A NEW POPULISM IS SHAPING POLITICS IN BRITAIN AND BEYOND / THE FINANCIAL TIMES COMMENT & ANALYSIS

September 27, 2013 7:11 pm

 

A new populism is shaping politics in Britain and beyond

 

By John McDermott

 

There is a profound ignorance among the powerful as to the depth of anti-elite feeling

 

 

 

When Isaiah Berlin said “there is a shoe – in the shape of populism – but no foot to fit”, he was probably not thinking of a cowboy boot.

 

This week Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican with a love of buckaroo heels, stood on the Senate floor for more than 21 hours decrying “Obamacare”. The marathon session was futile. But it was a sign of the Tea Party darling’s ascent and of the cantankerous movement’s influence over both houses of Congress. Five years after the financial crisis, Mr Cruz’s brand of populism threatens to shut down the US government.

 

The Texan, like his colleagues Rand Paul and Marco Rubio, espouses the anti-elitist rhetoric that since the crash has largely been the preserve of the right. Last year Francis Fukuyama wrote: “One of the most puzzling features of the world in the aftermath of the financial crisis is that so far, populism has taken primarily a rightwing form, not a leftwing one.” This is true in the US, in most of Europe and in Australia, where this month Tony Abbott surfed a populist wave to electoral victory.

 

There has been little in the way of durable leftwing populism. The Occupy movement briefly captured the imagination and US President Barack Obama selectively channelled its sentiments in his re-election campaign. The botched attempt to nominate Lawrence Summers as US Federal Reserve chairman showed that some Democrats have had it with finance-friendly faces making economic policy. However, few progressives would contest Mr Fukuyama’s depiction of “an absent left”, unable to formulate a populist or intellectual response to the crisis.

Enter Ed Miliband. In his speech to the Labour party conference, the UK opposition leader articulated what could be considered a new populism. Of course, he did not use the P-word.

 

It is a loaded term, deployed more by its enemies than its advocates. And as Berlin implied in his shoe metaphor, it is hard to define. In essence, though, it refers to the idea that unscrupulous elites are hurting the interests of a virtuous majority.

 

The public seems to think there is something rotten in the establishment. In 2010, a Policy Exchange poll found that 81 per cent of Britons agreed with the statement: “Politicians don’t understand the real world at all.” 

 

This month the British Social Attitudes Survey reported that only 18 per cent trusted governments to put the nation’s needs above a party’s, down from 38 per cent in 1986. Banks fare worse. In 1983, 90 per cent thought they were “well run”, compared with 19 per cent today, perhaps the most dramatic attitudinal shift in the report’s 30-year history.

 

Britain’s views of its institutions wax and wane – ask Her Majesty. But the successive scandals hitting banking, parliament and the media have the feel of an almost operatic collapse of faith in those who exert power in the country.

The link between the Tea Party, the Five Star Movement in Italy, Germany’s Pirates, the Freedom party in the Netherlands, the UK Independence party and Mr Miliband’s speech is anti-elitism.
However, what constitutes the elite varies. The Tea Party targets the federal government, whereas Ukip’s Nigel Farage turns his ruddy ire on the EU and Westminster. Mr Miliband has a different enemy: the oligopolies ruining British capitalism. He also has a different remedy: the state. These are his new populism’s distinguishing features. (And never underestimate how much of it comes from the Labour leader himself.)

In adopting Benjamin Disraeli’s “one nation”, he is commandeering a Tory concept. This is a clever slogan. But the bigger intellectual influence, as the historian Ben Jackson has observed, is Disraeli’s great rival, William Gladstone. In the late 19th century he defined politics as “the masses against the classes”. Mr Miliband wants to fuse the Tory unicorn’s patriotism with the populism of the Liberal lion. Red Ed becomes Red, White and Blue Ed.

 

Some headlines in the conservative media suggested Mr Miliband’s speech – notably his pledge to freeze energy prices – was a call to return to the bad old statist days. But this is simplistic. He has come to share the public’s grudging acceptance of austerity. And he is under few illusions about voters’ scepticism of the merits of a bigger state and of his party’s economic competence.

 

However, the Labour leader believes there is a case for a more active state. Energy markets were only the start. His defining purpose is fast becoming the spotting and smashing of “vested interests”. Mr Miliband seems to think this suits the public mood – and gets to the heart of Britain’s economic problem.

The most revealing part of this week’s Labour conference speech was not about gas and electricity bills. It was when Mr Miliband said: “Somewhere along the way that vital link between the growing wealth of the country and your family finances was broken”. Resolution Foundation, a think-tank, has shown that real median incomes stagnated from 2004-08 and have fallen since the crash. This, not the financial crisis, is the main context for the new populism.

 

Sane Tory politicians understand this context. Where they differ is that they see the immediate answer to market failures as more market forces. They also point out that the state is the biggest vested interest of all. This remains a problem for Mr Miliband – a member of the political elite who has spent nearly his entire professional life in Westminster – however much he parses the role of government in a new populism.

Moreover, an attack on oligopolies, real or imagined, does not address deeper causes of declining average incomes, such as technology and globalisation. And it is a fine line between sharing the electorate’s fears and scaring it with radicalism.

It is often said that Mr Miliband wants to shift the political centre to the left. But this is to mistake his strategy, which assumes a receptive audience already exists. There is a profound ignorance among the powerful as to the depth of anti-elite sentiment, in Britain and beyond. It transcends a crude left-right distinction. The Labour leader has outlined the most articulate version of a new populism to date – but he will not have the political space to himself. For, as next week’s Conservative conference may show, we are all populists now.

 

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2013.