Why Populists Are Making A Comeback

What are Rory and Alastair's funny translation stories? Could Boris Johnson ever have a comeback? And are there any politicians to watch out for in 2025?

Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more in today's Question Time.

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00:00 Fuse Energy
01:09 Politicans to watch in 2025
05:29 Political translators
12:05 Alastair’s career in Devon
17:20 Post truth politics
19:22 Books about populism
22:55 What are unlikely things that might happen
27:20 Africa
29:10 Could Boris have cringed on?
32:20 How should the Democrats respond to Trump’s win

Assistant Producer: Becki Hills
Social Producer: Harry Balden
Producer: Nicole Maslen and Fiona Douglas
Senior Producer: Dom Johnson
Head of Content: Tom Whiter
Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport

[sue]

Alistair - it really isn’t hard to understand: people feel betrayed by established political parties who don’t listen, who believe they occupy the moral and intellectual high ground whilst having absolutely NO understanding of what “ordinary “ people are thinking and using their power to feather their own nest. Simple

[BB-skto]

If you want to understand the rise of populism, you have to begin by acknowledging the role played by the application of neoliberal economic ideology to human life over the course of the last 40-plus years - an application that has been embraced by both sides of politics, and which is therefore not a question of "left" or "right", but of the totalizing impact which this application has had on people's lives. As Thomas Piketty and his colleagues have clearly demonstrated, under neoliberalism, the economic equalizing of the post-war Keynesian consensus has been catastrophically reversed, so that both income and wealth resources have been distributed away from the middle and working class and toward economic elites. At the same time, the middle and working class have been sold the false dream that if they work hard enough for long enough they will be able to secure their economic future - a dream that has proven demonstrably untrue as the middle class has been hollowed out and the working class have been plunged into poverty and marginalization. This despite the fact that productivity has increased exponentially from 1980 onwards. In other words, the middle and working classes have lived up to their side of the "bargain" imposed upon them by the political class and the corporatocracy; but instead of the promised matching of productivity to increases in incomes and living standards, they have been forced into insecure, fractured, low-paying part-time, casual, franchised and “gig economy” work characterized by a loss of control over hours, the availability of work, the safety of working conditions, the regularity of wages, the prospects for economic security and the increase in severity and intrusiveness of managerial control over their lives. At the same time, the corporatocracy - the owners of IT capital, the class of "super managers", and the inheritors of wealth - have seen vast inflows of income and wealth resources through dividend returns, tax loopholes, and only having to expose a tiny fraction of their wealth to the vagaries of the market in order to earn returns on investment higher than the overall rate of economic growth. Populism in the form of Le Pen, Farage, and Trump has thus arisen as consciousness of the betrayal that operates at the heart of neoliberal economic ideology has fueled widespread public anger and demands for change. A populist is therefore someone who reads this public mood and articulates its grievances - even if, like Trump and Farage, they are part of the privileged status quo and have no intention whatsoever of changing its fundamental characteristics. Instead, they redirect that anger toward "soft" targets like immigrants and welfare recipients, thereby disguising their duplicity and enabling the political class and commentariat to write off the supporters of Trump, Le Pen, Farage, etc as "rednecks" and "racists", instead of acknowledging the legitimate grievances that reside at the core of populist sentiment. Populism is thus the betrayal-in-waiting that has emerged from the betrayal-that-is we call neoliberal economic ideology and the devastating impact of its totalizing capture of human existence.

[martavdz]

As a police translator and occasionally a political interpreter, thank you so much for acknowledging interpreters! 🙂
It's an extremely hard and invisible job. Because you're employing so many neuron paths in your brain and switching between them very fast, your brain ends up feeling like it's boiling.
And some people have the unfortunate habit of screaming at the interpreter instead of the person who is actually saying the nasty things, because it's the interpreter they're hearing the nasty things from. You're essentially doing customer service, psychology, theoretical linguistics, inter-cultural consulting, acting and official representation at the same time. For me, one of the hardest things is totally suppressing my personality.
As to the vetting: I interpreted at a couple of embassy events and political meetings of region representatives. I wasn't vetted at all because there's like 2 or 3 of us in the country with that language combination, they were just glad to have found an interpreter 🙂

[Drudgen]

"Populism is a term liberals use to describe the political blow back against the social disruption that their policies have created" - John Gray

Inequality, Poverty, Crime, Aesthetics, Culture, Family.

Inevitable

[londresparis_]

Alastair saying he doesn't understand the appeal of Trump or Garage and Rory saying Badenoch will be a good leader just tells you how out of touch these two are.

[andybrice]

I think it's quite simple: Populism is a response to elitism. Populists may not have the right answers. But they at least acknowledge the concerns of the electorate.

[custossecretus]

To understand populism or to understand why our establishment politicians have failed the people so much, the electorate no longer trusts them.
But then politicians have never been good at understanding those they represent.

[xr]

All you need to understand populism is that it is fueled by anger. There were/are Pakistani Muslims rape gangs across the country which were covered up in the national dialogue but which local people experienced first hand. Indeed for a long time the phenomenon of people speaking out was treated as a 'moral panic'. This drives people mad. And there are many such examples. Start from there. But of course the hosts here, and most people in front of microphones, live in completely different realities and circles - I doubt they would be able to relate. And, actually, this podcast is interesting to me (and to others) exactly because of the high class/ cocktail class that the hosts are a part of. The casual references to holidays, to gardens, to attending plays, to meeting this or that important person, all the luxury beliefs. These are the reasons why we watch - but also why we know that they tend to be wrong and out of touch.

[philipmulville]

Enjoyed very much the discussion about interpreters and their very important role. In the early 2000’s in Dublin I had the pleasure of seeing Mikhail Gorbachev’s personal interpreter, the brilliant Pavel Palazhchenko, in action. At a later engagement during his visit, Gorbachev arrived at the hotel but Palazhchenko wasn’t with him. Our Minister was very keen to speak with Gorbachev, and I was called upon to ‘do the necessary’. I’m a fluent Russian speaker, but only then did I fully understand the immense skill and ability of professional interpreters. I managed to get through it, and in the process realised how important it is to differentiate between ‘intelligence’ and ‘wisdom’ - I caught it, but only just! Massive respect to all interpreters out there who will know these things.

[GuyM-hpin]

Thinking about populism, the visible lack of understanding by the current political leadership and metropolitan elite of populism's appeal only, to me anyway, underlines the seemingly increasingly disconnect between the elected and the electorate. If the electorate perceives it's needs and desires are being met on the whole there is simply no space, let alone appetite for what the populists are selling. Disparaging populists is attacking the symptom rather than addressing the root cause.

[michaeldeasy]

Despised, Why the modern left loathes the working class, By Paul Embery

[Talbot_travels]

Alastair - I am glad you are going to focus your energies on understanding why people are feeling disenchanted and voting for popularism. Until the ‘establishment’ understands how people are feeling, things will only get worse. Labour and Conservatives are too far removed from reality and no one is putting forwards policies which the majority of people identify with, or will bring about the change people want. Politicians seem to think they are on the moral high ground and that ‘we’ are all wrong or uneducated or misinformed. Until this attitude changes, nothing will change and only get worse. Please do give your attention to this and get people to listen. Thank you

[muzi]

You, Alistair, don't understand the importance of immigration, and the way legal migration is conflated with 'the boats'. The issue is insane levels of migration, not a lack of compassion for people who NEED to be here. You just don't get it. English urban communities are changing at a rate people are uncomfortable with; we were already very diverse, but we're now full (or feeling 'full') of people not from here. In my east Sheffield estate, we have huge numbers of sub saharan African people. They aren't asylum seekers, they have legally migrated here, but we never agreed to such rapid and profound demographic change.

[dereknicol]

Rory, sorry to break this to you but the Conservative Party is finished. Alistair, Starmer didnt win the election, Rishi catastrophically lost the election.

[michaelpolya]

Bertand Russell said "most people would rather die than think, in fact they do". This is why people are attracted by the extremes, where populism resides with its one line slogans which do not require reflection or analysis. Populists rely on tapping into people's emotions and prejudices. The centre ground is where the analysis and need to inform oneself is to be found. Here issues have to be weighed and assessed. Much too complicated for the majority of voters whose information comes from social media !

[Vasquez-tk]

I recommend everyone to find the book titled The Elite Society's Money Manifestation, It changed my life.

[dgb]

Rory's insistence that Campbell has some instinct that could reach young men is thoroughly baseless. Campbell comes across as a snooty arsehole peering over his glasses while he expects respect for being relevant 30 years ago. He's completely detached from the lives of young men in the UK today.

[symzie]

Populism explained by two people who apparently dont know what populism is.

[ninesfm]

I am a conference interpreter in Brussels, and it has become impossible to do the job properly: the speed reading of speeches, which not even native speakers would be able to follow, AND the degree of degradation of the English language when used by non fluent English speakers is devastating….

[eliseleonard]

Just as reporters often fail to tie specific natural disasters to the larger picture of climate change, they also love reporting on the antics of Elon Musk without talking about the long-standing and accelerating problem of money in politics.