Blame Liberals For The Rise Of Populism

welcome everyone it's great to see so many of you here on a day on which we've seen a historic political split with the departure of seven MPs from Labour and the formation of a breakaway party the independent group that does sound a bit like an online newspaper but apart from that the no longer secret seven are undoubtedly heading for the center ground of politics and they are I suspect the sort of people liberals who we're discussing tonight in connection with the rise of populism there are populist in power in 11 European countries whether it's Viktor Orban in Hungary or La Liga and five star in Italy 20 years ago the populist share of the vote was in single digits now one in four votes cast in action national elections in Europe is for a populist party look around the world and you can point to gerbil scenario in Brazil or Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines and I haven't even mentioned Donald J Trump there are populist on the old right and the left of the political divide what do they stand for and is it liberals who brought about this shift in political thinking well let's meet our panel who are going to thrash this out Alif Shafak is a political scientist by training she's also an award-winning novelist and the most widely read female writer in Turkey her works been translated into 50 languages and she contributes to the FT The Guardian and the New York Times and other publications around the world John Simpson is the BBC's world affairs editor he's reported from a hundred and forty countries interviewed a run around 200 world leaders and covered 46 Wars on four continents Mathew Goodwin is professor of politics and international relations at Kent University and a senior visiting fellow at Chatham House he's been studying populist movements for over a decade and his latest book is the best-selling national populism the revolt against liberal democracy and Daniel Hannan is a prominent Rexach campaigner and conservative MEP for southeast England he's a prolific journalist and the author of nine books including what next how to get the best brexit welcome to you all I think we should begin by guessing our terminology straight there's a lot to disagree about just in terms of what it is we're actually talking about so I want to ask each of you briefly how do you define populism Matthew well when I think of populism national populism in particular I think of a movement that wants to prioritize the interests and the culture of the nation-state and defender people who it argues are being held in contempt or neglected by distant and often self-serving elites national interests versus if you like elites that have are unelected often yeah indeed you know I think the distinction between left-wing and right-wing populism for example left wing populism would frame the people along the lines of class solidarity national populism would typically define the people in terms of an ethnic solidarity or an ethnic cultural solidarity and that's the point of distinction between the two but they each argue that the elite is responsible for all that has gone wrong in society Alif well I think populism is the is the wrong answer to some very real and very genuine problems and it's a bit like a bird with one wing it's an ideology but because he can't fly with one wing it needs another wing to support it and usually the other wing is another ideology in some cases that socialism but in most of the cases it's nationalism so it has to be accompanied by something else but basically it's a divisive ideology it divides the society into two imaginary homogeneous camps the people versus the elite and it acts as if the people have a single voice have a single will actually one of my favorite stories is when you know as you know with the French Revolution Robespierre when they came to power in the name of the people after a while he started saying I am the people and after a while he started slaughtering the people in the name of the people while all of that was happening there was an interesting debate in France they wanted to erect a statue of the people on poor nerve but the problem is how do you depict the people is it a man as the woman is it old is it young is it fat is it thin you know what is the people so that illusion of a homogeneous whole with regards to the people is is a central thing and secondly populism likes to act as if the elite is also a homogeneous whole in fact despite their rhetoric I think populist do not have a problem with the elite as long as they are the elite so essentially it is an anti liberal antipodal istic and eventually eventually it will get there it is an anti-democratic ideology Tanya Helen yeah I think there's a lot in what Alex just said the the classic definition of populism that we're for real people against an undefined elite is by its nature very difficult to pin down it's worth saying that this lack of specificity also exists among its critics so very often populism when people try and pin it down simply means something that other people like but that I don't like which could be tax cuts or tax rises could be different policies on health care immigration but it basically means a popular thing that I think is wrong and therefore that's why the word is spat out populist like like someone who's like a like a teenager who's mistakenly taken a swig from the beer can that was being used as the ashtray you know populist it doesn't it doesn't get you very far well I think is the the more interesting question is who are the Liberals that we're talking about well come to because if I made just the for me liberal I mean I would call myself a liberal in the classic sense in that in the tradition of you know jeaious mill and before that were the proto liberals in John Milton and John Locke and so on but I think in the way that you introduced a trickler liberal is now used to mean either kind of Davos crony capitalists or a kind of army of kind of complaining you know outreach workers from Hackney Council or something it isn't actually used to me what the word literally means which is the elevation of the individual above a collective and an emphasis on personal freedom I've got two for the price of one there John how would you define populism I I don't think the populism is a proper ism I think it's an expression that we use to describe a set of emotions anger being a prime one resentment and so forth which exists in a number of different countries for what I would think of as historical reasons reasons created by the historical moment through which we're living when you actually speak to people like that for Nacional in in in France or the the alternative eh land and and and the various other groups those that I have spoken to they of course approve in general terms of each other but there's no real link there's no populist kind of movement that sweeps across America Britain the the continent Turkey and so forth it's a it's a response which is individual to the individual companies countries and of course like so many of these kind of movements they've been used by people who've got a real real serious agenda whether Donald Trump has a real agenda under except for himself and trumpism III I don't know but in in this country clearly well I mean let's actually before we turn to this country let's think about about Turkey it's being used really essentially by Irwin for his own political purposes just as populism in a different sense in Russia is being used by Putin for his own political purposes and I I personally believe that the brexit was used a that brexit ears used populism our version of populism to create the kind of ends that they wanted to these things will not last in historical terms these big movements come up and they fade away like in push ideas and in France in the 50s but while they're here they're very very serious indeed and we cannot but take it take take account of them so quite a few different ideas now that we've got into the mix but a leaf whilst let's stay with definitions for a little a little bit longer liberal what is a liberal do you agree with Daniels definition I will answer your question but as I was listening to the other panelists I I want to make a confession I have to share this with you as a writer as a novelist I'm when they used to know the writer who believes in freedom of speech and the importance of diversity and minority rights I'm very used to defending liberal values and liberal democracy in a country like Turkey where sadly today there is no freedom of speech and minority rights are just constantly being trampled upon and there's zero appreciation for diversity so against that background and they're used to defending liberal democracy but I never thought you know I would feel the need to defend liberals and liberal values here in London in the hearts of the country that has given us some of the biggest and earliest liberal political philosophers in world history so it feels a little bit surreal for me but we are where we are it's the year 2019 and we have to discuss this I think it is going to be one of the major debates in front of us so I'm glad that we are organizing this and also I'm glad that there's a nuance there are lots of nuances in our on our panel because we are being more and more pulled into angry antagonistic tribes and we have to find a way to smash the out to ality that duality is not good for anyone and we need to smash it wisely and calmly and with utter respect for each other even when we disagree that's one thing I want to get out of my chest and the second thing is you know I I think the word liberal is today the most misunderstood and misinterpreted word in the English language as we're speaking and nobody nobody wants to be called a liberal you know I have friends in America writers journalists academics yeah nobody I'm very happy to call myself in when it when you talk to these people you know they they say don't call me a liberal they want to be called progressive so there's also a lot of criticism coming from as you move from one country to another the definition of liberal changes and we need to bear that in mind but of course most of the criticism today comes from the right yeah from the far right from the populist ride and that attack is quite vague so anyone and anything that disagrees with their views is being lumped together in a basket and labeled as liberals and that won't - we need to unpack that actually my my favorite definition is by Rush Limbaugh this far-right right-wing radio host he he calls liberals the New York theater and arts and croissants crowd so if you happen they enjoy theater and arts and literature and and the croissant next to coffee you too might be a liberal Matthew could remember the last time you had a cross off confessions are Syria but no in terms of them being a liberal it Daniels happy to sign up for others it's a term of abuse in the context of this conversation are these people these croissants eating elites are they are they the ones that should be blamed if there is blame to be shared perhaps you disagree with the idea of blame for the rise in the populace no I think liberals are partly to blame for the rise of populism I've put my cards on the table I think in particular a certain strand within liberalism has got things terribly wrong and I I would take a slightly different view of this evenings discussion I'm amazed that we're nearly three years on from the political shocks of 2016 with Trump and brexit and all that we've seen else else we're across the channel in Europe that it's taken liberals in general terms so long to reflect on why we're here and what might have gone wrong with the liberal project and I found it amazing that liberals have thrown comfort blankets all over themselves over the last two or three years that all of these seismic shocks are about social media and big tech the legacy of the financial crash what was written on the side of a bus shadowy figures controlling what we see on Facebook and Twitter we just heard that populism is a temporary blip it will be gone as quickly as it's arisen we've heard that populism is against everything that it's not for something and the general view I think has been just get this thing out of here I don't want to think about it I don't want to reflect about it I don't want to take into account for example the the possibility that it might have a distinctive tradition of thought in its own right that it might be offering people an instrumental opportunity to vote for some things such as national art national identity such as traditions such as belonging that it might actually be rooted in some things that liberals have got very wrong the economic settlement being one the obsession with individualism being another and so yeah I mean I think that in general terms I'm sure we can unpack parts of this liberals are to blame for the rise of populism well Daniel you're signing up to liberalism and yet you're all this is big sorry all this is being laid at your door well that's why I was being very strict about defining terms by liberal I mean it in the exact sense in the etymological sense of an emphasis on freedom I don't mean it is anyone who eats the cross on right that's that it gets to the point where it means nothing if you're just using it as a kind of term to mean you know elites but to answer the question are liberals to blame I mean I think the proximate cause for the changes in politics that we've seen in much of Europe and in the u.s. not in every Western country has happen in Canada hasn't happen in Australia but the the rise of a more authoritarian type of politics was the the financial crash or rather the mistaken response to it we saw the better part of a trillion pounds taken from low and medium income families through the tax system to bail out some very wealthy bankers and bondholders and rescue them from the consequences of their own mistakes and that seemed for the first time in my life to vindicate watered until then always struck me is a quite fringe left position which is that the capitalist system is really rig it's about the rich staying rich it's not meritocratic for the first time in my life there appeared to be an element of truth in that argument I think we will look back at the bailouts as a calamitous mistake I don't think that's the only thing going on but I think that was the immediate trigger whew you're saying this is about family and flag and faith it's got nothing to do with with perhaps 2008 that supplied those ideas have their roots much further back I would agree with that Dan that the financial crisis exacerbated a lot of the divides that we're now grappling with but the root causes go back much further anybody who's been looking at Europe knows that this really began in the late 1970s early 1980s and I think there's a lot of truth to the claim that what we're witnessing partly is a backlash to the great liberal revolutions of the 1960s and don't get me wrong I'm not here just to bash liberals I think liberalism has a obviously has achieved a lot of wonderful things and you know I'm on board with much of what liberalism is about but every liberal in the room would probably accept and if they don't have be keen to hear why that their ideology is increasingly being hijacked by a strain of thought that has no interest in the classical liberal principles that Dan just referred to that is absolutely obsessed with turning everybody and everything into a victory with historical and justices with cultural appropriation with describing everybody's a fascist everybody's a Nazi we're not interested at all in having any reasoned discussion whatsoever about things that are happening today and that strand of thought which has sort of aligned itself to the liberal left and hijack large parts of the liberal left that is what is really putting populism on steroids Alicia FAQ I was gonna mention Steve Bannon there who certainly identified the idea that let's call it identity politics was rather good for his brand of populism if you want to call it that I think there's there's a huge conceptual chaos you know out there and it's like a fog and everything and everything is just just lumped together we need to differentiate that classical liberal philosophy that asks basic questions and I think one of the most important questions is who exercises power over us individuals if it's the government that government power should never be absolute it should never be totally uncontrolled there should be checks and balances if it's a society there should never be a tyranny of the majority you know we should be careful if there's more subtle forces of power so just following that line of power that classical liberal thinkers were asking that is something else and what we're talking about and what is happening ever since 1970s onwards which is neoliberalism is something completely different we need to differentiate these two things this market-driven ideology and greed that has left the that expects the public sector to completely follow the rules of the private sector and subsidize the private sector that is something else so I think we need to be careful when you say Steven and it's not a coincidence that Steve Annan and marina pan and many many populous today they call themselves Democrats they don't have a problem with the word democracy all being called amok that it's not a coincidence that the populist party in Sweden is Swedish populist party or in own slope in many other countries it is the liberal component of liberal democracy at this stage they have a problem with so by that I mean rule of law separation of powers free media independent academia minority rights if you get all these components out and you end up with only the ballot box that regime as we've seen in Turkey as we've seen in Hungary and we're seeing in Poland and many other examples right now that regime turns into majoritarianism and once majoritarianism kicks in from there into authoritarianism it's a very short slide so in a nutshell democracy needs those liberal components and liberalism as a philosophy needs democracy they complement each other but what we are experiencing is a divorce a divergence of these two I'm sure we're talking about whether liberals should be blamed for the rise of populism but at the same time is it is this what at least describing the perhaps undermining of democratic principles the rule of law rights rational inquiry the open society and so on is that what makes liberals very uncomfortable with the rise of populism a desire to dismiss it because it's somehow unpicking the fabric of of what they see is the fundamentals of democracy yeah well I'm sure that's true the fact is though you asked us originally what to give some definition of liberalism and what we haven't yet heard from anybody here is that liberalism has given us 460 years of peace and and prosperity on an extraordinary scale the principle of internationalism the growth of relations between countries the linking of countries together has proved to be the greatest boon in in human history and that we it's fading now it's always starting to break up because liberalism as I maintain populism will liberalism is also starting to crack that's the the way that human beings run their lives and history is a is an extension of that of approach but the essence of what we've had we've had it extraordinarily good a billion people lifted out of out of poverty in the last 15 years why to continue why shouldn't that go on why shouldn't her if you like that the eruption of populism actually the chaos that ensues create an opportunity sort of you know Schumpeter creative destruction and something new and and vibrant emerges from it well perhaps it will I mean no doubt no doubt it will but what I'm trying to say is that the the what's created this is that liberal international cities out two things here there is a kind of globalization that is about lifting barriers allowing goods and services to cross borders and that indeed has lifted a billion people out of poverty ziz achieving the most extraordinary things all over Asia and Africa and I agree has led to a but that is a very and indeed hearin and and with the the the biggest benefits proportionately felt by the the poorest people so it's something I we can all agree is a good thing but we should be careful before alighting that into and therefore we want more powerful global technocracy z-- with more and more power to overall democratic governments because that is the opposite of lifting barriers out of people's way that is about imposing barriers and often doing so in policy areas which would not have succeeded had they had to go through national legislatures and so we shouldn't make the mistake now this is something that populist to her it was very striking listening to marine lepen that she alighted the two things together all the time she was against globalization both in terms of free trade and free markets and in terms of you know the European and and UN type technocracy but they're two incredibly different and I would argue antithetical things because one is about liberating people taking it making them freer from state coercion and the other is about imposing more rules what what I would wear I think you and I might agree quite strongly it is too much no no I'll try not to make a mistake yeah but but where I think we would agree is that what has damaged the European project so much in country after country and this country more than most is was that drive to unite Europe to put it together to lift the lift the boundary raised the boundaries to allow more and more countries to come in a kind of European izing principle which ran far ahead of what they the citizens of the the various European countries wanted or were prepared to look up that in my terms is not liberalism that's that's that's bonapartism I mean less driving these things through but this is Matt's point no one since the referendum here I've been in Brussels in the intervening two and a half years and there are various kind of approved acceptable responses to Brick's it disbelief or they'll never really do it rage led astray by demagogues or all kind of contempt just you wait you know the one things we couldn't be so do the one thing that nobody that nobody is allowed to say in Brussels is oh I wonder why they voted earlier I wanna I wonder whether we might have behaved differently ourselves I wonder whether anyone else might vote leave if there so there's been an absolute refusal to engage in any self analysis cuz of course it's much easier just to demonize anyone that you disagree with I promised we wouldn't spend the evening talking about brexit but whilst we're here is it populism is a vote for exit populist part of it but but by no means all of it just to give you one stat - to reflect I mean only about 60 only about six in ten levers had previously expressed any interest at all in voting for the UK Independence Party yet we're still routinely told that this was essentially a sort of populist project and we're also routinely told I mean the you know again to go back to my point about comfort blankets that this is all about you know big tech social media Robert Mercer I mean you know the fact some of the coverage of how people ended up voting leave has just been remarkable to me completely detached from the evidence but but it's everything happened in June 2016 that's basically where the causal mechanism is to be found and we've just completely lost sight of the 30 or 40 years of research that we have showing why Brits were so Euroskeptic and why they felt that the European project hadn't gone in the way that they were initially told that it was going to go and this has been wrapped up into a broader problem for liberals which I'll leave on the table and we can reflect on which is this tendency to absolutely catastrophize everything everything's got to be catastrophize brexit is populism Trump is fascist there's absolutely no room for nuance and the criticism of populism as we've heard is it's binary and it shuts things down into black and white terms and that's that's correct but liberals are very prone to doing the same thing which is that there are no legitimate grievances here everything is evil everything is bad everything is negative you see and I think that is really the sad thing about our times we are being constantly told that we have only two options in everything you know it's either this extreme or that extreme and I think we have much more options than that so you might be very critical in my opinion we should be very critical of populist demagogues who are exploiting using and abusing some very genuine grievances some very genuine problems I make a difference between them and the people who for very genuine reasons because they have worries they have concerns and they are right to have concerns we need to talk about inequality I mean finally inequality is now at the center of our debates in the year 2019 you know for such a long time it was just on the on the fringes in to 1928 did 1% you know the richest 1% could expect to capture around 15% of the of the wealth of the income in 1928 in 19 mm mm 18 last year the same 1% got more than 82 percent of the entire money generated I'm talking across Europe there is a huge inequality that we need to talk about when I look at the median household income in America it has been clearly stagnant flats since 1985 so there's that dimension that huge economic inequality but I'm not only talking about that the anxiety the anxiety of losing your job the anxiety of not knowing what tomorrow might bring the anxiety of thinking maybe my children are not going to have the same opportunities these are very real things and no one has the right to little these grievances do you know I respect those grievances I might be very critical of the populist demagogues who are exploiting those buildings so I make a distinction but if if we accept the idea that this is these are issues that are being exploited by populist demagogues why do you think liberals haven't alighted upon them Thomas Tom Frank published lists and liberal in 2016 before the election of Trump and he argued in that that the Democratic Party which had once been the party of the people had been kind of co-opted by a managerial class and they were affluent city dwellers suburbanite you know they believed in opportunity in meritocracy but actually they weren't willing to give up what they already had in order to make those things possible so this is why we have to make a distinction again when we're talking about elite it is not elite it's elites the elites can be of liberal values they might have a liberal worldview the elites can be how can have conservative views and as we are seeing right now the elites can have also populist views and just like Pareto wrote a long time ago there's a circulation of elites right now going on we have to differentiate that there were many liberals people on the Left people on the right saying you know what this inequality this is not fair this is not right there have been many people talking about that but their voices were never heard by the elites by mainstream politicians we need to make that distinction but if we lump together everything under the label of liberal we won't get too far but there's something else going on and this is a bit that I really worry about which is there's a YouGov poll two weeks ago that asks remain as and levers would you be ok if a relative brought home somebody from the other political tribe okay so if a lever brought home a remainer or remain a brought home early and 11% of leavers said I I would have a problem actually if a relative brought home a a remainer 37% of remainders said I would have a problem if a relative brought home a leader now how can we explain the difference between the two I'd suggest that what that gives us is yet more evidence that we have the of the fact that liberals can be as intolerant of other political beliefs and other ideas as populist can be and so when I ask the question to you know and I would say I'm generally a liberal but but when I asked this question to many of my liberal friends which is okay after 2016 what are you willing to concede are you going to concede some major reforms on inequality are you going to concede some immigration reform are you going to concede that we need to radically renew our political institutions because they are not very representative of the people who are voting for populist and usual responses nothing why should we concede we're not going to concede anything and it's the intolerance within a section of liberalism that I think is going to make this situation a lot worse but is that not simply because the issues are so serious this is not just an academic question this is the the actual way in which we live our lives and as you say though the amount of money we earn whether we're going to be able to feed our children this is not something you can just say well I take one view you take the other I'm sure we can find a middle ground this is serious stuff so everyone everyone thinks that I mean who wouldn't say I believe why my view but but but Matt's point is there is an extraordinary unwillingness from the people who are the first to say we believe in tolerance in accepting other points of view actually to to respond with incredulity whether or not when another point of view is actually put forward yeah I mean we're talking about some of the more intolerant opinions aren't we on the other side as well I would give you a real world example and I'm breaking all of our rules about not talking endlessly about right here's how the last two-and-a-half years could have gone we could have had remained politicians leaving London and going to coastal communities and saying hang on why have these areas not had any inward investment for 30 years we could have had people saying where should we move the House of Lords and should we replace it and make it democratically elected we could have had people saying which big institutions of financial powers should we move to Gateshead or to Wales or we should have people maybe of asking asking why are only three percent of MPs coming from a background of manual work compared to 18 percent who have only ever worked in politics we could have had a really interesting national discussion about where the settlement has gone wrong and we haven't what we had was a lot of people saying get this thing out of here I don't want to deal with it I don't want to reflect on the grievances and they say well we could have done that it's not true you know I don't like so why didn't it happen it's not true again we were making a huge huge generalization so if you ask that question in another country formulated in a different way you might have got some different answers let's look at the discourse the rhetoric of leaders people leading populist movements in different countries what are they saying there is a reason why many of them like cultural wars populism benefits from people being divided into groups us versus them and the more angry we get at each other the better it is for the demagogues at the top so we need to be very careful about not falling into this trap there is a reason why you know remembered one of trumps speeches to me it was like Ardoin speaking I couldn't believe my ears he said the important thing is for us to unify the people as for the other people they don't matter right Nigel Farage after the brexit vote one of the first things he said was the real people the decent people have spoken so if there's a real people then there's also the opposite on unreal people who are they the I can give you many examples there's always a division between you know these people are better pure these are the other people we have to be very careful I'm not by you doing any of that but I'm saying that the obsession with the populist demagogues is is it's distracting everybody the populist demagogues are important but we are obsessing about them what my question to you is how do you respond seriously to the grievances that are fueling pop I'm telling you I think the system is not sustainable this tool even the the left versus right divisions we need to move beyond that we need we need to reform our politics we need to reform our tax system we need to talk about inequality sincerely honestly there are lots of things that need to change and also there are some other elements that we haven't touched upon like demographics you know we need to talk about anxiety I understand anxiety so well maybe maybe it's because I am an anxious person myself I know how one form of anxiety triggers other forms of anxiety yeah but it's not going to happen because of the anger that's created within our societies don't move beyond our echo chambers it is our duty to communicate to connect what I'm doing that is to take seriously the reasons that people themselves if people vote for Trump the pendulum the classic response is to say what were they really voting for let's diagnose some subconscious reason that they weren't aware of to do with economic decline and that is of course exactly the kind of patronizing attitude that has driven people into being angry in the first place they work they let let's take seriously what they say they're interesting and see whether there is a way of addressing it is the underlying assumption in what both of you are saying that the populace have the answer I don't think the populist movements have the answer I agree with some of what you are saying that they do bend the question to a different outcome absolutely but there are unquestionably some very big legitimate grievances that people have over the representativeness of our political institutions over the economic settlement and over the pace of demographic change I mean why cry in respond you know in terms of where Europe is going over the next 50 50 years to our to 100 years contrary to the idea that we're witnessing a sort of puja deist sequel everything that I see that's driving support for populism I've read pretty much every study that this being says there are two ingredients to this one is very strong distrust of established politicians but by far the most important is anxiety over the pace and scale of demographic change now those two things as liberal politicians increasingly turn in on themselves and become less representative and as our societies continue to experience very rapid demographic change those things will sharpen so if we don't begin to answer the questions soon they're not actually they may begin to outflank us to a much greater what we're talking about is immigration is black people coming from Africa and arriving in Europe and European nations coming to I mean these these were real serious issues which I mean I think it's only fair to say that the liberal instinct as it were was to was to cover over not to notice I mean the essentially the Blair right response was to say it's actually good for you in the long run who do you think's going to serve you in in in cafes who's gonna do the hard work who's gonna clean the the the windows we have to have these people in and I don't want to hear anything from you that that is critical because that's a it's a bad response and that is certainly true there's no doubt about it you're a really interesting question which is do the populous have the answer which which no one has tried to answer yet so let me have a go right the problem is these problems are created we all agree about you know that we have sense that there's a dislocated elite that people don't feel represents them and then I would say this has been the story of almost every populist movement going back to the Grassi brothers in Rome what they say is when we get our people in it will be different because we will have right authentic genuine view and they will be different from these out of touch shadowy half foreign elites right and of course what happens every time is they get in and they use the power of the state to reward a different set of followers but nothing is actually solved starting now the real solution I would argue is instead of getting a different bunch of people into smash at the levers of control is to try and defuse power decentralized dispersed democratize power so that the issue of who is controlling becomes less of a problem yes but Daniel if that were the kind of solution that comes out of human nature and so forth we would have seen it again and again and again at the gray key and everybody down to earth the one would would behave better the fact is they don't those kind of those kind of movements do not throw up that kind of response no of course they don't that's that's that's why the correct thing it seems to me for a responsible policymaker is to say instead of giving people a choice between as it were mackerel and lepen or a choice between Clinton and Trump can't we do better can't we have an option which is about restoring the supremacy of actual liberalism the supremacy of the individual the super embassy of localized decision-making so that the the issues that drove populism in the first place the sense of disenfranchisement are addressed the year before the the freedom house I'm sure you've seen the results when they looked across the east and west everywhere 72 countries have been sliding backwards in 72 countries civil liberties political rights are today in danger you might say well some countries have made progress as well yes 35 countries have made progress but twice as many have been sliding backwards my motherland is one of those countries and for me this debate is not an abstract theoretical debate I have seen it happen first gradually and then with a bewildering speed I have seen what happens when populace come to power in Turkey in Hungary in Poland how they place their own cronies in Constitutional Court change the entire judiciary you know that's one of their first names how they changed the electoral system and then the media becomes the enemy of the people there are of course differences as you move from one country to another but there are amazing similarities which we should be aware of yeah and and that is why I think we should all be concerned whether you're voting labour or or toy is it is beyond that you know what we're facing is losing the coexistence is losing the harmony that has been binding us together and just to give you an example the distortion is so deep when there when the elections were going on in France maybe you've seen macron like many other politicians he goes out on the street he's talking to people and he goes into the fish factory he's talking with with the workers and he sees an eel a fish and he starts cutting the the eel with a worker and they work together and then of course his hands I'm messy you know dirty he goes on washes his hands right that's it that's the video a far-right side took that video and edited the video so they took out the eel the fish with that detail is gone and they took the previous scene and replaced it with a posterior scene so that in this new video micron goes to factory he shakes hand with a worker he looks at his hands and he says yeah I've just you know attached the worker and then he goes and washes he says the reason why I'm mentioning this is because we are losing the truth the norms you know we can always have disagreements but if the truth is being eroded that should concern all of us this kind of systematic distortion is very new one quick same question before we open out to the floor is the legacy which is I think where you're going away for this of populism to weaken democracy ultimately oh this country I think has much less of a problem than almost anywhere in Europe we're very unusual in not having an anti-immigrant populist party in the main chamber of our legislature we're also according to all the opinion polls the most Pro immigration country in Europe in the sense that when people are asked to you take a positive or a very positive view we come out above all the other big countries in fact in all the other countries in the the data that I've seen and the interesting thing to me and it runs so totally contrary to the media narrative over the last two years that a lot of people in the audience will shake their head disbelievingly when I say this but the the data is there we've become much more pro-immigration over the last thirty months so your question I was asking I was saying is that is the legacy of all of this whatever the causes whatever the way in which it manifests itself ultimately to undermine the democratic ideals by which we have lived and voted for the last however many years I mean the problem is not democracy with all of the the horror stories that we're hearing from Turkey and I I completely agree with that if there was a slow decline and then from about 2013 a sudden collapse but the last thing to go has been democracy that the problem with Turkey is not that there are no elections or that or it's it's that it's that the the rule of law and the liberal order that sustains democracy has been hollowed out that's a very narrow definition of democracy there is the election voting is yeah well yes okay it's a narrow but I think that's what democracy means well it will say those institutions and the rule of law and justice and various democracy doesn't just mean a good thing if you can have a democracy with bad outcomes democracy doesn't mean something I happen to agree with so in Hungary in Turkey in Poland there have been all sorts of moves away from a liberal order but I don't think anyone is arguing certainly not in Hungary in Poland until very recently in Turkey that the elections were not you know what were invalid that there was massive something very inherent a populist ideology if you think you represent the people anyone who challenges you is the enemy of the people you know that mentality is right there from the very beginning and this is why people like Kaczynski for instance in Poland he calls the poles who dare to criticize him those are the bad poles that have the gene of treason betrayal in their in their blood he says you can easily turn into a traitor in the eyes of the populace Davis was showing us with those statistics earlier and the reverse people can be every bit as intolerant the other way around okay on that note I'm gonna let you come back in a minute open the floor up to questions lots of hands going up already I'm just gonna wait to find people with microphones this lady at the front here I just like to add something to watch on citizens it's going to turn into a question John Simpson said that people kind of ignored the effects of mass movement into britain from from the EU countries loads and loads of statistics in in the kind of right thinking put in the PM pass off press used to say well yes this the advent of all these workers doesn't harm the economy except for the wages at the very bottom and I would ask the panel what special place in hell is reserved for people who who are so cavalier about the very mo the most vulnerable in our society okay thank you and there was a yes earlier on the discussion Matthew Goodwin got dangerously close to actually answering the question posed by the debate which is shoot to be and how can we blame liberals for the rise of populism you're all addicted to going on about how awful these populist leaders are we all know that what's interesting is to what extent are liberals to blame for this occurrence this pan national occurrence I'd love to hear the panel just address that point please [Music] and there with one more I think just over there thank you I wonder what the panel felt about the impact of issues like climate change in our collective future population growth and so on on the rise of populism and the links possibly with my increased migration that is likely to happen in the future thank you very much so should we should we there a special place in hell for those who were rather cavalier about the impact of mass migration on the lowest-paid should we blame liberals we've been pussyfooting around I'm told and climate change and population grows how much in a sense we can't get away from them how much are they going to keep driving these political movements I think that's what I understood your question to be let me take the second one I answered briefly in terms of the financial crisis but I I was gonna go on to say I think there is something much deeper as something whose explanations are to be found as much in the field of psychology as of politics a lot of the liberal ideals which we were taught which I guess most people in this room were taught from the day they went to school don't come naturally the idea that you should assess an idea on its own merits rather than on the basis of whether you like the person saying it is actually quite a counterintuitive one we've all had to learn to do it and we've internalized it but it is not something that comes naturally and people very easily revert to the kind of earlier tribal heuristic of I don't like you so everything you're saying must be wrong people have a tendency to conspiracy theory and you know in in places where you don't have that the closest correlation for where do you find conspiracy theories is how much higher education is there in that country this is something that has to be educated out of people if you like so I wonder whether we've not lived through a quite abnormal period a liberal period in which there is emphasis on individual rights and human rights and there is also an emphasis on the norms and courtesies that make for a civil political discourse but I wonder whether that isn't the unusual bit so when people say you know there's never been such a hostile climate in an American presidential election as now I mean of course there has you know what about what about Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860 or what about you know the Jeffersonian nation hundred or whatever maybe disquieting thought maybe it was the late 20th century that was the unusual period because there was next tunnel enemy in the form of the Cold War because there was a surprising and indeed in America a unique homogeneity everyone having watched the same three TV channels and gone to the same schools and study the same things if we want to preserve the basic Enlightenment values of empiricism and value you know the emphasis on freedom and an individual force and so on we have to teach them and when I said at the beginning I'm happy to call myself a liberal in the tradition of Locke and Mill and Milton and so on I don't think that those works are being nearly as widely taught as they once were and if they're not people are not going to Intuit these ideas because they don't come naturally they're running up against a million years of evolution so unless we work hard to inculcate in people the value the difficult value of listening to people that you don't like because they might still have something useful to say anyway don't expect them to find their own way to that conclusion masse well if I can weave some of the questions together I recently finished reading Hillary Clinton's book what happened and I got to the end and I realized she still doesn't know what happened in the sense that it was all about what had happened during that campaign and there was absolutely no reflection to speak to your question about the bigger challenges that are facing the liberal left and one of those challenges is linked to the other question about mass migration which is that people do not only evaluate the health of the nation in terms of GDP and this has run through the Trump campaign the brexit campaign it runs through Europe that this utter obsession with reducing every debate down to economic costs and benefits is at odds with how most people view not only their national community but also how they view life without getting too deep we are not wired to be self-interested lemmings in the way that many of our commentators would would have us believe and that's being revealed quite dramatically over the last few years and again the fact that we have an answer jewel the leading question as as detailed as perhaps we should have done is because I still think we're in a state of shock collectively that people haven't yet been prepared to pull the curtains back and say okay actually where did we go wrong here and my worry is that's now being overtaken by interestingly that new ideology that I mentioned and nobody really picked up on which is the way in which liberalism of the sort that Dan describes is being hijacked very quickly by people who claim to be liberals but in fact are not liberal at all the more in common rapport that was recently released by the Joe Cox foundation the hidden tribes report showed this very nicely that there are three types of liberal liberals in in the u.s. and one of those tribes which is the most noisy the progressive liberals are not interested in compromise they're not interested in consensus not interested in making society more fair or equal they're interested in defining everybody as a victim and going on and on about historical injustice to the point that then they're surprised when white Americans say well gee hang on I'm a victim too maybe I'd quite like to get on board with this Donald Trump guy who's telling me I'm I'm affecting my worry for liberals now is there's no unifying myth anymore there's no unifying story anymore there's nothing that is about bringing people together it's all about differentiation it's all about sub dividing people into constantly evolving and new categories and groups and then we sit around and we say well why is a communitarian and collectivist ideology on the march by gee I don't understand because we're just obsessed with turning everybody into if you lay those criticisms at the door of liberals why shouldn't you lay similar criticisms at the door of populace who have equally are as we've talked about other in talking about defining themselves against other groups it works both ways yeah I mean I think populist are ruthless are manipulative are conceited are very quick to turn questions into an ethnic or see all questions through through an ethnic lens but in a way I'm less interested in the populace themselves like you we all know who Donald Trump is I don't find Trump particularly interesting what I find more interesting is the is the complete failure of the Democrats to renew their ideological vision and their message I mean this even today the new party or the new faction in Parliament what struck me about reading their statement this morning was it's completely absent of any idea there's just no idea there's nothing other than we don't really like brexit that's it there's no passionate new case for yeah how to fix a settlement how to renew the nation how to renew the international order there's just nothing there and it's Dan said I maybe we're at the point you know without sounding to macro about it all but we've had human civilization for 5,000 years we've had liberal democracy for a hundred years maybe we are at the point where actually an ideology is now just entering into its twilight year gosh there's a big John I I think the gentleman who asked us to actually address the question that's hanging so heavily over I has is absolutely right I mean we we haven't I personally do not think it's liberalism or liberals who are responsible for the rise of populism I think it's the without wanting to sound too Marxist about it I think it's the march of history I think it's the direction of history we saw something of the same thing in the 1880s and 1890s in the early 1900s a sense of that human existence was was it was improving all the time when in fact it it wasn't and I thought one of the things that Matthew said that was really really attractive and it answers why debate it addresses itself to the lady who asks about the particular a place in hell of course we should have responded by by trying to work out what was wrong where did we go wrong and redress it and change the way that our politics are operating that just a human nature it's not what we're doing and if you could examine all of this sub speck yay I turn it artists like God would looking down you'd say oh god they're added well I suppose God doesn't say Oh God does he but but they're there they're at it again they work themselves up to a point where they doing extremely well and then they they screw it up for themselves because their cloth eared and they don't listen Aleve I also try to connect the the questions you know until not that long ago when when you look at the political parties the MPs politicians many of them those were who were on the Left had very strong roots in trade unions trade union culture the working class and when you look at the politicians on the right side many of them had very strong connections with the agricultural sector they came from such families or they knew people who are connected with that community more and more we see those bonds weakening so much so that today in this country only 3% of MPs are coming from a relatively lower class background less privileged background to put it more bluntly I think we need to talk about how education is a major divide in this country we need to talk about the class barriers in other words more and more mp's politicians on both sides of the ideological spectrum are becoming similar to each other and becoming more and more disconnected from the people I think that is one of our major problems another thing is this massive inequality that we need to talk and it is direct result of neoliberalism that was started in 1970s onwards and got worse and worse this entire idea of the markets you know unrestrained the the corporate world how that benefits we need to talk out about you know and to me this is a very liberal question we need to trace the power you know who exercises power over us is a very legitimate question a second thing that has been changing dramatically is demographics this is affecting countries on the periphery of Europe such as Bulgaria where we are expecting a 27% decline in the population in the year 2050 that also means an anxiety you know people are becoming worried that they are going to become a minority in their own countries this is also a major question in America in many states today including in Texas and California the white segment of the population has turned into a minority is this not only because of immigration it's also related to birth rates among different groups but in the Year 2044 America is most probably going to become a minority majority country maybe for me this is not a concern but I can understand that this can be a concern for many people who are living very different lives so we need to talk about demographics and one thing that we have not sadly not touched upon hopefully on another debate is the social media we need to talk about that you know the social media everything our political debate has migrated online whether we like it or not we need to talk about big data we need to talk about micro targeting this is very real and especially after the year 2012 13 when tech companies turned into advertisement companies when they allowed us you know when they allowed big firms to target us depending on our purse you know inclinations lit so if you have anti-semitic inclinations yeah you used you will be getting more and more anti-semitic messages if you have Islamophobic maybe a potential you get more and more of that the algorithm of YouTube that does not make the difference whether you're selling extremism or an eczema cream it's a it's a it's a property like you know any other so what I'm trying to say is that whole shifts that whole transformation has also affected our political debates okay I got to bring Matthew in briefly because you did talk about tack a little bit but I think you're quite cynical I think about the extent to which algorithms are dictating our views yeah so well I'm open to the idea that what big tech social media is doing is exacerbating polarization but what we've been given is a different line which is it's a causal factor in why people voted in Trump or brexit and that is incredibly misleading I've read every study for example that's been done on the UK referendum and you would be incredibly hard pressed to put a convincing case together to suggest that what people were seeing on Facebook and Twitter was as influential as we've been led to believe and we've also conveniently forgotten the fact in this conversation about big tech is that it's a very low trust environment only 30% of people trust what they see on social media people are not these kind of you know non inquisitive lemmings walking around being told how to vote by certain politicians was the first elections in America where the majority of the waters got their information through social media but but I think we need to clarify one thing what we're experiencing right now is a very complex phenomenon and it would be a mistake to try to reduce it to one single course I'm not saying the social media is the cause but we need to talk about the shifts in social media and it's not only people are on the on the liberal left are saying this many conservative thinkers like David Frum they are expressing their worry that almost 30% of America is living in an information ghetto you know that should concern all of us where do we get our knowledge from we're all being so nostalgic about the previous age when you only read the Guardian or when you only read the Daily Mail you really were in a guess now because of nostalgia but here's that here's the difference this has nothing to do with nostalgia you know when you read The Guardian or the Sun as a reader we know more or less what to expect we have our own personal filter the algorithm of YouTube gives the impression of being neutral the you know we all accept that the printing machine had a huge impact on you know on the culture on politics on society but we find it very difficult to accept that the the revolution these changes in trust in communication technology are also having because I get very citizens we all of us doesn't matter which party we're voting for but we need to keep an eye on social media okay I get that so that was a great discussion I want to get some more questions in I'm gonna go on the left number four over there yes there's a gentleman there so anybody then there's a gentleman here number two yes great okay my question is for math you could win specifically you gave a stat that well liberals were three times as likely to be upset if some of the opposite camp came home to dinner any idea why okay and it was gentlemen up here LF you just said YouTube sort of promote that algorithms to be neutral but I'd argue that the algorithms are actually promoted tell you kind of give you the idea that the impression that they understand what you want how do you feel that that is sort of promoting Popular's and then liberalism okay any more on that side yes one more there number two thank you hi yeah that's one question I had which was is what we're looking at as a dearth of quality of politician if you over the last over the last 10 years I can't think of any true strategic thinker that's come out with breakthrough policy the referendum is a perfect opportunity for people to think about how to be strategic and how to reinvent the future of this country and clearly no one's done it quite yet okay Matthew I'm gonna go with you first because there was that very specific question why do you think liberals are three times as likely to be upset it's so on of the opposite of persuasion comes home there was crushing about algorithms and YouTube and the dearth of quality politicians well on the the first question we haven't talked at all really about some of the achievements of liberalism and one of the achievements has been some pretty remarkable social change in a very short period of time to give you one example in about 50 years in the US the percentage of Americans who have gone from disapproving of intergroup marriage to approving in about 50 years has gone from 90 percent disapproving to about 90 percent approving in an incredibly short space of time we forget how quickly views can change but but now we're faced with findings similar to the one I mentioned in the UK where you have nearly 40% of Democrats saying they would have a fundamental problem if a relative brought home a Republican to to have dinner and you know introduced a Republican into the family which is a reflection of how political polarization is quickly I think eclipsing some of those traditional arenas of of division why is it happening this is the elephant in the room I think that runs through this debate which is that we now have a growing number of studies some of which I shared on on Twitter and it's always met with what I call the silence which is nobody really really sort of engages with with them but that we have a growing number of experimental study suggesting that liberal orientated people are very intolerant can very intolerant of political views and beliefs that are different to their own and it may well be a fact that we've it may be to do with what we've hinted towards that the self selection into high prestige high status educational institutions also exacerbates the tendency to self-select into social networks that don't particularly challenge views alongside the fact that to be frank a lot of liberals have benefited from a media social and economic consensus that has largely supported and defended their values and I think over the last two or three years a lot of people who were used to feeling like winners in at least in the political world have for the first time in their lives started to feel like losers and I think that's been especially challenging and I think it's brought out a lot of a lot of those underlying psychological dispositions but the research on that I think is out there and I think we do need to take it quite seriously John I'd like particularly to address the gentlemen who felt that politicians are a lower and lesser quality now and there was quite a lot of applause of blood about it I I've been reporting on on British politics since really about 1970 for a time I was the BBC political editor in the early days of the Thatcher government first Thatcher government my my impression is not that we nowadays have midgets and dwarves my lord to say them I don't know we're not allowed we don't have politicians of restricted stature compared with the giants that want be strode the the nation not true what has changed is the way in which we perceive them and we're allowed to perceive them Harold Wilson was a man who surrounded himself with with with defenses which made it really difficult to see him as a as a person same was true of of Harold Macmillan although he was just slightly before before my time weirdly it was Margaret Thatcher that that did away with a lot of that that kind of distance that politicians placed between themselves and and and ordinary people we were permitted to see Margaret Thatcher at a closer a closer to then for instance we had with her predecessors and as as it's gone on so we've been able to see our politicians more and more closely we've stuck them under the microscope we've seen every single failing and fault that they have but believe me as somebody who's who's gone the gone the rounds with them there's not much difference between politicians today and politicians in the 1960s it's just that we're not allowed we weren't allowed to examine them as closely as we are now bit of a defense line I'm gonna make Dan wait at least I'm gonna pick up on that question as well there's a story that I like actually about John McCain and obviously I have lots of I had lots of disagreements with his politics but also respect for for the man himself and while he was running his campaign against Obama at the time there are lots of times when people in the audience stood up and they would say all kinds of things about Obama and he would challenge his own audience and in one of those occasions in a town hall a woman stood up and she said that she did not find Obama trustworthy because he's a Muslim he's an Arab he's not trustworthy so he used these she used those words and John McCain's response was madam first of all what you're saying is misinformation you know you have been guided by misinformation and secondly Obama is a decent father he's a decent citizens he's a decent politician we just happen to have disagreements on fundamental issues and that is what this campaign is about so the reason why I'm mentioning this is because that kind of agreement and respect for basic democratic norms is what we're losing today and this is the danger of populism that we need to underline you know this constant hatred this constant tension and questioning the very truth the very foundations of liberal democracy so I am as critical as you are if do I agree with the proposition that is the liberal elite are the elites themselves whether they are conservative or liberal or populist the elites to be held responsible for all this inequality and how they turned a blind eye to all that you know unfairness that has been going on for decades yes I am very critical of that but do I agree with the proposition that we can generalize we have to be very careful about that because what we're losing right now is this very basis you know the basic norms but at the time many politicians with integrity were aware of and tried to defend with regards to the algorithms I find it a very important issue I lived in America I lived in Boston Michigan and then Arizona I lived in Tucson very close to Mexican border it was just i opening experience for me after 9/11 and this was a time when radio hosts were saying the Liberals have four pillars of evil they would say the the media science academia and one by one we're going to replace it that kind of discourse started in in early 2000s you know to build an alternative digital world out there to build an alternative media to build an alternative science there's there is an effort there that has been going on for a long time and just to give you a few numbers the number of people following White's supreme Syst white nationalist accounts on twitter between the year 2012 and 2015 increased 600 percent in America all of that should worry us because of the way how we are bombarded by you know we don't even know how to deal with a bombardment of information but now we are also bombarded with misinformation I'm gonna briefly I'll stand to talk about we just can't get the politicians these days and then I would say we're running out time is your fault right I mean in a democracy you get the politicians you deserve I'm soon gonna be able to say our fault because I fought my last election I'm glad to say and will be returning to civilian life but I perhaps presuming on that outgoing status I'm gonna do something which is never popular which is to mount a defense of my existing not for much longer profession very often when we complain about politicians what we're complaining about is the inability to work out the contradictory impulses that exist in any polity in any state you know we want to have lower taxes and we want to have higher spending on our pet projects we want to have less immigration and we want to have the growth that comes from more integration we we don't want any new houses built near us but we want to be able to afford houses and the politicians just don't listen but of course they can't reconcile fundamentally irreconcilable ambitions and of course it's part of their function just to be the people that get blamed in that situation I want to say one other thing following on from Eric's last point about the the the the number of people now following white supremacist websites I think one of the issues that is driving the current rise of authoritarianism is our obsession with identity politics in general and racial politics in particular and the this idea that the outright and the woke left a kind of opposites I don't think really stands up to scrutiny they're both determined to see everything through the prism of race and it seems to me the most fundamentally a liberal ideal of all whether it comes from the far right or whether it comes from people who call themselves program to say that the most important way to judge someone is not by their kindness or their intelligence or their courtesy or their gender or steal their courage but by their physiognomy and I'm gonna stop you there because it is a whole another conversation while I know that intelligent squared are gonna have very soon so do come along to that one because I want to get some more questions in yes number one and there's also one up front here and one at the back that you will seemingly criticized liberalism as well as populism quite justified Lee so populism I'm sure everyone agrees and as a young leftist and political person I personally feel very disillusioned by all the political options when it comes to voting I'm like who do I vote for and I'm sure there's I know a lot of my peers agree with me on that front so if we can't vote for populism which is appealing in many ways for disillusioned young people because it offers a sense of unity in harmony as you said do you think that liberalism needs to be redefined or that we need a positive or termina tip to populism there was another one at the back somewhere yeah and thank you for the healthy debate around liberalism and populist within a nation-state I think one thing I'd like to get your viewpoint on is an external viewpoint when you look at the rise of populism across the nation states and perhaps to frame it into a question do you think you would rely on but thinking the ideology of liberalism to help ease the tensions of rising populism across nation states okay and there was I know there's one more hand up here mine's quite quick one said do you think we're at risk of over complicating the debate by turning into this kind of ideological thing and actually another definition for Popular's and the liberalism is poor people and rich people and actually this simple kind of inequality growth is driving more populist and through simple kind of economic factors great okay so someone who's disillusioned by the political operative options does the liberalism need to be redefined or should there be a positive alternative to populism should we rely on the ideology of liberalism to fight populism or another way of thinking about all of this simply poor versus rich John I'm gonna go with you first I mean these are such different subjects aren't they it's bit difficult sort of get a one-size-fits-all answer I do think perhaps I can take they quit the first of the questions but no I do think and believe me once I mean it must be impossible you know to to to even conceive of it but I was young and I and I think that there is something often in us when we are young which is really terribly kind of self-indulgent and soft about it politics is as we are always being told the art of of having to choose between difficult solutions and possible solutions and I think it's important for young people not that they'll do it not that I did it to to to kind of man up about it and accept that you're never going to find perfection I mean this was what what happened with with with Jeremy Corbyn that people thought that he was perfect and then surprise surprise they found that like everybody else he had to make compromises and that then the some of the support at least started to fall away that's that's a really naive approach to politics you have to accept that these things are difficult that they're awkward and that there isn't a kind of 100 percent solution and never never will be dan if we can keep what ask all of you to keep it fairly brief Stanley Baldwin was Prime Minister for much of the interwar period very uh Nydia logical on dogmatic Tory and he was asked towards the end of his life whether he'd been influenced by any particular thing and rather surprisingly because he wasn't the sort of chap who read books very much he he said yes yes I was I was very influenced as a young man by the teaching of Sir Henry Maine and it was through reading his works that I came to understand that all human progress is a move from status to contract and then he paused frowning and said well was it the other way around now the story is a is a little illustration of how even most brilliant ideas become over smooth through overuse but just pause for a second and think about what that means the move from status to contract that instead of having our relations with each other mediated by birth or caste or tradition we are all treated as autonomous individuals able to make free-standing contracts one with another on an issue-by-issue basis that for me is the essence of a liberal society for me a tea that what a what an open society rests on and it has elevated our species to a pinnacle of wealth and happiness that would have recently been unimaginable if by liberalism we mean defending that supremacy of the individual then it's still the best idea on the market if instead of allowing liberalism to be corroded by all of these ideas of identity politics and you know elitism and so on if we just restore our confidence in the core idea that the individual should be elevated above the collective and that the rules should be elevated above the rulers then I think that is the answer both to the populist challenge and indeed to the elitism which spurred it in the first place Alif no memory is an interesting thing and it's an important part of of this entire political debate actually one of the most interesting researches that was done recently asked people of different age groups on both sides of the Atlantic how important is it for you to live in a democracy and interestingly people above a certain age answer that question in a more positive way they said it was crucial for them to live in a liberal democracy among the Millennials it was it was a bit more tricky the results and a large portion of them said maybe it wasn't that important my worry is when I look at the numbers in the UK in Germany in u.s. people who are now situating themselves especially among young people on the far right or the far left those numbers are increasing you know in the UK it has doubled in a place like Sweden it has tripled why because people are the solutions they're not happy with this status quo obviously and they're there right not to be happy so those grievances those resentments are very real and we have to deal with those problems honestly and frankly and without any delay but at the same time I think we need to understand what we have here you know liberal democracy especially if you come from a country where there has never been a proper liberal democracy maybe you understand its value better and there are many people all across the world in Brazil in Venezuela in Turkey for them being a liberal or being a Democrat it's not a theoretical question people people risk their lives you know for voicing these opinions and unfortunately even in Europe this is happening as you know the Liberal mayor of over town in Poland has been killed recently again in Poland 14 women they recently have been arrested and their crime is to open just a banner that says no to fascism they were beaten by ultra national school and then the police came and instead of arresting the ultra-nationalist groups the police arrested the women and now they're going to be they have to go through a trial so in many parts of the world it is not easy to say I'm a liberal I'm a Democrat and to voice these opinions and what I'm trying to say is maybe we have to appreciate the system that we have definitely liberal democracy is not a bed of roses but it is the it's a better system that any other regime that humanity could come up with so far but what I'm referring to here is things like rule of law separation of powers free media minority rights these are the things we need to protect at the same time we need to renew this system because it's not working we need to deal with inequality while protecting the basics we can reform and renew the system and we must do that now Matthew very briefly cuz I've now crashed the bulletin and ruined the arches or something so very brief usual to address those quick questions and then we'll have one quick little run-through at the end it's all in the book it's all in the book that's good okay I get ask each of you before Matthew sells the book about the front to come back to the main question I think we have addressed much of this as we've gone along but just in 30 seconds each do you blame liberals for pot the rise of populism and is populism here to stay dan no two both days absolutely Matt yes and yes and 20 seconds as to why if you can do one thing after tonight's debate get hold of a marvelous essay by Margaret kanavan who sadly passed away last year and she wrote a really good piece on the two faces of populism and the reason I had tell everybody to read that essay is because can even argued that we need to stop thinking about populism as if it's alien to democracy as if it's a disease that needs to be cured her thesis was far more compelling which was that populism is embedded at the heart of our democratic life you cannot get rid of populism because it thrives off of the tensions that exist between the politics of skepticism of managerialism of technocracy and the politics of faith of redemption of salvation of taking back control of making the nation great again and it's the tension between those two styles that gives birth to populism time and time and time again we can't get rid of it we can only live we only learn sorry to live with it so I think it will be around for the rest of our lives and then some Elise very briefly populism is going to stay with us for a long time and actually every case every precedent that we look at has shown us once they come to power they do consolidate their power they do crush civil society and in the long run they damage democracy and so it is inherently anti-democratic but we have to deal with it I do blame the inequality I do blame the liberal elite in also the conservative elite and the populist elite but I don't blame the university student who might have a liberal values liberal ideas but can't even afford her tuition or a teacher who has liberal values but can't even you know pay pay her rent these are the people that we should be very careful about not blaming and we need to talk about how the elite have been disconnected from the real problems of our times job I want to end on a really really gloomy note I don't think it's liberalism or liberals that are responsible for populism I think it's a movement of history and that we've had it good for a very very very long time through all my lifetime and I'm afraid I think we are heading into the shadows much more where people like at like uh dawuan are starting to control things much much more than they have been I hope I'm wrong but I've got a nasty feeling I'm right sweet dreams everybody John Simpson Alicia [ __ ] that's a good win Daniel Hannan thank you very much [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: Intelligence Squared

Views: 118,502

Keywords: populism, liberals, politics, elif shafak, matthew goodwin, religion, culture, daniel hannan, brexit, trump

Id: J2sOCD1Q3oI

Length: 88min 45sec (5325 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 04 2019