The suggestion Boris Johnson is a populist can only be willful blindness to how Johnson governed. For example, his response to the Covid crisis was to leave decision making to his technocrats. (Was the destruction of the UK economy deliberate I wonder).
Johnson may have campaigned like a populist, but he ruled like the metropolitan elite he is. Massively high immigration, green policies, and as woke as they come.
Do you really believe these policies are dinner table talk in the working class areas of the North and Midlands? Johnson’s populist credentials disappeared in a wisp of smoke within hours of his election.
He tried to implement the World Economic Forums playbook, “Build Back Better”. You can’t get much more elite than that.
The irony is Boris was the elites best bet to create the totalitarian technocracy they so desire and yet they kicked him out.
The author has failed to explain why the likes of Johnson – elected to form an Executive – fail to deliver. The answer is structural. There is no mention of NMIs and the creation of a permanent non elected technocratic para state first by Blair. This was a part of the EU imperial mission to diffuse power away from and so weaken national parliaments. The public health bureaucracy demonstrated who had real power forcing the limp executive into lockdowns. Boris pulled levers but nothing happened – remember? The ongoing scandal of illegal migration again sees the Executive powerless to enforce its will due to the second problem – the mass of leftist human rights and regulatory controls embedded in our laws. Together this suffocating Regulatory Blob and its laws render the 30 odd Executive around the Cabinet utterly impotent. The Civil Service is now openly hostile to any effort to destroy the status quo which has enriched the elite via a rigged property market and pauperized vast chunks of the nation outside London. So called populism is the correct educated response to a venal corrupt elite who do not even recognise the need for energy. But no one can vote out these incompetents. For the UK, read UKSSR. The parallels are there to see.
Absolutely. And the USSA, too, squandering its money on wars and weaponry, defeated in Afghanistan, with an unreformable bureaucracy, feather-bedded arts and academic establishment dedicated to support of the regime’s ideology, show-trials of political enemies, criminalisation of opposition, mass drug addiction (fentanyl instead of vodka) – and even a delusional geriatric waxwork of a ‘leader’, Joe Biden, the west’s answer to Yuri Andropov.
The permanent “expert” bureaucracy is not nonpartisan. The first wave of populist governments made the mistake of thinking bureaucrats would follow orders. They didn’t and won’t. Trump in particular was sabotaged completely by his own permanent bureacracy. However, I think the next populist Republican president, whoever he/she is, has the tools to make things very different.
The next Republican president should remember the Department of Justice, FBI, State Department and the Intelligence Community are all tools of the Democrats. He/she should fire everybody that the president can in these agencies on day one. Temporary caretakers can be appointed without Senate confirmation to fill crucial slots.
Security clearances are a privelege, not a right. They are ultimately controled by the president as Commander in Chief. The president can and should use clearance revocation as a tool against an entrenched leftist bureaucracy. The president should immedately suspend the security clearance of anybody even remotely suspected of leaking to the press, civil service or not.
As the head of the executive branch, the president can reassign bureaucrats. The president should reassign anybody who doesn’t follow legal orders. If the reassigned fight it, remove their duties, then string out the process as long as possible.
A Republican Congress should use reconciliation bills to cut federal head count in the Department ofJustice, FBI, civilian levels of the Department of Defense and analysis divisions of the intelligence services. The bill can allow the president to allocate the personnel cuts where he sees fit, and not according to seniority. Reconciliation can also be used to make it easier to fire civil servants for insubordination.
Agencies that are part of any “Resistance” need to downsize.
Only the shock and awe of terminations will bring the leftist bureaucracy to heel.
I’m not familiar enough with the Prime Minister’s powers to make similar suggestions for the UK. However the theme is the same. Only massive firings can scare the bureacracy into following orders. Any populist PM has to find ways to fire quite a few resisting bureacrats pour encourager les autres.
You overlook the arrival of Carrie almost immediately after his campaign phase so that the ‘ruling phase’ fell largely under her influence. For he never had a mission, a programme he wished to achieve beyond ‘getting brexit done’ so in she stepped who did indeed have a programme, but not the one the electorate had wanted.
Totally agree but strangely overlooked by correspondents. I’m pretty sure it was her that converted him from Climate change atheist to Climate change zealot.
The UK badly needs to legalize fracking to produce its own natural gas and oil. Perhaps Liz Truss will see the light, or maybe not feel enough heat? Probably not.
When does an eco-loon get hooked up with a populist? When he’s not a populist but a globalist.
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. If you want to know Boris’ true nature check out his Dad. Another eco-loon and lover of the EU.
R Wright
1 year ago
It really it isn’t that hard. Fire half the civil service, put a handful of ideologically allied reformists in top roles, use an electoral mandate to unilaterally abandon sovereignty eroding membership of international conventions and organisations, cease funding your enemies immediately and begin creating a network of allies using the funds. The above could be done in six months.
AC Harper
1 year ago
Perhaps the surge in ‘populism’ is anti-Elite-Establishment – you can argue that the Elite Establishment has run its course and a fresh way forward is desired. Unfortunately the early populists have been obliged to work with the Establishment and this has blunted their progress.
In Cliodynamic theory there is a period of around 10 years or so of chaos between the old Elite and the new Elite. The march back through the institutions takes time. Trump failed to significantly ‘drain the swamp’ because the swamp fought back. Boris did get Brexit done but the Establishment worked hard to punish him for it.
I guess that in 5 or 10 years time we will look back and wonder how the old Establishment managed to hang on so long, but until then we have to live with the chaos of change.
None of his policies were populist, he didn’t change anything. He was just like previous recent PM’s, he desperately wanted the top job and didn’t have a clue what to do when he achieved that. So we were left with just the same old establishment running things.
But ultimately it was the people. The Tory MPs who removed him were taking decisions based on the public mood and their own judgements of their future prospects in the next election. Of course, there were many interest groups involved in removing Boris Johnson (certainly a merdia vendetta amongst them) – but the large drop in popular support in the country was almost certainly the deciding factor.
Back to the point – I don’t see any good reason to label Boris Johnson a “populist”. But I’m not sure the label has any real meaning anyway. How can one test whether someone is or is not a populist (or “fascist” for that matter) ? And what exactly is wrong with pursuing “populist” (i.e. popular with the public at large) policies if that is what the majority of people want ? Are we just looking for problems where there are none ?
“But I’m not sure the label has any real meaning anyway. How can one test whether someone is or is not a populist (or “fascist” for that matter) ? “: you mean you cannot recognise a fascist (eg Trump, Orban, Bolsonaro) when you see one? Seriously?
You have precisely made my point. The label is almost meaningless if you can assert this as a “fact” and three other people immediately disagree. I don’t like using undefined or subjective terms.
Do feel free to let us know your definition.
I had posted a reply to this but it disappeared.
“The public mood … “ is that the polls or the frightened MPs?
“Ultimately it was the people.” Hardly, if there was no vote.
Tory party members are not all of ‘the people’ but they are people and not members of the parliamentary tory party (not MPs). I read that you left out “know” between don’t and enough.
I advise you to stay away from the BBC HYS section – it would send you into orbit. I don’t touch it now. It is frequented by a mix of disgruntled remianers (who seek to blame Brexit for everything), liberal-left Labour partisans (who blame the Tories for everything), obtuse keyboard warriors (who just want to insult and blame anyone but themselves) and die-hard Johnson fanboys/girls who will not hear a word against their hero. They will downvote even the most reasonable and balanced comment. I actually think there are some who genuinely do not know what they are downvoting, or indeed upvoting. Pond life, some of them.
Yep: that’s all the Maitlis-Packham-Lineker Broadcasting Corporation has left now.
Last edited 1 year ago by Peter Joy
David Simpson
1 year ago
What’s needed are to find the “grey elves” (cf Curtis Yarvin) inside the current elites – those who know the current system is broken, but who are too weak on their own to do anything to change it.
John Croteau
1 year ago
I can’t speak to Boris Johnson and the UK, but the US has always had elites. You can’t describe George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Ben Franklin any other way. The difference today is that America’s political elites have become corrupt, regressive, and anti-liberal in nature. Lies, gaslighting and weaponizing government against citizens has become accepted political practice. They no longer represent a government by and for the People. Trump was elected (and will likely be re-elected) to blow up and reset the Swamp. He would have made much more progress if true, Liberal elites in BOTH PARTIES united to drain the Swamp with him. Moderate Democrats could have implemented their Liberal agenda much easier if they allied with Trump – who’s NOT a true Republican – rather than the Lunatic Left. Trump would have been a passing, albeit objectionable, figure who served a temporary purpose, much like George S. Patton during WWII. Now we’re stuck with him another six years.
Matt Hindman
1 year ago
I was almost worried that populism would be here to say. It turns out all elites have to do is a half way decent job and have the populace believe they care even slightly about them. If they do that, the populists will go away. That should not be too hard, right?
You’d think. But they trouble is that they don’t care, and are proud of it.
The plebs are ‘deplorable’ and they openly despise them. ‘Let them eat cake’, and all that. These are not people with very much self-awareness or sense of objectivity, particularly where their own immediate interests are concerned.
Jonathan Story
1 year ago
The alternative to technocrat is not populist. Good governance involves consent. Consent is not involve disdain of the public. It involves listening carefully, and elected officials then deducing what will work and what won’t work. The deep legitimacy of the British state was squandered by the decision to enter the EEC. Labour insisted on a referendum and parliamentary sovereignty, the heart of British identity, went out of the window: Harm was compounded by the eagerness Whitehall became a pillar of the Brussels system, far removed from the hoi polloi. That was revealed in the June 2016 vote. It will continue to be revealed until we learn again to govern by consent. So far, my judgement is that Truss has got off to a promising start.
Arguably the populist revolt has been the most successful in Britain with a Farage led Brexit being the barometer of change.
This populist legacy was deepened by Brexit Boris which failed on the right culture left economy platform due to the incessant flanking attacks from the EU neoliberal left and the libertarian right.
However the populist revolt continues from what was a social democratic rightwing platform to a more nuanced libertarian Keynesian one where a libertarian elitist social infrastructure is more well formed.
Therefore I would wholeheartedly disagree with your analysis. British populism is alive and well. It might have been coopted by the libertarian right but they know that without the populist red wall, then their electoral chances are doomed.
The march through the institutions is certainly long.
John Sanchez
1 year ago
An old Etonian who has been a politician at a long established political party for most of his life cannot be classified as a “populalist”.
Peter Scott
1 year ago
I agree with this survey: 100%.
A further thought. In the United Kingdom we have had 4 all-visibly failed Prime Ministers 2010-2022, who have left office despondently in something like disgrace – BECAUSE they and the Parliaments around them would not take account of popular discontents but simply doubled down on the old miserable economic and other nostrums of the alliance between Big Money and the Political Left which has run the western world these past 30 years.
Their parties, no less than those chieftains, have been perpetually tormented by the discontented voters.
This has been true in other western democracies.
Might not even some Occidental legislators – staggeringly unintelligent, uninformed, managerially incompetent and above all COWARDLY as they are – decide one day that actually catering to the public’s wishes would make for a much more settled manageable, even contented, professional career than the plank of anguish they nowadays perpetually walk?
Ian Stewart
1 year ago
Eh? This is completely wrong. The liberal elites lost when we left the EU – which was a step change or revolution – I still hear them whingeing about it every day. The liberal elites lost again when Johnson supported Ukraine – they’d rather reach a comfortable accommodation with authoritarian regimes as long as they stay off their lawns.
And with Johnson’s demise the liberal elites have, hilariously, lost yet again as net zero green policies that they love and can afford, but which everyone else pays for, are being scrapped by Truss.
The liberal elite in the U.K. are losing comprehensively. Once we get silly identity policies ruled as illegal, which is underway right now in various cases, they’ll have lost completely.
Last edited 1 year ago by Ian Stewart
William Brand
1 year ago
The next populist leader will need a reign of terror to make real changes. Example the French and Russian revolution. I only hope that the blood shed is removing bureaucrats from their jobs and not from their heads as in France or Russia
Is there a chain of events that leads you to this certainty? Because, obviously, this is not 1917 and nor are the circumstances similar. It does suggest that the weight of the people will have no affect. But I can’t help thinking that the constant change of leadership is a sign of political panic. Eventually it might dawn on politicians that it might just be easier to address themselves to the people.
Last edited 1 year ago by Brett H
Nicky Samengo-Turner
1 year ago
One of the few ” systems” in Britain that still functions is The Military, based on unabashed elites, visible rank and hirearchy, with defined executive and support functions and roles, and detailed management ” top down” orders systems…..
Not really. All three services have gone trans-rainbow mad now. The RAF is actually not functioning, the RN barely and very little is being asked of the Army at present.
Spot on! Even the Army has gone to pot and not just on this ‘rainbow rubbish’, but even on tactical matters, such as fire control where we have ‘adopted’ the US policy of suppressing fire rather the doctrine of aimed shots which had served us so well for years.
One Infantry Battalion recently returned from Afghanistan having fired seven million rounds of small arms fire in a mere six months and probably hit no one! Why? Because the SA80 rifle permits it, as does the new doctrine. So much for “shoot to kill” and “ cowards shoot first” etc.
Another odious development in ‘medal inflation’ again probably by osmosis from the US. In the past, nasty yet at the same time splendid little ‘wars’ such as Palestine, Cyprus, Malaya, Borneo, Aden, or Northern Ireland earned a bar on the General Service Medal (GSM) but now ever tin pot little event gets another medal, with the result that some young soldiers look like Christmas Trees they are so over medaled.
I could go one about women in HM Submarines but it would make a mockery of the once ‘silent service’.
As for the RAF, deplorable is the only appropriate word. In fact due the impending financial crisis it should be disbanded forthwith.
More tea Vicar?
Richard Ross
1 year ago
Not sure that I would agree that Trump failed to implement populist reform. He made huge strides in US foreign policy, viz. The Abraham Accords, North Korea, and cowing China, Russia, Iran. The open border was effectively closed and unemployment, especially among racial minorities, went down. He even superseded the constraints of the party he hijacked to win election. But Rome wasn’t built in 4 years, and the antagonists of this article,(liberal elites) remain strong within all parties, all over the globe.
Last edited 1 year ago by Richard Ross
Walter Schwager
1 year ago
As the German political scientist Michels said: the band leader changes but the music stays the same..
Phil Rees
1 year ago
The overall thesis advanced here is persuasive. However, I find the argument confusing in that it almost seems to identify the scribes and mechanics who implement their orders (our civil service) with ‘the elites’ while such an identification may be common on twitter, I don’t think its what the title of the essay suggests, nor mention of Mongol chiefs as exemplars of elites. It seems to me that the likes of Boris and Trump are undone when they leave the job to those scribes and mechanics, for they want things to remain as they have always been. One then needs a separate argument to show how ‘the elites’ team up with those disobedient scribes and mechanics.
Jordan Flower
1 year ago
This is correct. Next step: read Yarvin.
Michael Parkhill
1 year ago
Could it be the Pandemic was the undoing of Johnson? . As Parliament wasn’t sitting nothing else was done?
Walter Schwager
1 year ago
Populists may not be able to make governments change course, as Lipset alreay showed, but they can destroy a lot: regulatory agencies, research institutes, funding agencies, and so on. They can do a lot of damage that way.
The suggestion Boris Johnson is a populist can only be willful blindness to how Johnson governed. For example, his response to the Covid crisis was to leave decision making to his technocrats. (Was the destruction of the UK economy deliberate I wonder).
Johnson may have campaigned like a populist, but he ruled like the metropolitan elite he is. Massively high immigration, green policies, and as woke as they come.
Do you really believe these policies are dinner table talk in the working class areas of the North and Midlands? Johnson’s populist credentials disappeared in a wisp of smoke within hours of his election.
He tried to implement the World Economic Forums playbook, “Build Back Better”. You can’t get much more elite than that.
The irony is Boris was the elites best bet to create the totalitarian technocracy they so desire and yet they kicked him out.
The author has failed to explain why the likes of Johnson – elected to form an Executive – fail to deliver. The answer is structural. There is no mention of NMIs and the creation of a permanent non elected technocratic para state first by Blair. This was a part of the EU imperial mission to diffuse power away from and so weaken national parliaments. The public health bureaucracy demonstrated who had real power forcing the limp executive into lockdowns. Boris pulled levers but nothing happened – remember? The ongoing scandal of illegal migration again sees the Executive powerless to enforce its will due to the second problem – the mass of leftist human rights and regulatory controls embedded in our laws. Together this suffocating Regulatory Blob and its laws render the 30 odd Executive around the Cabinet utterly impotent. The Civil Service is now openly hostile to any effort to destroy the status quo which has enriched the elite via a rigged property market and pauperized vast chunks of the nation outside London. So called populism is the correct educated response to a venal corrupt elite who do not even recognise the need for energy. But no one can vote out these incompetents. For the UK, read UKSSR. The parallels are there to see.
Absolutely. And the USSA, too, squandering its money on wars and weaponry, defeated in Afghanistan, with an unreformable bureaucracy, feather-bedded arts and academic establishment dedicated to support of the regime’s ideology, show-trials of political enemies, criminalisation of opposition, mass drug addiction (fentanyl instead of vodka) – and even a delusional geriatric waxwork of a ‘leader’, Joe Biden, the west’s answer to Yuri Andropov.
The permanent “expert” bureaucracy is not nonpartisan. The first wave of populist governments made the mistake of thinking bureaucrats would follow orders. They didn’t and won’t. Trump in particular was sabotaged completely by his own permanent bureacracy. However, I think the next populist Republican president, whoever he/she is, has the tools to make things very different.
The next Republican president should remember the Department of Justice, FBI, State Department and the Intelligence Community are all tools of the Democrats. He/she should fire everybody that the president can in these agencies on day one. Temporary caretakers can be appointed without Senate confirmation to fill crucial slots.
Security clearances are a privelege, not a right. They are ultimately controled by the president as Commander in Chief. The president can and should use clearance revocation as a tool against an entrenched leftist bureaucracy. The president should immedately suspend the security clearance of anybody even remotely suspected of leaking to the press, civil service or not.
As the head of the executive branch, the president can reassign bureaucrats. The president should reassign anybody who doesn’t follow legal orders. If the reassigned fight it, remove their duties, then string out the process as long as possible.
A Republican Congress should use reconciliation bills to cut federal head count in the Department ofJustice, FBI, civilian levels of the Department of Defense and analysis divisions of the intelligence services. The bill can allow the president to allocate the personnel cuts where he sees fit, and not according to seniority. Reconciliation can also be used to make it easier to fire civil servants for insubordination.
Agencies that are part of any “Resistance” need to downsize.
Only the shock and awe of terminations will bring the leftist bureaucracy to heel.
I’m not familiar enough with the Prime Minister’s powers to make similar suggestions for the UK. However the theme is the same. Only massive firings can scare the bureacracy into following orders. Any populist PM has to find ways to fire quite a few resisting bureacrats pour encourager les autres.
You overlook the arrival of Carrie almost immediately after his campaign phase so that the ‘ruling phase’ fell largely under her influence. For he never had a mission, a programme he wished to achieve beyond ‘getting brexit done’ so in she stepped who did indeed have a programme, but not the one the electorate had wanted.
Totally agree but strangely overlooked by correspondents. I’m pretty sure it was her that converted him from Climate change atheist to Climate change zealot.
The UK badly needs to legalize fracking to produce its own natural gas and oil. Perhaps Liz Truss will see the light, or maybe not feel enough heat? Probably not.
When does an eco-loon get hooked up with a populist? When he’s not a populist but a globalist.
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. If you want to know Boris’ true nature check out his Dad. Another eco-loon and lover of the EU.
It really it isn’t that hard. Fire half the civil service, put a handful of ideologically allied reformists in top roles, use an electoral mandate to unilaterally abandon sovereignty eroding membership of international conventions and organisations, cease funding your enemies immediately and begin creating a network of allies using the funds. The above could be done in six months.
Perhaps the surge in ‘populism’ is anti-Elite-Establishment – you can argue that the Elite Establishment has run its course and a fresh way forward is desired. Unfortunately the early populists have been obliged to work with the Establishment and this has blunted their progress.
In Cliodynamic theory there is a period of around 10 years or so of chaos between the old Elite and the new Elite. The march back through the institutions takes time. Trump failed to significantly ‘drain the swamp’ because the swamp fought back. Boris did get Brexit done but the Establishment worked hard to punish him for it.
I guess that in 5 or 10 years time we will look back and wonder how the old Establishment managed to hang on so long, but until then we have to live with the chaos of change.
Yes. Maybe it’s just the beginning: clumsy and new lessons to be learned.
“Trump failed to significantly ‘drain the swamp’ because the swamp fought back.”
Spot on, and the swamp is still resisting any real reform!
Note to author; Boris Johnson was not a populist.
Why’s that?
None of his policies were populist, he didn’t change anything. He was just like previous recent PM’s, he desperately wanted the top job and didn’t have a clue what to do when he achieved that. So we were left with just the same old establishment running things.
I don’t know enough to judge. But is his failure to hold onto the leadership proof of not being a populist? It wasn’t the people that removed him.
But ultimately it was the people. The Tory MPs who removed him were taking decisions based on the public mood and their own judgements of their future prospects in the next election. Of course, there were many interest groups involved in removing Boris Johnson (certainly a merdia vendetta amongst them) – but the large drop in popular support in the country was almost certainly the deciding factor.
Back to the point – I don’t see any good reason to label Boris Johnson a “populist”. But I’m not sure the label has any real meaning anyway. How can one test whether someone is or is not a populist (or “fascist” for that matter) ? And what exactly is wrong with pursuing “populist” (i.e. popular with the public at large) policies if that is what the majority of people want ? Are we just looking for problems where there are none ?
“But I’m not sure the label has any real meaning anyway. How can one test whether someone is or is not a populist (or “fascist” for that matter) ? “: you mean you cannot recognise a fascist (eg Trump, Orban, Bolsonaro) when you see one? Seriously?
You have precisely made my point. The label is almost meaningless if you can assert this as a “fact” and three other people immediately disagree. I don’t like using undefined or subjective terms.
Do feel free to let us know your definition.
Politicians and people holding different views to you doesn’t make them fascists.
I had posted a reply to this but it disappeared.
“The public mood … “ is that the polls or the frightened MPs?
“Ultimately it was the people.” Hardly, if there was no vote.
Tory party members are not all of ‘the people’ but they are people and not members of the parliamentary tory party (not MPs). I read that you left out “know” between don’t and enough.
he desparately wanted the top job and didn’t have a clue what to do when he achieved that. Yes, so said Tony Blair’s Biographer.
All PMs who came after Thatcher, have been the same.
Amazing. I get a negative vote for asking a question,
I advise you to stay away from the BBC HYS section – it would send you into orbit. I don’t touch it now. It is frequented by a mix of disgruntled remianers (who seek to blame Brexit for everything), liberal-left Labour partisans (who blame the Tories for everything), obtuse keyboard warriors (who just want to insult and blame anyone but themselves) and die-hard Johnson fanboys/girls who will not hear a word against their hero. They will downvote even the most reasonable and balanced comment. I actually think there are some who genuinely do not know what they are downvoting, or indeed upvoting. Pond life, some of them.
Yep: that’s all the Maitlis-Packham-Lineker Broadcasting Corporation has left now.
What’s needed are to find the “grey elves” (cf Curtis Yarvin) inside the current elites – those who know the current system is broken, but who are too weak on their own to do anything to change it.
I can’t speak to Boris Johnson and the UK, but the US has always had elites. You can’t describe George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Ben Franklin any other way. The difference today is that America’s political elites have become corrupt, regressive, and anti-liberal in nature. Lies, gaslighting and weaponizing government against citizens has become accepted political practice. They no longer represent a government by and for the People. Trump was elected (and will likely be re-elected) to blow up and reset the Swamp. He would have made much more progress if true, Liberal elites in BOTH PARTIES united to drain the Swamp with him. Moderate Democrats could have implemented their Liberal agenda much easier if they allied with Trump – who’s NOT a true Republican – rather than the Lunatic Left. Trump would have been a passing, albeit objectionable, figure who served a temporary purpose, much like George S. Patton during WWII. Now we’re stuck with him another six years.
I was almost worried that populism would be here to say. It turns out all elites have to do is a half way decent job and have the populace believe they care even slightly about them. If they do that, the populists will go away. That should not be too hard, right?
“It turns out all elites have to do is a half way decent job…”
Ah but there’s the rub. Maybe it’s time for us populists to take the gloves off.
Maybe the populists are just learning some truths. Each attempt makes them smarter and stronger. Evolution in politics.
Exactly. In the end, these buggers either get a P45 this decade, or the guillotine some time in the 2030s. .
Sarcasm?
Honest sarcasm. They could stop populism, but that would involve changing their very nature and to stop pretending everything is fine.
You’d think. But they trouble is that they don’t care, and are proud of it.
The plebs are ‘deplorable’ and they openly despise them. ‘Let them eat cake’, and all that. These are not people with very much self-awareness or sense of objectivity, particularly where their own immediate interests are concerned.
The alternative to technocrat is not populist. Good governance involves consent. Consent is not involve disdain of the public. It involves listening carefully, and elected officials then deducing what will work and what won’t work. The deep legitimacy of the British state was squandered by the decision to enter the EEC. Labour insisted on a referendum and parliamentary sovereignty, the heart of British identity, went out of the window: Harm was compounded by the eagerness Whitehall became a pillar of the Brussels system, far removed from the hoi polloi. That was revealed in the June 2016 vote. It will continue to be revealed until we learn again to govern by consent. So far, my judgement is that Truss has got off to a promising start.
Really? And your basis for saying so?
Arguably the populist revolt has been the most successful in Britain with a Farage led Brexit being the barometer of change.
This populist legacy was deepened by Brexit Boris which failed on the right culture left economy platform due to the incessant flanking attacks from the EU neoliberal left and the libertarian right.
However the populist revolt continues from what was a social democratic rightwing platform to a more nuanced libertarian Keynesian one where a libertarian elitist social infrastructure is more well formed.
Therefore I would wholeheartedly disagree with your analysis. British populism is alive and well. It might have been coopted by the libertarian right but they know that without the populist red wall, then their electoral chances are doomed.
Spot on.
The march through the institutions is certainly long.
An old Etonian who has been a politician at a long established political party for most of his life cannot be classified as a “populalist”.
I agree with this survey: 100%.
A further thought. In the United Kingdom we have had 4 all-visibly failed Prime Ministers 2010-2022, who have left office despondently in something like disgrace – BECAUSE they and the Parliaments around them would not take account of popular discontents but simply doubled down on the old miserable economic and other nostrums of the alliance between Big Money and the Political Left which has run the western world these past 30 years.
Their parties, no less than those chieftains, have been perpetually tormented by the discontented voters.
This has been true in other western democracies.
Might not even some Occidental legislators – staggeringly unintelligent, uninformed, managerially incompetent and above all COWARDLY as they are – decide one day that actually catering to the public’s wishes would make for a much more settled manageable, even contented, professional career than the plank of anguish they nowadays perpetually walk?
Eh? This is completely wrong. The liberal elites lost when we left the EU – which was a step change or revolution – I still hear them whingeing about it every day. The liberal elites lost again when Johnson supported Ukraine – they’d rather reach a comfortable accommodation with authoritarian regimes as long as they stay off their lawns.
And with Johnson’s demise the liberal elites have, hilariously, lost yet again as net zero green policies that they love and can afford, but which everyone else pays for, are being scrapped by Truss.
The liberal elite in the U.K. are losing comprehensively. Once we get silly identity policies ruled as illegal, which is underway right now in various cases, they’ll have lost completely.
The next populist leader will need a reign of terror to make real changes. Example the French and Russian revolution. I only hope that the blood shed is removing bureaucrats from their jobs and not from their heads as in France or Russia
Is there a chain of events that leads you to this certainty? Because, obviously, this is not 1917 and nor are the circumstances similar. It does suggest that the weight of the people will have no affect. But I can’t help thinking that the constant change of leadership is a sign of political panic. Eventually it might dawn on politicians that it might just be easier to address themselves to the people.
One of the few ” systems” in Britain that still functions is The Military, based on unabashed elites, visible rank and hirearchy, with defined executive and support functions and roles, and detailed management ” top down” orders systems…..
Not really. All three services have gone trans-rainbow mad now. The RAF is actually not functioning, the RN barely and very little is being asked of the Army at present.
Spot on! Even the Army has gone to pot and not just on this ‘rainbow rubbish’, but even on tactical matters, such as fire control where we have ‘adopted’ the US policy of suppressing fire rather the doctrine of aimed shots which had served us so well for years.
One Infantry Battalion recently returned from Afghanistan having fired seven million rounds of small arms fire in a mere six months and probably hit no one! Why? Because the SA80 rifle permits it, as does the new doctrine. So much for “shoot to kill” and “ cowards shoot first” etc.
Another odious development in ‘medal inflation’ again probably by osmosis from the US. In the past, nasty yet at the same time splendid little ‘wars’ such as Palestine, Cyprus, Malaya, Borneo, Aden, or Northern Ireland earned a bar on the General Service Medal (GSM) but now ever tin pot little event gets another medal, with the result that some young soldiers look like Christmas Trees they are so over medaled.
I could go one about women in HM Submarines but it would make a mockery of the once ‘silent service’.
As for the RAF, deplorable is the only appropriate word. In fact due the impending financial crisis it should be disbanded forthwith.
More tea Vicar?
Not sure that I would agree that Trump failed to implement populist reform. He made huge strides in US foreign policy, viz. The Abraham Accords, North Korea, and cowing China, Russia, Iran. The open border was effectively closed and unemployment, especially among racial minorities, went down. He even superseded the constraints of the party he hijacked to win election. But Rome wasn’t built in 4 years, and the antagonists of this article,(liberal elites) remain strong within all parties, all over the globe.
As the German political scientist Michels said: the band leader changes but the music stays the same..
The overall thesis advanced here is persuasive. However, I find the argument confusing in that it almost seems to identify the scribes and mechanics who implement their orders (our civil service) with ‘the elites’ while such an identification may be common on twitter, I don’t think its what the title of the essay suggests, nor mention of Mongol chiefs as exemplars of elites. It seems to me that the likes of Boris and Trump are undone when they leave the job to those scribes and mechanics, for they want things to remain as they have always been. One then needs a separate argument to show how ‘the elites’ team up with those disobedient scribes and mechanics.
This is correct. Next step: read Yarvin.
Could it be the Pandemic was the undoing of Johnson? . As Parliament wasn’t sitting nothing else was done?
Populists may not be able to make governments change course, as Lipset alreay showed, but they can destroy a lot: regulatory agencies, research institutes, funding agencies, and so on. They can do a lot of damage that way.