When New York Times contributing journalist Ben Judah asked on the night of the American presidential election, "What is collapsing right now?" his befuddlement represented the sudden confusion enveloping the world. There were thousands of opinions, naturally, none of which had any sense of certainty to it. Three weeks later, we still don't have a clear answer. Nothing feels the same anymore, not just in America, but around the world. Donald Trump's surprise victory has shaken the international order and nobody can stop talking about it.Increasingly we hear that the political centre in both Europe and the U.S. is in the process of coming apart on the heels of Brexit and Trump's win. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair isn't so sure. In a revealing interview on Peter Mansbridge One on One, Blair affirmed that many of the grievances evidenced in recent voting patterns are real and require attention. Issues like immigration, ISIS, and lost economic opportunity create significant insecurities that the political establishments on both sides of the Atlantic prove hesitant to effectively address.Yet the former Prime Minister refuses to believe that the political centre is falling away. Most voters still adhere to values like tolerance, fairness, and compassion, he maintains, but things are fraying on the edges of their collective aspirations. For this reason, Blair believes the centre still matters in political life, perhaps now more than ever, given the Trump victory. When people reflect insecurity or anger, the easiest way for manipulative politicians to pull their vote is to cater to such angst, regardless of the consequences. To defeat such urges, Blair believes, leaders of the political centre must move on from managing the status quo to putting forward solutions that clearly address the problems. "The centre must become the place where the change-makers congregate and where the progressive side has to start designing answers for people," he told Mansbridge.Yet that's pretty hard to do when hundreds of millions of people feel they don't have a place in the modern and fast-paced globalized world. Anger will remain and prove an appealing political draw until progressive solutions are put forward and acted upon. Blair warns that if the progressive movement fails to act in a coherent way, they will inevitably lose political support. The beginnings of all this are being played out in front of us right now.We are now experiencing the distemper of the "middle-class" – a term first invented in 1745, in a book about the benefits of the Irish wool trade, but quickly grew in acceptance as wealth began to be generated at unheard of levels and which finally escaped the possessive clutches of the wealthy. It became an 18th-century pivot that firmly launched the modern economic age. It moved forward, with the odd and troubling interruption, and caused whole populations to believe that life would get increasingly better.Except that many now question that premise. For them, the escalator has stopped and, for some, it seems to be reversing itself. The collective insecurity created as a result has made citizens irascible, suspicious, and rightfully worried as to their family's future possibilities. The effects of such developments are felt in Canada as well, where a recent Ipsos poll reveals a widening distinction between the values and worries of Canadians. While the results showed that 70% of Canadians didn't like Trump's win, it also revealed that 77% felt a certain kinship with some of his policies, like tougher crime laws, doubts over free trade, and a tendency toward tougher immigration and refugee controls.All this points to attitudes we presumed were tucked away in the past. Beneath all that talk of globalization, open markets, liberalized trade reforms, enhanced deregulations, and open borders were concerns that have now come out into the open, confounding pundits, politicians, and pollsters alike. It turns out that all that compliance among citizens didn't keep us as malleable as we thought – a veneer covers our collective contradictions and aspirations.All this collective worry will inevitably look for political expression, and if it can't be assuaged by the traditional political parties, citizens will prove increasingly open to a single angry leader willing to parlay their angst into personal power. Clearly, it's time we took this possibility seriously and began the process of better understanding ourselves before we prove too intolerant for such an exercise.Glen Pearson was a career professional firefighter and is a former Member of Parliament from southwestern Ontario. He and his wife adopted three children from South Sudan and reside in London, Ontario. He has been the co-director of the London Food Bank for 29 years. He writes regularly for the London Free Press and also shares his views on a blog entitled “The Parallel Parliament“. Follow him on twitter @GlenPearson.