The riots and demonstrations in Cairo in 2011, and the similar breakdown in public order in Kiev last month, were both fuelled by popular resentment at corruption. The manipulation of the economy for the benefit of the rich had gone beyond the public’s capacity to tolerate it. The unearned luxury of the super-wealthy, a group known in Ukraine as the oligarchy, had become an unbearable affront not just to the hard work – and sometimes hardship – of the common people, but to their sense of justice. Extreme inequality damaged social cohesion and stability, a situation which various groups were eager to exploit – the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, neo-Nazi groups in the Ukraine.In sophisticated Western democracies like Britain, there are lightning conductors and safety v