Nigel Farage, Donald Trump and the Coming Populist Crisis

Along with the entire population of the earth, with the exception of North Korea, I felt that enough had been said about Brexit, the US Presidential Election, Nigel Farage and Donald Trump without me joining in. However, the recent refusal by Teresa May to deny discussing making a peer of Nigel Farage has stung me into action.

It's not been a good year for anyone to the left of Farage and Trump. Two seismic events that I thought could never happen - Brexit and Trump becoming US President- have happened, and I, along with what Farage would describe as "remoaners", "looney lefties" and "the liberal establishment elite", am still coming to terms with the shock.

If we are to make sense of these two shocks to the political system, we have to ask what has caused the two events. Now, there are differences between Brexit and the US election results, but one outstanding common factor is "Right-Wing Populism".  Wikipedia (which is not always wrong) says:

"Right-wing populism is a political ideology that rejects existing political consensus and often combines laissez-faire liberalism and anti-elitism. It is considered populism because of its appeal to the "common man" as opposed to the elites."

Besides this, of course, is another factor: hostility to immigration. Both Farage and Trump favour an end to the free movement of labour and unrestricted immigration (Muslim and Mexican immigration, in Trump's case), but the growing refugee crisis has stimulated Populist Right parties all over Europe. As The Economist says:

" Across the continent, right-wing populists are gathering steam. This year’s migrant influx has proved a huge boon to politicians hostile to Islam, immigration and the European Union."

There is no doubt that concern about these issues greatly helped Trump in the USA, as well as Farage and the Brexit campaigners over here. Some people say that without playing the migrant card, the Brexiteers would have lost the referendum. Ironically (or should I say tragically?), The Guardian's research showed that those who experienced the highest levels of migration were the least anxious about it:

"London, which absorbed 133,000 of the 330,000 net arrivals in 2015, voted the most strongly for remain. Manchester also voted for remain – and at 13,554 had nearly double the level of net migration seen in Birmingham, which voted leave."

From this, we can discern that fear is an element in populist success. There is also a need for a crisis that can be exploited. During the EC Referendum, UKIP and the Leave campaigners campaigned very hard in areas badly affected by the Tory government's austerity measures following the international banking crisis. Instead of putting the blame where it belonged, on the bankers and the government, the Leave campaigners - or at least the UKIP elements - diverted resentment towards refugees and the EC migrant communities. The rise in hate crime after the referendum is the result.

But there is a problem for populist politicians, should they come to power: what if they don't deliver on their promises? Donald Trump has already begun to go back on some of his election pledges. As the BBC point out, his stances on prosecuting Hillary Clinton, the Mexican Wall, Obamacare and banning Muslim entry to the USA are beginning to soften. He is even appointing an immigrant to one of the top jobs in his administration, as this photo of Michelle Obama shows:

Trump may well find himself unpopular with some of the more extreme and violent elements among his electoral supporters, if he is seen as backtracking on his promises.

A similar thing might happen in the UK if Leave campaigners feel themselves frustrated by the slow progress of Brexit. Nigel Farage has already threatened mass protest on this issue. The voice of the choleric Right, The Express, said:

"Sir Gerald Howarth, the Tory MP for Aldershot since 1997 has said any plans to hold back the will of the majority by going by preventing triggering Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty could be met by angry opposition on British streets."

Farage, Howarth and their ilk are playing with unstable explosives here. If you stir up populist anger to resolve political issues, you may well find it impossible to control, as the French revolutionaries found out, nearly two centuries ago. The late Jo Cox, M.P., whose alleged murderer is on trial at the present time, was probably the first victim of that anger. Should Brexit happen, and the imagined benefits not happen, we may well see Farage, Howarth, Boris Johnson and the other Leave politicians denounced by other, more violent demagogues who will not hesitate to rouse populist passion into action on the streets. Still, I really should not go scaremongering. I may have been wrong about Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, but I am sure that such things as angry populist mob violence could never happen here...