blessed state of freedom.

It is a very potent message to people in feudal, oil-rich nations with great disparities of wealth. It must also have fired at least some repressed women in those states with the high degree of angst once experienced by our suffragettes. Steadily, there is building up a demand for a better, more equal place in a freer society.

The movement may be handicapped and confused by tribal or religious loyalties and rivalries and a lack of any experience of other forms of governance. It could fall prey for a time to fanatics whose middle name is oppression. But their guns and terror can no more stop over time – and it may be some time – the people’s acquisition of a better life than the KGB could hold Communism together in the face of perestroika and glasnost.

The Soviet Union simply could not bear the weight of a modicum of liberalism.

I do not expect to live to see a great flowering of political and economic freedom across the Middle East and Africa. But it will come as surely as the seasons.

My worry is what is happening to the West in the meantime. President Obama, the leader of the Western world, is a busted flush. He is burdened by colossal debts, too many wars and a sapping Leftiness. He has the fundamental failing of too many leaders – he wants to be loved by all.

Europe is an even worse case. Since it does not believe in anything other than expensive politically correct nonsense, it is systematically conniving in its own demise. Its ludicrous carbon emissions reduction targets alone will ensure that it can no longer compete in this world within a decade.

Together, the difficulties of the US, EU and NATO in reaching agreement on a rational strategy and command structure for dealing with that Mediterranean pestilence called Gaddafi, is evidence of an alarming palsy at the heart of the West.

What must it say to dictators across the world? They will conclude that the West is never likely to be anything more than a coalition of the unwilling, who, while not afraid to wound, is terrified of striking a decisive blow.

“You can’t count on them,” they will tell their unhappy people. “Why? They won’t even topple a lunatic with a long history of running a terrorist state.”

What does it say to Russia and China with their vast resources and potential with a far more authoritarian approach to life? The West has lost its will. It is fading.

The future is ours.

There is also the risk that it will embolden militant Islam and al-Qaida to frustrate rebels seeking a measure of freedom. In practice, these fanatics have nothing to offer those wanting greater control over their lives. But a West that allows its economic strength and values to be eroded has less and less to offer oppressed peoples desiring its way of life.

Margaret Thatcher did not raise Britain’s standing in the world on the back of the Falklands and eventual economic success. Both were important. But the clincher was the consistent application of a set of what her husband saw as deep Christian values.

I am hanged if I know what the West stands for any more other than motherhood – in or out of wedlock – and apple pie.

You can be sure this message of decadence will get through to the aspiring masses of Africa and the Middle East by the moving pictures of television and internet. This is no time for the democracies to let them down.