They don't want yet more of that old poisonous porridge of the policy enfeebled Mandarins.

Well, yes.

From What Europe Should Worry About Most: Bad Demographics by Stéphane Lauer.

PARIS — Nationalist forces and their alarmist, demagogic obsession with migration took center stage throughout the European election campaign. The results, therefore, showed that the extreme right's strategy — playing on fears that Europe is being overrun by hoards of outsiders — continues to be effective.

What got lost in the noise, however, are two other demographic trends that are quietly shaping the Europe of tomorrow in a lasting and structural way: the aging of the population, and emigration from one EU country to another.

In less than 30 years, 20% of Romanians, 12% of Bulgarians and 7% of Poles have left to work in other European countries, according to Eurostat figures. These waves of departures constitute a demographic upheaval, with multiple consequences for EU stability. At first, the exodus primarily involved people in Central and Eastern Europe (the CEE) after the fall of the Berlin Wall. But it took on a whole other dimension after the financial crisis of 2008, and further accelerated with the debt crisis of 2011.

The phenomenon also implies a spectacular transfer of wealth.
The collapse of Southern Europe pushed hundreds of millions of Portuguese, Spanish, Greeks, and Italians to leave their respective countries to find work primarily in Germany or the UK. Since 2008, over 2 million young Italians left their country as well.

You get the gist. And too bad about the boilerplate Mandarin Class opening paragraph.

Lauer is right to point out that what people are talking about in terms of the recent elections is in many ways just static which distracts from an underlying challenge.

There are three iron constraints which, if unaddressed, bode ill for the future.

Demographic collapse - Low fertility rates and high emigration rates. Not enough children are being born and not enough young people are staying to rebuild their country.

Structural deficit spending - A rapidly rising national debt on top of a dwindling national population is a recipe for economic end-times.

Stagnant Productivity - As the Japanese have demonstrated, aging/declining population is not definitively apocalyptic . . . as long as your economic productivity is rising faster than your labor force decline. Productivity is a function of minimal but sensible regulation and as minimal diversion of resources into taxes as possible.

The European continent is in a pinch with declining demographics, eroding finances, rising debt, rampant regulation, ever more resourceful taxing and declining productivity.

All that was courtesy of the old Mandarin Class and their disposition to coddle themselves, ignore the electorate, and kick the can down the road. A shtick no longer being tolerated by voters. No one is quite sure what they want except that they are sure that they don't want yet more of that old poisonous porridge of the policy enfeebled Mandarins.