IT matters how stories are told. Victory, for instance, isn’t always as clear-cut as it may seem. Emmanuel Macron’s defeat of Marine Le Pen in the French presidential election is proof that extremism is vanquished, we’re told. Macron is hailed for winning by a thumping margin.

For those who fear for the future of western liberal democracy, however, such cheerleading seems somewhat naive. We’re listening to the narrative of relief, not reality. To beat an extremist by 58.55% to 41.45% isn’t a margin that befits boasting. In 2017, Macron beat Le Pen by 66.10% to 33.90%. In just five years, millions more French found themselves capable of voting for a woman whose vision includes banning headscarves, and giving priority to native French over foreigners. So another way of seeing the election is that it’s the best result ever for the French far right.

Violence broke out in French cities after the result was announced. Police opened fire on a car, killing two. Demonstrators and officers exchanged volleys of fireworks and tear gas in the streets. Protestors waved banners reading "A bas Macron Le Robin Des Bourges" ("Down with Macron, the Robin Hood of the Rich").

Let’s be clear: 41% of everyone who voted (and turnout was large, standing at 72%), cast their vote for a woman many see as a fascist. That’s 13 million people. Le Pen may have rebranded the party her father once led – from National Front to National Rally (Front National to Rassemblement National) – but its history is inescapable. Under her father, Jean-Marie, the party was a haven for Holocaust deniers and anti-Semites. Monsieur Le Pen, who once said that Hitler’s occupation of France wasn’t “particularly inhumane”, allowed former Nazi collaborators into his party.

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Marine Le Pen leads what amounts to a Gallic iteration of the British National Party. That Macron lost ground to her and saw so many voters back such a woman is cause for fear, not celebration. Le Pen is in hock to Putin. Russian money bankrolled her party. Yet even amid war in Ukraine, she was able to put in her best showing yet – taking French democracy to the brink.

Only a fool would interpret Macron’s win as some roll-back moment when the tide of illiberalism that’s swept over the West is finally stayed. For those of vigilant mind, the French election seems merely a setback for the far right. There’s an uneasy sense that soon, maybe not next time, but perhaps the time after, a Le Pen-type figure will hold power in Paris.

However, nor should we sound democracy’s death knell just yet. In Slovenia, the liberal Robert Golob has just ousted three-time prime minister Janez Janša, a Trumpist populist, who undermined press freedom. Yet Slovenia is balanced by Hungary, where Viktor Orbán rode to victory for a fourth time this month. Orban has smashed the free press, dog-whistled anti-Semitism and sucked up to Putin.

There’s a central problem afflicting modern liberal democracy which accounts for most of its discontents. Our politicians have broken the social contract which existed between power and the people: the notion that "we – the people – consent to be governed by elected representatives of our choosing on the condition that they look after us.

From 1945 onwards, western liberal democracies advanced living standards. The welfare state, free education, expanding job opportunities, all contributed to the sense that democracy "worked".

But poison was sown into democracy’s heart. Under cover of "freedom", Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan linked democracy umbilically to the free market – not stakeholder capitalism, which saw workers and communities play their part in business, but shareholder capitalism, which treated workers like trash and destroyed communities in the pursuit of profits for the wealthy.

Then came "the great holiday from history", that Edenic decade after the fall of Communism, when the 1990s seemed to promise endless advancement for ordinary people. Yet those who came to rule over this period – the Clintons and the Blairs – were creatures of the market, not the people. They stored up the damage that came to pass in the early years of the 21st century: the global financial collapse caused by unfettered capitalism and globalisation; an agony still unfolding in the cost of living crisis, which itself poses existential democratic threats.

Add in a war, Iraq, which severed trust between people and power. Add in global terrorism, not just September 11, but the attacks motivated by the Iraq invasion, which fed hatred of "the other". Add in a refugee migration crisis, as civilians fled war in Syria and Iraq, which stoked those flames of hatred. The discontents in democracy became festering boils. Leaders like Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy did nothing to face down these problems. Obama simply basked in the glow of his own coolness, Cameron was a man unfit to run a small business, and Sarkozy a convicted crook.

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What was left to people when it seemed that politicians neither cared about them nor had any ideas how to reform our broken economic system? The answer: identity. All that mattered was how "I" felt, and the people in "my" narrow group. The "us" in politics died. Yet democracy must be about "we", not "me".

Fate, for good measure, threw in social media, a self-radicalisation machine that feeds off this bitter harvest we’ve made of politics, hollowing out every pillar which keeps democracy still standing.

After 40 years of allowing politicians to take our way of life to the brink by mismanaging and abusing power for their interests not ours, we find democracy facing, at the worst moment, its greatest test: war. For what’s happening in Ukraine is undoubtedly a battle between tyranny and democracy.

So here we stand, in the halls of democracy – marble falling from the walls – trying to defend an edifice crumbling around us. That’s why Ukraine cannot lose. It offers hope of saving what we’ve still got. Perhaps the shaming act of watching Ukrainians face the destruction of their democracy and dying in order to protect what we take so for granted, will remind us of what we should cherish.

You never really miss what you’ve got until it’s gone, after all.

Our columns are a platform for writers to express their opinions. They do not necessarily represent the views of The Herald