No.201 - Is the End of Populism Nigh?
Dear James,
It is a landscape from Armageddon or Apocalypse Now. From the air, Delhi seems to have been hit by a massive incendiary bombing raid. Funeral pyres burn in car parks, public spaces and back gardens. And yet only three months ago Prime Minister Modi was boasting that India was ready to ‘save humanity’.
Instead Modi is today seen as the initiator of this tragedy. Like Trump, Boris and Bolsanaro before him, he touted the ‘it’s not as bad as it seems’ and the ‘economy first’ mantras while the pandemic still raged. While Trump called the pandemic a ‘hoax’ and suggested disinfectant injections as treatment, Modi allowed millions to go to the Kumb Mela festival on the Ganges. Over here, Boris Johnson boasted about shaking hands with everyone in a Covid infected hospital and keeping Christmas ‘open’ despite rising cases. These are men of a kind. Trump, Boris, Bolsonaro and Modi are peas in a pod. They are populists and they have helped to bring devastation to the world.
Populism allows charismatic individuals to challenge the political, economic, cultural and media, establishments of a nation. Bravado and the projection of overwhelming self-worth equip these leaders to take on reality with the promise that they can do better than normal mortals. The phrase, ‘false prophets’ comes to mind. They blame "the elites” for the ills of the world and promise simplistic solutions. They focus on news ‘management’ rather than hard facts such as statistics. And millions of people fall for it because it is easy and is a poke in the eye for the elite. Watch the local election on May 6th and prepare to be disappointed!
But populist governments rarely survive first contact with reality. Take for example, Trump. Firstly, he had to face the reality of nature itself in the form of the pandemic. Secondly, he was dealing with the manmade reality of the last forty years – Reaganomics - low taxation, small government and freedom to do business without constraints. Remember Reagan’s quote that ‘Government is not the solution to our problems. Government is the problem!’ For Trump, it was this combination of pandemic and the oligarch’s belief that the response should be left to the individual rather than government that lead to the tragedy of many more American deaths than necessary. When governments dither and deny, people die.
The populist wave peaked in 2016 and since then the populists have become the ‘elites’ themselves. The result is that India has recorded over 400,000 new cases in a single day, in Brazil people are dying in their thousands. Worldwide there have been over 3 million deaths and countless more millions of decimated lives. Many of these deaths have been unnecessary and are due to Populist refusal to face truth or to face it too late. Populism and reality do not mix.
With Biden back in the White House, a massive counter-revolution has begun. Multi-trillion dollar investments in an American Rescue Plan have been announced, major infrastructure renewal is promised and serious, evidence based government has returned to allow the free world to breathe again – at least for the moment. But while Covid has forced our own government into massive spending also, Boris and his tawdry team struggle with their own populism. They have no over arching strategy or plan. There is only scrabbling from one crisis to the next. Today Boris Johnson is desperately trying to reinvent himself from populist to serious leader. It won’t work. Once a Boris, always a Boris!
America has rid itself of Trump and his cronies while in this country we are stuck with populist leaders who see themselves as political gods, thinking themselves immune from scrutiny, they beg favours from donors and pals and reward them handsomely. There are no big ideas here. Just political survival. In America the Trumpian survivors are still making noise and resorting to the old populist tactics of voter suppression, gerrymandering and filling the courts with originalist judges. But they are no longer in power. Our post-Brexit rump is still in power. The ‘new’ Tory party may soon find itself the last survivor of the 2016 madness.
While the pyres burn in Delhi, our polls this weekend show Boris’s personal rating has fallen back into negative territory to -6 from +1 a week ago. Even if he survives the current scandals he has brought shame, embarrassment and ridicule to your party and the country.
Politics is sometimes called a circus James but the pandemic has shown us all that this is not the time for a B.T. Barnum analogue. Clowns are for the real circus James. Not for No.10 Downing Street.
Kind regards,
BH – Your Concerned Constituent