The Economist February 12th 2022 Britain 49Theriseofunpopulism
B
oris johnson’s attack had an alliterative snap. At the despatch
box, the prime minister dismissed Sir Keir Starmer, Labour’s
chief and a former barrister, as “a lawyer, not a leader”. The line
had one flaw: beyond Westminster, lawyers are liked. No parent
ever complained about a child becoming a solicitor. Indeed, voters
prefer politicians to have been lawyers rather than journalists
(like Mr Johnson) by three to one, according to YouGov. People
who dislike lawyers include government ministers, who find their
best ideas squished due to illegality, and divorced middleaged
men. Westminster has lots of both. And they presume that every
one else feels the same way.
A misjudged attack line reveals a peculiar transformation in
the Conservative Party. At the start of Mr Johnson’s tenure, it
thrived with a populist message, pledging to implement the will of
the people against the wishes of an outoftouch elite. Now its mps
project their own neuroses, fetishes and obsessions onto an imag
ined people. They invoke the will of the people to pursue policies
that are, in fact, unpopular. mps slate footballers, fight culture
wars and attempt to thwart green policies in the name of voters
who prefer the opposite. Call it unpopulism.
The first signs of unpopulism emerged during Britain’s depar
ture from the European Union. Politicians of all stripes argued ov
er minutiae such as dataprotection rules and phytosanitary stan
dards. Beyond broad principles, few ordinary people cared. Yet in
that debate, proverbial voters with a striking tendency to repeat
mps’ own views on, say, membership of the customs union, kept
cropping up. The general election in 2019 was won by the party
that pledged to make the topic go away.
Confusion between correlation and causation embedded un
populism in the Conservative Party. Mr Johnson remains in office
because Tory mps think he has a unique ability to win over places
that never voted Conservative before 2019. In fact, Mr Johnson’s
personal ratings in these “red wall” seats were lower than Mrs
May’s in 2017. Dislike of Jeremy Corbyn, Sir Keir’s farleft predeces
sor, rather than love of Mr Johnson handed the Conservatives vic
tory. Mr Johnson stays in power despite wretched ratings thanks
to the endurance of that myth. He owes his job to the will of West
minster, not the will of the people.What preoccupies Tory mps does not always preoccupy voters.
The culture war is one example. In Parliament Jacob ReesMogg,
the new minister for “Brexit opportunities”, lamented the “charge
of the woke brigade”. Any voters who chanced to be listening
might well have been confused. According to a poll by YouGov,
59% have no idea what “woke” means. Lee Anderson, an mpin
Ashfield, a former mining constituency, boycotted the Euro 2020
championships in protest at England’s footballers taking the knee
to protest against racism. It was a lonely boycott. Polls showed that
about twothirds of England fans supported the players.
In general, mps still view Britons as libertylovers. There is a
crossparty consensus against mandatory id cards. Britain is not a
“papers, please” society, runs a common refrain. In fact, Britain is
a “Papers? Please!” society: polls show overwhelming support for
idcards. In the minds of Tory mps, liberty extends to the English
man’s inalienable right to drive where he pleases. When local
councils started to create lowtraffic neighbourhoods during lock
down, those mps led the attack. But according to Opinium, a poll
ster, voters support lowtraffic neighbourhoods by two to one.
In other areas, unpopulism is just beginning. On environmen
tal policy, increasing numbers of Conservative mps, such as Steve
Baker, an influential backbencher, worry that attempts to reach
“net zero” will go down badly with the red wall. A growing crowd
of rightwing mps, columnists and thinktanks, such as Net Zero
Watch, are pressing for a referendum on the topic. Yet support for
green policies is roughly the same across the country. How to pay
for them is a matter of debate, but there is nearuniversal agree
ment among voters about carbon neutrality as a target.
Part of the cause of unpopulism is anthropological. After an
electoral realignment, politicians do not necessarily understand
their new voters. Tory ministers speak to their new voters like ner
vous British holidaymakers in a Spanish restaurant, loudly and
slowly (“We...Would...Like...To...Level...You...Up”). The existence of
a large, prosperous middle class outside the southeast is little un
derstood in sw1. Instead, caricatures of the red wall are given cre
dence: a land populated entirely by old, workingclass men. It is
much easier for politicians to project their own views onto voters
than to learn what voters actually think.
Unpopulism is to be expected when old methods of gauging
public opinion have failed. Tabloids have become a poor guide. In
the 1990s British newspapers sold almost 15m copies each day.
Now they muster barely 3m between them. Their remaining read
ers are much older than the average Briton, with a worldview to
match.That tabloids still hold any influence at all is due not to
their connection with voters, but to their hold over the elite. Mr
Johnson and his team pore over them daily. A front page may not
be read by many, but will be covered by the bbc. Vox unpopuli
Unpopulism can play out one of two ways. Either its exponents
continue to obsess over their own interests, rather than voters’—
that is, until they are removed from office. Or it can lead to surpris
ing, spectacular electoral success. What is unpopular today can be
popular tomorrow. Brexit was once an eccentric hobby of a few
Europhobic Tories, who campaigned for decades in the name of
the common man. Eventually, the common man caught up. The
rewards were enormous—for Brexit’s proponents, if not for the
country. So the unpopulists will keep going in the hopethatan
other such wild card comes up trumps, whether an end tonetzero
or the waging of a culture war. Unpopulism is here to stay.nBagehot
Why Tories give the people what they do not want