How you can beat populism

We couldn’t beat someone with 34 felonies, who called all Mexicans rapists, who encouraged an insurrection, was called Hitler by his vice president and deemed unfit for office by almost every senior person who worked for him.

We are the reason he is becoming president on January 20 – for the second time.

It is our collective failure – we, the progressives, the centrists, the remainers, the political elites. It’s look-in-the-mirror time. Cold water to the face time. Enter the I’m A Celebrity… jungle and eat a kangaroo’s penis time. 

We have been asleep at the wheel while the populists have dusted off their megaphones, fine-tuned their algorithms, and got to work exploiting the gaping chinks in our armour.  

Yet somehow, we are undeterred. We are still surfing wave after wave of superiority, each one propelling us forward to the promised land of political oblivion. 

The first wave is to denounce the far right populist as a monster; worse, a fascist – “he’s a threat to democracy”. “Surely this must disqualify him?”

The second wave is to be shocked that the “fascist” has won – “why are people so stupid?” “Can’t they see he is a con man?”

The third wave is to wrap ourselves in the smug embrace of a certainty – populists never have solutions, they thrive on grievances, not answers. “Mark my words, it will all go wrong very quickly.” 

Just as with Brexit, nine years on, we comfort ourselves in being proved right usually well after we’ve lost the real battle and the damage has already been done. 

Trump is the wake-up call that liberal democracy has needed. But it’s not the first. 

We’ve had the wake-up call of Brexit. Viktor Orbán in Hungary. Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. Giorgia Meloni in Italy. Coming soon, Marine Le Pen in France? The AfD in Germany? Perhaps even Nigel Farage in Britain? 

Wake-up call after wake-up call. Yet we are still sleeping through the alarm, turning over and pressing the snooze button. 

We saw the storm too late; the world changed, and the centrists were left shouting “democratic norms” while the populists went viral. 

The more I immerse myself in the rise of far right populism, and the more I reflect on the Trump supporters I met in the American midwest, the more certain I have become that without a radical change of direction we have become sitting targets, ready for the far right populists to pick us off. 

So, in the spirit of looking in the mirror, it’s time to be blunt about why we are failing to stop the populists, outline the seven deadly sins of us, the “sensible people” – and vow in 2025 to banish them to the dustbin of history. 

This is how we are seen:

1. Patronising 
We believe we are the clever ones. With our university degrees, metropolitan lives, greater expertise. From the comfort of knowing that money is coming through the door at regular intervals, we look down on those who are not living by our rules. 

2. Complacent
We believe that the logic of our position will win out in the end, that people will see the light, and emotional appeals are slightly grubby. Yet, that rational appeal falls on deaf ears, if trust is low and you have not made a connection.  

3. Abstract
The populists speak in direct terms; too often we speak in riddles. We are systems thinkers, which is good for solving problems, but when we communicate, A plus B rarely equals C.  

4. Censorious
We are the thought police. We cancel those who fall short of the right kind of virtue signalling or who refuse to go along with our latest linguistic contortions. We are in the shame game, and people don’t like being shamed. 

5. Gullible
We are suckers for the bait. We stop to examine every turd a Trump (or a wannabe Trump) drops on the sidewalk. Every wind-up remark, anti-woke sentiment, sexual innuendo. We do more than that. We crowd around the turd, pick it up, sniff it, debate it. We lose focus, get diverted, stop connecting to the people we want to serve, meander away from the mainstream. Meanwhile, the populist is marching forward with the smirk of someone who knows he’s got one over on us yet again. 

6. Conservative
We win when we are the agents of change and when we shape the future. Yet, we have a caution born of fear – of the far right, of the far left, of the media, of failing. But too often we get boxed into defending institutions that aren’t working, giving away the mantle of change too easily, allowing others to become the disruptors on behalf of the people we once served. 

7. Bland
In a world of entertainment, we do not surprise, amuse, anger, excite, charm. Our range of emotions starts at earnest and ends at sincere. We are the TikTok of an antique carriage clock, not the viral clip. And no, asking a teenager to add some sparkle to our social media pages will not work if the content remains bland.  

These seven deadly sins are a barrier between us and the electorate. We are the ones who have built a wall.  

I was struck by how many Trump supporters I spoke to in the States who felt this way. 

Like this man in New York: “I’m Cuban, gay, a fashion designer – so don’t tick many Republican boxes! But I can’t take the cancel culture of the Democrats.”

Or this woman at a Trump rally outside Pittsburgh: “He’s trying to give the country back to the people. I swear we don’t have two parties any more in the United States, the two parties are the same, they work hand in hand – say the right things to get out the vote. But once they get in there they work as one and nothing changes.”

We aren’t understanding the appeal of the populists because we are not listening hard enough. The reality is that for increasing numbers of voters the populists are seen as strong, patriotic, disruptive, unpredictable, entertaining, hopeful, and agents of change. 

In an age of rampant insecurity, where people feel a loss of control – culturally, economically, socially – and a growing belief that mainstream politics is failing, change is the new mantra. It is what the far right are tapping into. It is what the UK Labour Party embodied against a flailing Tory Party at the last general election. 

And it is why the Labour government will only sustain itself and see off the Reform threat if it continues to be the party of change – genuine, deep-seated change. 

There are now two types of politician: the disruptor and the business-as-usual. The disruptors know the current system is not working. The business-as-usual politician believes it can still be made to work. 

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The disruptors channel the anger and lack of trust of an alienated public. The business-as-usual politician tries to reassure – “stick with what we know, we will get there in the end”.

But history is on the side of the disruptors. This is an anti-establishment age, a time of massive change, immense creativity and possibility, and people simply don’t want to be shackled by the old ways of doing things, particularly when those ways are leaving too many behind.  

We’ve got to become the disruptors again. Not by aping the far right, but by being the agents of change, the builders of a better future. 

Yes, it’s possible to uphold the rule of law, oppose bigotry, defend our core values and at the same time overhaul outdated systems and institutions that are not serving the public properly.

For many the fightback starts with communications and of course that needs to improve – using social media better, delivering more confident values-based messages, trying however difficult to fight back against the media giants corrupting our politics. 

But the real fightback begins with substance. The best communicators, in the end, are people with something of substance to say. 

Ideas matter. They matter because they guide policy, provide a driving sense of purpose and sustain governments when the political weather gets stormy. 

Here again, we mustn’t underestimate our opponents. Trump’s supporters, for example, have built an impressive right wing ecosystem: books, articles, speeches, podcasts, platforms. 

A 900-page plan for government: Project 2025. Organisations such as America First, the Heritage Foundation, CPAC, National Conservatism. 

It would be wrong to see Trump’s appeal solely as the TV showman, the expert tweeter, skilled at the clickbait of social media. Underpinning it all is a central idea that is gaining traction: that there has been a double failure of liberalism. Neo-liberal economics has left too many working people behind. And at the same time, ultra-liberal social policies – the Great Awokening – has turned identity politics into something toxic.  

Our fightback requires the creation of our own robust edifice. That means better ideas, better narratives, better policies and better communication. It needs all of them in a powerful brew – brought together with a confidence and a zest that connects with the public.  

If we reduce everything to a narrow set of “things to deliver”, we will have failed to learn the lessons from the rise of the populists. Delivery will always matter – real change that real people can feel, sniff, experience. But it will never be sufficient. 

We need to create our own movement – one built around change and strong, confident, inclusive values. A new economic model, a rewiring of the state and a hopeful, outward-looking patriotism.

Rebalancing the country to working people
First, we need to be clear about who we are for. How do political parties dominated by university-educated elites connect to working people?

The Harvard professor Michael Sandel, author of The Tyranny of Merit, summed up the problem beautifully in a recent interview on CNN analysing why Trump won:

“People feel overwhelmingly that their voice doesn’t matter. The divide between winners and losers has been deepening, poisoning our politics. For the bottom half of the country that means stagnant wages and outsourced jobs and a widening inequality of income and wealth. 

“People are told ‘you can make it if you try’, what they missed was the insult implicit – if you’re struggling in this economy and you didn’t get a university degree the failure is your fault. The result is a feeling of being dispossessed, economically squeezed, and insulted, looked down upon by governing elites.

“Democrats didn’t focus on the dignity of work, honour respect, social esteem and recognition.”

The idea of respect is key; respect for working people’s lives, for their feelings, for their livelihoods and for their status.  

It is the best ground on which it is possible to fight back against far right populists – a universal approach rather than a coalition built from a series of aggregated issues and identities. 

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The Labour government has started to do this. A big rise in the living wage and a workers’ security package (too often framed either negatively as a set of union demands or as part of a growth plan) are both emblematic of dignity at work.  

More is needed, more disruption. For decades politicians have talked about parity of esteem between a university education and vocational and technical pathways. In reality this has never happened. 

A legacy of missed opportunities haunts both main political parties. Education has been inexplicably neglected by parties of the left across the west for more than a decade. The Labour government will fail in its long-term objectives – on growth, aspiration, opportunity and holding off the populists – if this is not rectified.

I know from my years as a headteacher that we need a modern curriculum in our schools that prepares young people properly for a world where problem solving, creativity, oracy and digital skills are now vital. We need a skills revolution – government, employers and further education providers – properly creating the infrastructure needed to build the talent pipeline of fulfilling jobs in every part of the country in the green transition, life sciences, finance, AI, creative industries. This is the route to real status, recognition and aspiration for those who don’t go to university. 

“The people versus the powerful”
Part of this respect agenda is to return to our historic purpose, to side once more with the underdog, the “people against the powerful”. This is territory now firmly colonised by the populists. We have allowed it to happen; we must now seize it back. 

Progressives are reformers by nature. We are about tackling injustice, fighting for a better society or we are about nothing. 

The left must accept that people have run out of patience with traditional politics. In the words of one woman I met at a Trump rally: “He says he will drain the swamp. Our government is totally corrupted. We are so bloated, there are so many organisations within the government that we don’t need.”

Our natural impulse is to reject these claims and defend institutions even when they are not working, but that would be to play into their hands. We must once again side with the people against the powerful. 

And you don’t have to look far in Britain to know why: Hillsborough, the Post Office, infected blood, Windrush, Grenfell Tower. A roll call of shame – the people humiliated, ignored, patronised, thwarted by the powerful. 

But each day there are injustices that make fewer headlines but are just as heartbreaking. NHS waiting lists of eight million. The more than four million children living in poverty. 

The people living in run-down towns with crumbling high streets. The frightened family when their house is burgled. The young couple still living at home because they can’t afford to move out. The performance of government across many western democracies has not been good enough. 

The powerful win, the people lose. It’s as simple as that. 

A smaller, more strategic state
The populists are licking their lips. They know that politicians who offer business as usual, pulling the familiar levers, making the same tweaks, are doomed. 

Farage is relying on the Labour government failing to use its big majority to shake up the way the state operates. That is why our project of change must be nothing short of rebalancing the country to working people. To change the power dynamics – to make the economy more inclusive, society more unified and politics more responsive – all with the purpose of lifting people up. 

In this context, Keir Starmer’s missions are important; and any attempt to water them down is a mistake. For their main purpose is to use the scale of their ambition to disrupt a business-as-usual mentality. The best inoculation against the appeal of Farage is ambitious goals and bold solutions to the everyday problems people face. 

To achieve the fastest growth in the G7 needs a total rethink of how the Treasury operates and a far closer economic relationship with the European Union. To rebuild the NHS will require a completely new operating model and a new set of principles that drive reform across the service. 

The simple truth is that the left should be in favour of a smaller, more strategic state. Why? Because the big state is not proving responsive, agile, or effective enough. It is not working for working people. 

The state needs to be a catalyst for change; entrepreneurial and experimental, harnessing talent, technology, resources and new thinking, rather than crowding it out. 

A state with fewer people but with higher pay so it can attract the best talent. A state that can plan properly for the future with detailed analysis and horizon scanning, and harness technology and innovation to tackle the thorniest problems.

At its heart, a philosophy of empowering individuals and communities.

A new economic model 
What is clear is that unless we change our failing economic model, which is delivering stagnant wages and massive income, wealth and regional inequalities, then the populists will always be on fertile ground.

Up until now, far right populists have been focused almost exclusively on immigration. As soon as they become economic populists, they become more potent.

And it is striking how much populists of left and right converge in their analysis (if not their solutions). I spoke to several Trump supporters who had voted in the past for Bernie Sanders. 

Yet, many parties of the centre and centre left are weary of anything that smacks of economic populism; Labour’s Achilles heel is always financial rectitude, so we bend over backwards to burnish our establishment credentials.

So, this is a careful balancing act, but it’s vital to get it right. We need a new kind of strategic partnership with business to achieve our goals, not least economic growth and the clean power transition. 

And at the same time, we need to distinguish between those who are extracting wealth and exploiting working people, and those who are creating jobs, rebuilding our country, starting up new businesses and working tirelessly to provide services and new products to power the country forward. 

If we need a new strategy for the economy and the role of the state, there is a third piece to the fightback: a new narrative about the nation.  

The fightback: pride in our nation and a sense of belonging 
This is where there is perhaps the biggest gap between the political elites, who are often squeamish about overt signs of patriotism, and the public for whom the nation matters. 

In America, Trump has turned Make America Great Again into a movement – with a common uniform – the red MAGA cap – and common chants like “USA, USA”. It is a movement that embodies strength, the American dream and a nostalgia for restoring America’s greatness. 

In Britain, Farage is now getting away with using Make Britain Great Again – without maybe the bombast of the MAGA movement, but equally without the self-consciousness too many of us would have in giving voice to such a phrase.  

As we have seen across the world, when far right populists combine a story about the nation with one about protecting the country’s borders, it sends us into a tailspin. In almost every instance, parties of the centre have done too little too late to enforce a robust, fair and humane asylum system that has genuine integrity. 

The Labour Party in the UK is a rare example of a party determined to neutralise the issue. We need to understand that this is not about pandering to the far right, but about fairness and control. Having secure borders and orderly immigration is a basic requirement of good government. 

If we are to break out from identity politics, we need to reclaim an unashamedly patriotic national story. We need to understand that for millions of British people, national pride comes from a belief that whatever our difficulties and setbacks as a nation, to be British is to have won the lottery of life. That being British brings with it the world language, a history of great pioneering achievements and national characteristics from satire to sarcasm, stiff upper lip to a love of the underdog, that makes life worth living. 

We need to start from this place and tell a story about Britain’s future that draws on our proud history and is hopeful, outward-looking, dynamic and entrepreneurial. A Britain united by a shared project; one in which all play their part, all feel they belong and all feel respected. 

A fightback is possible. It needs to come from a place of humility and reflection. We need to avoid “the seven deadly sins” of our current approach and take seriously the scale of our task. 

As Trump takes office, we must use this moment to stop taking the bait, wrestle ourselves free from a business-as-usual mindset and start to become the disruptors again – all in the name of a better and fairer future for all our citizens. 

Peter Hyman was an adviser to Tony Blair from 1994-2003 and to Keir Starmer from 2022-24, as well as a history teacher and headteacher. He is currently working on a project to fight back against far right populism