Why the West is on fire

ON OCT 17, the roof of the 19th-century town hall in Limoges collapsed after it was set alight during a coordinated nationwide protest in France against the cost of living.

That same weekend, smoke drifted past Milan Cathedral, Brussels police turned water cannons on teenagers, and tent cities rose in the central squares of Lisbon and Madrid. Across the Atlantic, Americans rallied in all 50 states under the banner “No Kings”.

It is tempting to file each of these as a local story – a French schools dispute, a Belgian budget row, an Iberian housing shortage. That would be a mistake. Taken together, they describe a West where political and economic settlement is coming apart at the seams.