The grave and increasingly obvious limitations of populist politics

I guess there’s nothing to do about my reluctance to write this post, than to write my way through it.

Across the West, the political elite have become estranged from their native populations. This process began in the years after the demise of Communism and it accelerated in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. The causes are manifold: Cheap money during a long period of low interest rates, ideological radicalisation, the lack of clear political alternatives, the cancerous growth of state bureaucratic systems and the social consequences of globalisation within the political classes all played a role. Probably we have yet to understand the causes fully, but the upshot is that our elites have been pursuing crazy policies that are obviously detrimental to their own populations for decades now. They had a head-start in wreaking their destruction because the West had accumulated a lot of prosperity they could burn through before anyone began to feel the pain of their idiocy, and also because of various structural advantages, including their control of broadcast media.

As Postwar Television Democracy succumbs to the internet and as it is increasingly clear that the fat years are behind us and the future portends nothing but ever leaner years as far as the eye can see, an organic opposition has taken shape. This is the populist backlash, and in each national context it has had different political consequences, although the movement itself is broadly similar everywhere. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz spent 16 years attempting to establish “illiberal democracy” before they were voted out in May. In the United States, where Trump has succeeded in loosely aligning all three branches of government behind his agenda, the MAGA movement is at the height of its influence. In the United Kingdom, Nigel Farage’s Reform and more recently Rupert Lowe’s Restore have all but eclipsed the Tories. In Germany, Alternative für Deutschland continues to accumulate support despite withering opposition from the cartel parties and the state itself.

The establishment has reacted to the backlash very strangely. We would expect elites to adjust their politics and adopt elements of the populist programme to defang their opponents. Instead, they have ceded incredible ground by doubling down on the very policies that caused the backlash in the first place. Part of this is because we are governed by stupid and parochial elites who don’t understand what is happening to them and why. Another part, however, is probably that elites have assessed the new opposition and decided that this is a passing moment which they can either manage or outlast.

I’m not sure they’re right, but more and more I’m also not sure they’re wrong. Since sometime last year, I’ve been thinking a lot about the limitations that beset populist political movements everywhere they have arisen. These limitations aren’t anyone’s fault; for the most part, they’re expressions of where these new politics come from and what they are. This doesn’t mean that they aren’t real and potentially also very bad for those who want to live in reasonable sensible countries with reasonable sensible politics.

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