“Then the seemingly impossible happened and, at the top of the straight, the old jockey surrendered the saddle to his female stablemate,” writes The Gadfly columnist ROBERT MACKLIN.  

In this year of the international test of Democracy versus Autocracy, something unexpected is happening – the good guys have taken the lead. 

At the beginning, prospects looked dreadful. Russia’s murderous Vladimir Putin cleared the field of candidates by jailing the small fry and killing Alexei Navalny by unknown means in a far-off gulag. 

And Pretend Emperor Xi Jinping eliminated his opponents by charges of corruption as a legal system bent to his will.

And speaking thereof, the US Supreme Court of the United States, which would-be dictator Donald Trump had stacked with reactionary cronies, began giving legal imprimatur to his policies and preferences. The anti-democratic forces looked to be on a roll. 

But then in short order came India where the would-be theocratic kingpin, Narendra Modi, met democratic resistance that forced him into coalition with a more reasonable grouping. His faith-filled fantasies fell in a heap.

Meanwhile, the British poll threw out the Tories in favour of a centrist Labour Party; and the remarkable French electoral manoeuvring saw Marine Le Pen’s far-right extremists run into a solid wall of fiercely democratic parties. Even the Iranians elected a “moderate” against the wishes of their “Supreme Leader” Ali Khamenei.

Suddenly the 2024 race was looking good for Democracy. In Melbourne Cup terms, our horse had stumbled at the start but had now joined the pack as the runners passed the finish post for the first time.

But then, down the back straight, Pretend Emperor Xi secured himself a fourth term from his hand-picked lackies and the also-rans bunched up behind him. 

However, the weight of Xi’s economic policies were beginning to show the vulnerability of chubby Pretend Emperor’s rule that will inevitably threaten his Mandate of Marxist Heaven. Some even say his race is run already.

That takes us via Xi’s “beautiful letter” to the man in orange colours who would enact Project 2025. This is the Republican Party plan designed to clip Democracy’s fetlocks and place “the entire executive branch under the direct control of the president under the unitary executive theory”. Indeed, it proposes to replace tens of thousands of neutral federal civil service workers with the political henchmen of a President Trump. 

Xi’s letter celebrated Trump’s survival from an assassin’s bullet, courtesy of his God; and as they approached the turn towards the home straight it looked very much as though he was odds on to replace his ageing opponent sitting astride the Democratic Party mare.

That’s when the seemingly impossible happened and at the top of the straight, the old jockey surrendered the saddle to his female stablemate. He tossed her the whip. “The baton is in our hands,” she cried. “Let’s win this!”

By now it was a two-horse race as they thundered towards the finishing post on that special Tuesday in November. In two mighty strides she overtook the distance between them. Punters raced to place their bets – $300 million in a single stroke.

And then…well, who knows for sure, but Democracy has its nose in front. And if you think about it, even the murderous Putin paid lip service to what Churchill called “the worst system of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”. After all, once he’d killed off his opponents, the Russki didn’t have to bother with an election. 

Perhaps he knew deep down that the people valued the right to vote, even if it was utterly meaningless… except, of course, to the deluded little man in the mirror.

robert@robertmacklin.com