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At first glance, the former New Labour minister Liam Byrne is not the ideal person to explain the rise of rightwing populism in Britain and beyond, and how it might be stopped. At the end of Gordon Brown’s government in 2010, Byrne infamously wrote a one-line letter to whoever would succeed him as chief secretary to the Treasury: “I’m afraid there is no money.” Both friendly advice and an inside joke, these words were used for years by the Tories and Lib Dems to justify their austerity policies – and were arguably one of the causes of the modern disillusionment with conventional politicians. This loss of faith, and the damage to society and public services from austerity, have fuelled populism ever since.
Byrne’s short but ambitious book is, in a sense, his attempt to make amends. Yet some of the arguments and evidence he presents, in quick, confident sentences which fit his past reputation as a clever but impatient minister, are unlikely to persuade many people that he is thinking afresh. He often cites and echoes centrist authorities such as the Tony Blair Institute and Keir Starmer’s former advisers Claire Ainsley and Deborah Mattinson, who have all long said that the way to defeat populism is to respect its supporters, however rightwing. Given that Reform UK has surged ahead in the polls, while Labour is regarded by most populist voters with contempt, this deference seems a dead end.
Byrne remains an MP, with a small majority and Reform strong in his constituency. So there may be an element of self-preservation in his book’s claim that most voters “have a sixth sense about where the country needs to go”. But that doesn’t make it persuasive. Across the west, actual and potential populist voters are often motivated by myths: for example, that immigration to Britain is rising, when in fact it is falling. Suggesting, as Byrne does here, that centrist parties can win back these voters with policies that accept some of the populist worldview – rather than seeking to challenge its fantasies and prejudices – feels at best optimistic, and at worst dangerously naive.
And yet, as his book gallops along, it soon becomes clear that in between its unconvincing stretches are others in which populism is considered with more rigour and originality. Byrne neatly lays out the movement’s paradoxes and hypocrisies. It’s against elites, but led and funded by the rich. It presents itself as a mass uprising, but relies on low turnouts for much of its electoral success. It talks a lot about freedom, but its policies are authoritarian. It promises a glorious future, but its social vision is “soaked in the brandy of nostalgia” – one of several rich and irreverent images with which Byrne decorates his chapters. Books by former New Labour ministers are usually ponderous and defensive, with little sign that any rethinking has been done since the party’s distant heyday. Perhaps because of his semi-disgrace over the 2010 letter, Byrne seems more liberated.
A particularly free-ranging and useful chapter looks at the language and themes of populism’s public messaging. While conventional politicians usually speak in chewy and unappetising “word salads”, writes Byrne, populists such as Nigel Farage are clear and conversational. They combine a “soft” informality of syntax with “acquisitive hard verbs”, which resonate with voters who see Britain and the world in increasingly competitive, zero-sum terms. Populists “sound like friends while speaking like generals”.
Byrne points out that the Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci, one of whose great insights was that “common sense” is often highly ideological and the product of political and cultural struggles, was an important influence on 1980s French populism, one of the first wings of the movement to revive in western democracies. Other parts of the book make use of dystopian science fiction and the niche leftwing American magazine The Baffler. Byrne is refreshingly interested in the world beyond Westminster orthodoxies.
Although only up to a point. Without explicitly saying so or explaining why, the book treats populism as an essentially rightwing phenomenon. Leftwing populism barely features despite its promise and achievements, from Zohran Mamdani in New York to Zack Polanski’s rising Green party. Nor does Byrne consider whether the radical left in general has a part to play against rightwing populism – by mobilising on the streets, for example. Britain has seen large and regular anti-racist and anti-fascist protests since Reform began its current surge.
These blind spots are revealing. Leaving the left out of the story enables centrists, even relatively open-minded ones such as Byrne, to downplay the role of increasing inequality in populism’s rise – an inequality that centrist governments and their corporate allies have done little to challenge, or actively worsened. Seeing populism as driven by traditional patriotism, cultural conservatism and anger at the decline of “left behind” places is not wrong, and Byrne explains these factors well. But this perspective conveniently minimises its economic causes, which are more uncomfortable for mainstream political and business elites to think about, because they are still invested in the economic status quo.
The final quarter of the book says what “the radical centre” should do to stop populism. There are some good ideas: expose its leaders’ oligarchic outlook and general shiftiness much more aggressively; tighten up the loose laws on political funding that parties such as Reform exploit; concentrate on winning back the least dogmatic populist voters; and increase taxes on the rich – both to fund public services better and fit the anti-millionaire outlook of most voters. “Right now our tax code simply does not reflect our moral code,” as Byrne nicely puts it.
Would his remedies be enough to “beat” populism? Probably not. The movement is too global and entrenched now. But even cutting its support by a few percentage points could stop it winning power. And then centrists, or leftists, might have time to come up with something else.
