A Biden win buries the populist decade
(Photo by Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images)
This has been the decade of populism, the most over-worked word in the political lexicon. But with the defeat of the populists’ hero, Donald Trump, it may be drawing to a close.
Populism, the idea of a people’s revolt against the elites, has been the most discussed if slippery of political concepts this century. It’s normally associated with the right, yet Jeremy Corbyn’s “For the many, not the few” was a quintessential populist proclamation. The books never stop pouring out. Publishers like Oxford University Press and Routledge produce handbooks on populism.
Professor Matthew Goodwin cornered the market in newspaper columns. Writing in the Guardian in 2018, he predicted that “National populism is unstoppable”. Goodwin’s influential book National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy has been followed nearly every month by a book lamenting the rise of populism. In the case of David Goodhart, the former editor of Prospect, he framed the issue in terms of his much-cited distinction between “somewheres” and “anywheres”.
For Goodhart the “somewheres” never leave their communities and are the solid, salt of the earth. The “anywheres”, however, who used to be called “rootless cosmopolitans” or in Theresa May’s denunciation of pro-Europeans citizens of the world who are citizens of nowhere, are the internationalist, pro-European, well-off readers of the Financial Times, Economist or the Guardian.
2016 was the annus mirablis for the populists. Brexit, a raw populist project, won in England. Donald Trump won in America. He sent Steve Bannon, his principal cheerleader of populism over to Europe, to shape a crusade against the EU or the idea that different races and religions could live harmoniously within a single community. Bannon pulled together the rising forces of populism like Matteo Salvini in Italy, Marine Le Pen in France, the AfD in Germany, the Freedom Party in Austria and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands.
They opposed multicultural values, used the coded language of white supremacy, hated Muslims, and above all they denounced the European Union. But something went wrong. Marine Le Pen was seen off by the ultimate “anywhere” liberal technocrat, Emmanuel Macron. Angela Merkel retained power in alliance with German social democrats, despite all the fulminations of the AfD.
Wilders disappeared as voters shunned him. Theresa May, who used crude populist language thinking the Brexit vote would turn into a big majority, was humiliated in the 2017 election. Hard left populists like Jeremy Corbyn were rejected by voters, as was the left-wing populist party Syriza, in Greece. It was replaced by the outward looking modernised New Democracy party, full of multi-lingual smart “anywhere” ministers.
In 2015, Professor Goodwin predicted that Ukip would win at least five parliamentary seats. Other than a Tory MP who moved to Ukip, the Farage populists were trashed. Matteo Salvini was humiliated in elections this year after he walked out of government hoping to put himself at the head of a nationalist populist movement in Rome. Instead, the success story of Italian politics has been an intellectual “anywhere” lawyer, Giuseppe Conte.
Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark and Finland all have social democratic prime ministers. Greens are the new rising force in European politics. In New Zealand, Labour’s Jacinda Ardern, has won a new term of office, seeing off rightwing nationalist populist opposition. The Islamaphobe Austrian Freedom Party suffered a major defeat in elections to control the key city of Vienna last month.
Brexit is turning out to be right royal mess. John Redwood, author in 2019 of We Don’t Believe You: Why Populists and the Establishment See the World Differently now sees his populist dream of total rupture with Europe ebb away as British business forces Boris Johnson into a messy compromise with the EU. Brexit problems will continue for years, as the “anywhere” people in the civil service try and make it work. The latest YouGov poll shows only 39 per cent of Brits think Brexit remains the right decision.
The big moment that will sound the end of the populist decade is next Tuesday in America. Joe Biden, is the “anywhere” man par excellence. He served for years as Chair of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee and then was the most internationalist vice-president in US history.
Donald Trump sought to appeal to working class voters who have lost manufacturing jobs under the tide of imports from China. Yet in Detroit, home to America’s car industry, the Republicans won 7,085 votes compared to 191,152 for Democrats.
Biden’s pragmatic, problem-solving, centre-left politics are the very antithesis of nationalist rightwing populism, whose moment came and is now going.
Democratic politics has always been about populism in the sense of seeking majoritarian support to win and hold power. But as an explanation of what is happening in democracies, it has run out of steam. The Biden victory will bury the Goodwin-Goodhart thesis that populism was taking over.
Political scientists, intellectuals and commentators now need to get down to work and stop leaning on the crutch of populism as a catch-all explanation of politics going into the next decade.
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