As the 'Ealing Comedies' show, democracy is about compromise, it is about the acceptance and tolerance of others and their ideologies. This is what South Africa's government of national unity will now face head-on.

Listen to this article 9 min Listen to this article 9 min The British-made films of the 1940s and '50s that are commonly known as the Ealing Comedies might seem like a bad source for understanding local and global political trends. These parochial moments in the history of celluloid refer to a bygone era, of a racially homogenous Britain, with the vestiges of "the Blitz Spirit" still filtering the air. But they do, I think, have something to teach us.

They generally tell the story, often with the help of Alec Guinness, of the desire of the lower-middle class and working class to get "one up" on their traditional class enemies in the British establishment. The everyday heroes that stand at the centre of these stories are people who long to be free of a world from which they gain little benefit.

I hope that it is not too overly simplistic to observe that these are, in some ways, the same kinds of people that are at the root of current populist trends around the world. As we are so often told by analysts, populism has taken root in communities that feel excluded from the economy.

But as the...