There have been plenty of populist parties rise in the EU. No wonder, when the traditional parties, the national establishments and the EU serve up slow or no growth, high taxes and high levels of inward migration. The populist parties do sometimes get into power, but then often let people down. Syriza seized the government of Greece only to get into a dispute with the Euro authorities over austerity and economic policy. They ended up backing down and the voters decided they had not enjoyed the experience, with a stop on withdrawing some of their money from Greek banks and more damage to the economy. In Italy Lega came into a position of influence but was unable to kick start the Italian economy or halt the arrivals of large numbers of migrants. From the left Five Star also rose and fell.
The populist parties of the so called right often adopt a number of important attitudes and policies from socialism, and populist parties of the so called left often adopt supposedly right wing attitudes towards migration. They do so because they often create programmes – or more accurately craft soundbites – based around polling. Most voters are not ideological. Many want more freedoms for themselves and more controls on their neighbours, lower taxes for themselves and higher taxes for others, more public services that suit them and economies elsewhere. Why not? Of course people vote primarily for their own interests. The task of competitive parties is to come up with a policy offer that will work, to tackle the main concerns of the majority.
In the UK there are four populist parties today, Reform, Restore, Green and Advance. Green has decided to drive hard left, ignoring many of the traditional green issues like climate change and concentrating on major redistribution of wealth and income and Middle Eastern Palestinians concerns. Reform has flirted with backing parts of the two child benefit cap withdrawal, proposes extensive nationalisation, wants proportional representation, seeks to abolish the Cabinet Office and set up a much bigger and more powerful Office of the Prime Minister and struggles to find savings in the spending of the Councils it runs.It has highlighted unacceptable levels of illegal immigration and suggested various measures to reduce it.
These parties hold out the hope that they could push through the change people want, but they find it difficult to set out how exactly they would define the change and how more importantly they would push it through. Starting with a big change in the structure of Whitehall departments could prove costly and create plenty of delays in achieving things voters want. The continental parties remind us it can prove to be a big let down. Most of the problems we face flow from too much government, from taxes that are too high and from a public sector which delivers too little for too much cost. It needs a lot of work to decide what needs to be stopped and how to generate the change needed in government. Soundbites and headlines will not achieve it. Determination, a detailed plan and an ability to drive the machine of government from within is what is needed.
May 27, 2026
Good Morning,
Why is there space for new political parties? It’s simple, the legacy parties are failures at the job of governing. We the voters are not going to vote for the same duplicitous and incompetent people.
May 27, 2026
Good morning.
The problem many ‘populist’ parties have is, as soon as they start to take serious chunks of the voter base the established parties of which the government is part of come under attack. They get labelled racist, far-right or extreme. And because they are new and have not the resources to develop a broader base of policies to appeal to the wider base. But one such party that despite all this seems to be bucking this trend is Germany’s AfD. This despite some serious attacks from the State.
Here in the UK we are seeing the slow and irreversible demise of the two main parties. Both in the first quarter of this century and mostly throughout the last have been in office. The situation we now find ourselves in is much to do with their policies and bad management, the worst of which is failure to control the Civil Service.
People sense that the ‘system’ and the country is broken and the old parties cannot understand what needs to be done let alone fix it.
May 27, 2026
Reform may not be able to tackle all our problems and are certainly running into problems with local councils. Much of the problem is government mandated spending which leaves little discretion. Where they have a majority they are pulling out of the government resettlement schemes and challenging the net zero nonsense especially solar farms.
We have been failed by the legacy parties for over 30 years now and people are fed up voting for more of the same.
I read 2TK is handing money over to Mauritius in lieu of the Chagos deal. The whole government is rotten to the core.
It’s time to let others take the helm.
May 27, 2026
So Lord/Baron Hermer, Attorney General is to refer the recent rape sentences to our wonderfully learned Court of Appeal Judges for a review. These the wonderful people, six of whom twice refused Lucy Letby any appeal, three of whom decided 31 month for Lucy Connolly’s foolish but mild and temporary tweet was perfectly correct and reasonable, refused Sally Clark’s first appeal, Guildford four… and so many other obvious errors. Indeed they seem to be very good indeed at refusing so very many attempted appeals of innocent men and women.
It will be interesting to see what sentences they come up with here. Is serial and multiple rape worse than a minor temporary tweet (the first offence and load of mitigating circumstance) 31 months or not? It will also be interesting to observe also the Scottish Court sentencing of the clearly rather potty Peter Morrell. Hopefully here there will be some more investigations into the SNP and the rather dodgy Scottish legal system given the almost one party state since Blair’s appalling devolution.
A shame Morrell did not take it to court and expose all those others who allowed it to happen and/or tried to cover it all up. His argument could have been that too much temptation was put in his way by the organisation and without proper oversight accountancy and audit controls and he was clearly going rather potty (perhaps understandably given whom he was married to for so long). So hard to resist posh salt and pepper pots, coffee machines, laundry baskets I find. My new caffetiere (the last one smashed) cost £2 at a charity shop. Jacob R M the other day actually said he preferred instant coffee is he OK?
May 27, 2026
Reform UK favoured proportional representation as in the 2015 general election UKIP gained 3.88million votes but only one MP. In contrast LibDems gained 2.42million votes but 8 times as many MPs. UKIP had 12.6% of votes cast in contrast to LibDems having only 7.9%.
That was the level of unfairness it sought to unlock. However, as Reform UK are now in such a powerful position in terms of polling they are probably less inclined to change the system. PR tends to create a mishmash of people’s voting preferences as displayed in the EU. First past the post is more decisive.