Review of newly published book: PANDERING TO POPULISM? JOURNALISM AND POLITICS IN A POST-TRUTH AGE
Bite-Sized Books (www.bite-sizedbooks.com) have taken on the crucial issues of the role of the traditional media in a social media world and in a world of radical new political movements and parties. Pandering to Populism? (Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/y25vtpta) contains some excellent essays by people wrestling as journalists and academics with these problems. The editors see the growing strength of the new parties and the ways traditional parties have to change their views and preoccupations to stay in the national conversations. They mainly see the rise of in terms of Trump, Farage and Brexit, though they see the bigger picture with many radical party challengers of left as well as right in many EU states.
They date the phenomenon to the poor ec
onomic performance of Europe since the banking crash of 2008, though US performance has been considerably better with US living standards and productivity growth far outpacing the feeble European pace. They see that people have come to be anti-net zero, anti-migration, anti-EU and anti wokery, and often attribute this to dissatisfaction with the poor economic performance of the last 17 years.
John Curtice charts the collapse of support for the Conservatives in the 2024 election, and the poor result for Labour which still translated into a landslide of seats. He points to low levels of turnout as well as unprecedented numbers voting for parties other than the traditional main three. Trevor Phillips in an elegant Foreword shows how the growing anti-establishment movement today is left as well as right. He sees it as a strong condemnation of two main UK parties that have not listened to what the public want, and who have failed to see growing resentment at the changing of national culture through migration. Maybe in the case of some Conservative Ministers it was not so much not listening as failing to get the system to do what people wanted. On migration a succession of Home Secretaries struggled to stop the boats and cut the numbers, only to face opposition not just from government bodies but from the courts.
Stephen Cushion from his academic studies of the media thinks the answer to the rise of populism is to get broadcast journalists to fact check more things. He praises BBC Verify for challenging the Leave claim in the referendum that the UK would save £350 m a week of contributions to the EU once we had left. Yet this is what we are now enjoying, with an EU putting up contributions by more than we thought and the UK at last free of all such payments. He is pleased the BBC also “called out” Rishi Sunak in the 2024 election for claiming the next Labour government would raise taxes by £2000 per family. There was no attempt to call out the Labour claim they would not increase any of the big three taxes. Once in office they imposed a large National Insurance rise on the self-employed and employers. Labour has already put through a £40 bn tax hike with more likely to come in the next budget. With 20 million families in the UK £40 bn looks a bit like Rishi’s £2000 per family, as families and individuals end up paying the extra National Insurance through price rises and lost jobs.
Stephen Cushion has missed one of the main points made by the Populists. The so-called facts used by the establishment are often wrong or simply are lies. Take the Remain campaign, as he is so worried about Brexit. They used the Treasury and Bank of England in a political campaign to say if we voted to leave GDP would fall, unemployment would rise and jobs would be lost. After the vote the opposite happened, with GDP increasing, employment increasing and unemployment falling. What would Remain have said if the Bank and Treasury had backed the Leave campaign claims? Doubtless they would have told the Bank and Treasury to stay out of politics. The Remain campaign put out a bizarre forecast that over the next 15 years GDP would be 4% less than if we had not left the EU. This often was misrepresented as a 4% fall in GDP from current levels. This is now regularly repeated as a fact of Brexit when we have not reached the 15-year mark and when there is no evidence of any such fall owing to Brexit. Our service sector trade has grown rapidly since 2016 including to the EU and is the dominant part of our exports.
Stephen Cushion could have asked why there is no fact checking of the Bank of England, constantly claiming inflation will return to the 2% target when it does not? Why did he not call them out for forecasting 2% inflation for 2022 when it hit 11%? How wrong can you be without being accused of promoting a fictional reality you would like to see? Why no fact checking of the current government’s claim they would smash the gangs, as we see illegal migration up by more than a third this year?
My favourite mini essay in this selection is that of Tor Clark. The delicious caricature of establishment attitudes is wicked in its accuracy. He mourns the lack of effective challenge to Brexit, glossing over the concerted efforts of the combined civil service, legal and Opposition party establishment to prevent Brexit happening and to block any Brexit wins after the vote. He thinks immigration is all positive, filling vacancies that need filling, without pausing to ask how we house and provide for all those people coming to low-income jobs or to stay in a hotel with no work. He says, “GB News is driving a coach and horses through previously established hard rules on balance and impartiality”. Yet every GB News programme has a left-wing critic on to provide balance sadly lacking on the BBC. GB News will run big stories on illegal migration, rape gangs and other difficult topics which the main media refuses to cover or covers by just offering the establishment view.
Tor Clark’s fear that a crisis of confidence in the legitimacy of news journalism could become a crisis of confidence in the legitimacy of the state misses the point of populism. Populists think the state is letting them down and failing society. They see mainstream media as part of the same problem. More fact checking will not hack it. The two sides do not agree the facts or choose to use different facts to illustrate their arguments. Rigged fact checking to expose exaggerations by Populists need to be balanced by exposing the outright lies of an establishment that has failed to control the borders, failed to deliver strong economic growth and could not even keep inflation under control.
Do get a copy of Pandering to Populism? It reveals a lot about why we are in a mess.