I think I can understand – and even empathise with – what’s in the minds of people in Europe and America who vote for right-wing, ‘populist’ parties these days. Not necessarily in the minds of their leaders, who may be merely exploiting ‘popular’ views for reasons of their own; but the sorts of folk who phone into radio stations like GB Radio, which I’ve been tuning into quite a lot recently. (I’m sure that other countries have their equivalents – Fox News?)

You can tell a lot about ‘public opinion’ – or a slice of it – from programmes like GB Radio’s. Today for example phoners-in expressed almost universal support for Lee Anderson’s recent islamophobic remarks about the mayor of London – for which he has had the Conservative whip withdrawn from him (for foreign readers: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/24/lee-anderson-stripped-of-tory-whip-over-sadiq-khan-comment); and condemnation of Shamima Begum (see my last post). Other common opinions expressed are against immigration (‘stop the boats’), anti-political demonstrations, anti-‘woke’ (variously but usually very vaguely defined), Islamophobia, anti-civil service, suspicion of ‘intellectuals’, anti-the ‘Westminster bubble’, anti-‘establishment’, (now called the ‘permanent state’), and anti-‘government’ generally; all in the supposed interests of ‘real people’ in the ‘real world’ (that’s Lee Anderson’s words, introducing his weekly slot on GB Radio today).

Sceptical of ‘historical parallels’ as I am, I can’t help being reminded of 1920s Germany; where similar views gave rise to Nazism, against the background of the sort of economic depression that seems to be affecting many people – certainly in Britain – right now. Replace 1920s German Jews by Moslems or ‘Islamists’ as today’s convenient scapegoats, and you have an almost perfect fit. Anderson and our former Home Secretary Suella Braverman are even constructing a full-blown ‘conspiracy theory’ around this, charging Islamists with taking ‘control’ of the country, or at least of its capital (for Braverman, see https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uk-suella-braverman-says-islamists-now-control-britain); doubtless in league, as ex-PM Liz Truss argued the other day at an extreme-Right American conference, with ‘trans activists’ who had infiltrated the civil service, no less (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/21/liz-truss-deep-state-cpac-far-right). It’s all looking a bit scary, for progressive liberals – whether ‘trans’ or not. (Another speaker at that American conference claimed that ‘progressive’ was simply another word for ‘communist’.)

I recognise a lot of this kind of talk from my very early years, in a lower-middle class family, and at one of those schools that liked to think it was ‘Public’, but really wasn’t. (It was a ‘Direct Grant’ grammar.) One year we had a ‘mock’ election, which I wasn’t allowed to vote in – too young at 14 – but was prevailed upon, as the school artist, to design posters for the ‘RWNP’, or ‘Right-Wing Nationalist Party’ – before I understood what those words meant or implied. (The posters all pictured the dangers of Communism. As an architecture enthusiast, I didn’t want all the churches pulled down either.) There was a communist candidate, who had poor personal hygiene, and had to be accompanied around – at a short distance – by bodyguards. Eventually the election was won by a late entrant, led by the school comedian, calling itself the ‘Intellectual Extremists’: slogan ‘Vote for Daddy’; which annoyed the headmaster no end. He’d instituted the election in order to instil civic responsibility in us boys. But it could be that ‘Daddy’s’ voters were pretty representative of the electorates we have today. It would explain Boris’s (temporary but disastrous) recent success.

Of course my views transitioned when I reached the Sixth form, and came to study History – Mediaeval, as it happens (Modern was for the dumdums, with the really bright doing Ancient), but it made me think; and I then went on to university, which, despite being almost all male and Public school dominated,  also proved to be a new multiracial environment for me to live in. So I could never be a racist. But of course most voters lack most of these advantages; and so cannot be blamed for having narrower views of the world.

Some of which, however, I really can relate to. It’s not hard to lose one’s patience with Parliament, with the voting system we have, its arcane practices, the corruption of various kinds, and in the light of last Wednesday’s shambolic vote on Israel-Gaza (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-68362405). I too get exasperated with various forms of what are called ‘wokishness’ or ‘political correctness’, especially when they give so much ammunition to the right-wing newspapers who delight in misrepresenting or exaggerating them out of all proportion to their real significance. I can sympathise with the resentment expressed by those who feel patronised by ‘intellectuals’, even when I think (some of) the intellectuals may be right. I’m suspicious of most governments, whether ‘permanent’ or not; although my suspicions point in a different direction from those of Liz Truss. I accept, reluctantly, that immigration has to be fairly regulated: although I would have missed my African and Asian friends at college. I suppose I’m Islamophobic, in the sense of deploring all fanatical forms of religion, in which guise Islam often presents itself today. I’m not too happy with demonstrators breaking things, though I wouldn’t accuse most of them of being motivated by ‘hate’ (that’s Suella again). Like those others who are unsettled by the huge societal changes taking place today, I’m often tempted to wrap myself in the warm blanket of nostalgia; although not of the imperial past that so many of today’s populists clearly miss more. (‘We used to rule half the world’.) I’m bored with the ‘trans’ debate, although that’s probably a failing of mine. (I should take more interest in gender.) Ditto the vexed question of ‘identity’, and the ’culture wars’ generally; but partly because I fear they are taking people’s attention away from what is truly ailing both them, and the planet.

This of course may be quite deliberate, on the part of the leaders of these ‘populist’ causes. But that’s another issue. I may come back to it in a later post.