In the face of a planet-wide takeover by untrammelled finance, voters have turned increasingly away from the political champions of the free market to those whose social democratic traditions seem to offer a sense of protection and order. Hitherto they have been sorely disappointed. Traditionally left leaning parties now in power have directed their regulatory enthusiasm, not at the behemoths of finance and industry, but at individual liberty and public morals.
In The Age of Insecurity Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson mount a coruscating argument for government to turn rapidly developing surveillance technology and strictures concerning ethics away from the citizen and on to a financial system that is making society ever more precarious.