The Real Reasons Populism Is Taking Over

Alastair Campbell· Host0:00

Thanks for listening to The Rest is Politics. To support the podcast, listen without the adverts, and get early access to episodes and live show tickets, go to therestispolitics.com. That's therestispolitics.com. Hi there, and welcome to The Rest is Politics with just me, Alastair Campbell. We're doing something a bit different today. Pretty much most weeks in the four years we've done this podcast, Rory and I probably use the word populism, and we've talked anxiously about the growing influence of populist leaders and populist appeal all around the world. And I really wanted to get right to the bottom of why people do seem to such-- feel such a pull towards leaders that frankly, Rory and I both see as charismatic charlatans, people like Trump, people like Farage, people like Orbán in Hungary, and then even the ones that have been found out, like Bolsonaro and Boris Johnson. There's still a kind of, "Oh, well, you know, they're quite this, they're quite that, they're quite funny. They get things done," which is nonsense. And so what's it all about? And also, what does it mean? I think the word populism itself needs a bit of kind of exploration and understanding. But above all, how do progressives, Democrats, call them what you want, how do we counter it? And what's at the heart of it? Is it a sense of personal loss? Is it that populists are the only ones who acknowledge what has been lost, and of course, as we