British politics seems to have changed dramatically in the last few years. A very unpopular Conservative party suffered one its worst ever defeats in the 2024 general election. The incoming Labour government, on which many people had pinned their hopes, had a very short honeymoon before it, too, became unpopular. With the two governing parties of the last century both appearing discredited, the Liberal Democrats have been able to prosper. But so, even more obviously, have new populist parties of the right and left.
What we see in Britain is part of a wider pattern of a turn to populism across the world. Populist parties offer a heady blend of eye-catchingly simple solutions and a focus on immediate grievances and discontents.
Simple solutions often turn out to be neither simple nor solutions. The world is a complex place, where many things are linked in ways that we don’t immediately appreciate. An action to address one problem can have serious consequences for others. The more we drill down and examine the reality of supposedly simple solutions, the more we find that they generate no end of complications.
Populists rarely worry about such matters. Their aim is not to offer practical solutions but to catch your attention and suggest that life is simpler and more straightforward than ‘experts’ claim. They concern themselves very little with potential consequences of ill-thought-through ‘solutions’ because they never imagine that they will have to implement them.
Populism’s prioritization of short-term fixes over long-term viability is another fundamental problem. The job of responsible decision makers is to think ahead, to be mindful of the needs of the future as well as the needs of today. Often, the two can be brought into alignment; but there are occasions when pleasing people now can have serious and undesirable consequences down the line. A saving, or income generation measure, may be unpopular when introduced, but if not pursued it could lead to a need to make much bigger savings or income generation in years to come. Populists always prefer the immediate gratification that comes with opposing difficult decisions to sound planning for the future.
Responsible politicians may not be as exciting as populists, but they are more reliable thanks to their sense of duty, their willingness to take difficult decisions, and their long-term thinking. In my view, unflashy competence and rational, evidence-based approaches to complex problems are infinitely preferable to superficially attractive but unworkable and irresponsible populism.
My view, however, is less important than yours. Rarely has there been a starker choice than the one that faces you now. If you are tempted by the rhetoric of populists of either left or right, I urge you to think very carefully about what you might get if you put them into power. People who think things through, and are led by facts not emotion, are far more likely to be your true friends. People who try to address the problems we face now without blighting the future for our children and their children are far better people to have in charge than those who focus only on current discontents and leave the future for others to worry about.
By Cllr Stephen Conway, leader of Wokingham Borough Council
