Rightwing populism is littered with broken promises. Its opponents need to make those failures count
Andy Beckett
Of course this is trivia as compared to left wing populism. Those extravagant promises of the 1940s have left us saddled, 80 years later, with one of the worst health care services in Western Europe for example….
Right wing populism is a very bad thing. In a democracy, being popular would lead to you being elected. And then where would the Lefties be?
Populism is not merely being poular. It means taking positions which are superficially attractive but fundamentally flawed in the hope that you will get support from people who don’t realise the difference. For example, advocating tariffs on imports to favour local manufacture and thereby make the country much more prosperous. Or rent controls, or VAT on school fees to promote equality.
How’s that Right-Wing populism working out in Argentina and El Salvador? The only two countries I can immediately think of where it has been given a chance by the electorate and thankfully spared the unlawful intervention of the eu or a statist judiciary when the plebs vote the wrong way.
TBH he has a point. Are Nige seems to make policy on the hoof while none of his team appear to have much grasp of the detail, or the difficulties of actual implementation. Trump is much the same but at least has a team around him who can get some things done – mass deportations for instance.
As opposed to the Grand Strategies of the Progressives and Socialists which intrinsically ignore reality and are pushed through regardless of first, second and third order effects?
Nige at least *can* make things up on the hoof when faced with Reality.
Your average socialist is utterly incapable of even *considering* alternatives if conditions change.
I’m not saying they’re any better but Reform need to get their act together. What if Starmer decided to resign next month and an election was called; they’d have nothing to offer except vague promises.
As opposed to the Serious Promises and Manifestos of the other parties which get dumped as soon as the elections are over?
yeeeaaahhhh….
Serious promises to legalise all drugs, release all prisoners, admit and pay a monthly salary to all immigrants and kill the Joos (sorry I mean facilitate the killing of the Joos)?
Because those policies are currently resonating remarkably well with voters (genuine or otherwise) in cities across the country.
All they need to do really is list the acts that they are going to repeal.
If Starmer went to the King and proposed a GE the Labour Party would quickly point out that as the largest party they have a right to elect a new leader and form a new government.
There’s a lot of idiots in the Labour Party but they aren’t suicidal and despite calls for a GE every time the Tories elected a new leader and therefor PM they’ve demonstrated enough times in this past 2 years they don’t hold themselves to those same standards.
Again, I’m not saying exactly what might trigger an election, just posing a question.
But the public don’t want boring, sensible, thought through politics, or they’d be voting for the Libertarian Party who want to cap housing benefit and close down half the railways, and can explain in detail why. I don’t agree with everything they say, but there is at least some working out around it.
How many people are looking at solar and asking about intermittency? And when someone says batteries, asking for a breakdown of the costs of that.
I wish it weren’t so. I wish that more people reached the age of 35 and realised that government is a shit way to do things, but they don’t. I would love Reform to be BURN DOWN THE STATE to the bare minimum, but they have “procurement policies that favour British producers” (making us all poorer) and “We will ensure our young people are trained in skills that manufacturers need, providing them with fulfilling and well paid jobs” even though government is always a decade or more behind on what employers actually need. Richard Tice wants to end high speed rail, which is great, but instead to piss money away on other rail in the North, despite it all being a fucking waste of money compared to cars and buses. It wants to ban ULEZ and LTNs even though that should be an entirely local matter.
Monorail! Monorail! Monorail!
Populist policies, if right-wing, are sabotaged by unpopulists who then use the failure to demonstrate how populist policies don’t work. Real populism has never been tried.
“some Reform-led councils raising rather than cutting taxes”
But when you delve into the Full Fact article, it does point out that on average, they have had lower tax rises than other parties, and actually, that’s what you give a shit about as a voter. Cuts are great, but you’ll still vote for them as “least worst”.
And as Simon Cooke and others point out, local government gets to decide almost nothing. Duties are imposed by central government and often without spending increases to match it.
You’re reminding me of the NDIS here in Oz.
It’s so expensive that the federal government proposes dumping it on the states, and then blaming them for the money wasted or the lack of loot to lavish on the free loaders.
Reform are discovering that councils in Britain have very little financial power. Their money comes mostly from central government (and how much they can raise from tax is strictly limited), and simultaneously the bulk of their expenditure (SEND, care homes, police pensions for 40yo Inspectors with suspiciously bad backs living on the Costa Brava) can only be reduced at the margins, if at all.
Reform could do a lot worse than lifting the boot of central government off the necks of councils, whether they will or not remains to be seen.
I’m a bag fan of localism in government. Councils collect from rates/council tax, and spend. More power to the (local) people.
“Very little financial power.” What’s your threshold for “very little?” A hundred million per council?
Councils have lots of money, but relatively little discretion in how it is spent.
With some people, you can instantly tell they’re a twat just by looking at them
Whenever I see that face in the article strap line I think – “check his hard drive”
I am the (White) captain now.
He reminds me of Mr Mackey in South Park (mmmkay…)
Incel.
Are we allowed to claim
“That wasn’t REAL right wing poulism”?
Do you man to tell us that both sets of politicians lie, Timmy? Say it ain’t so!
I don’t think the social democrats who have ruined Europe over the past 30 years ought to be asking people to focus on the failures of political parties.
Its opponents need to make those failures count
Just sabotaging them isn’t enough for Andy á Beckett.