November « 2019 « John Harris

Archive for November, 2019

‘A politics of nostalgia and score-settling’: how populism dominated the 2010s

Tuesday, November 26th, 2019

From India to Turkey, Trump to Farage, populism has gathered pace in the last decade. Why now?

On Wednesday 28 April 2010, 20 months had passed since the financial crash of 2008, and there were eight days left until the UK general election. Soon, the reins of government would be taken by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, committed to a programme of austerity that would still be making its effects felt a decade later. But for another fortnight, Gordon Brown would be prime minister, and he was on a walkabout in Rochdale, Greater Manchester. It was there that he was introduced to 65-year-old Gillian Duffy.

Surrounded by men in suits, and accompanied by the snap of cameras, Duffy ran through a mess of grievances – about the tax she had to pay on her pension, the state of the national finances, and a benefits system she claimed paid out to people who “aren’t vulnerable” while denying help to those who needed it. She reached a climax with a single broken sentence about immigration: “You can’t say anything about the immigrants… but all these easterns European what are coming in, where are they flocking from?” Still wearing a radio microphone pinned to his lapel by Sky News, Brown then got back in his car, and let rip. “She’s just this sort of bigoted woman who said she used to be a Labour voter,” he said.

There is a leftwing version of populism. But it is the rightwing iteration that has spread around the world

I spoke to voters responsible for Farage’s surge. One talked warmly of Margaret Thatcher

Posted in Guardian RSS | No Comments »

Anywhere but Westminster: homeless people, the voters without a voice – video

Tuesday, November 26th, 2019

In the third part of their election series, John Harris and John Domokos go to Southend-on-sea, and find a coastal town with a homelessness crisis. A local charity is making sure that homeless people register to vote, while huge issues scream out for attention: benefit sanctions, abusive landlords, the gap between wages and rents, and the dire lack of mental health services

Posted in Guardian RSS | No Comments »

This is a seismic election. So why doesn’t it feel like that? | John Harris

Monday, November 25th, 2019

Despite the momentous choice facing the country, the mood is one of weariness. That’s not the electorate’s fault

As this weirdest of general elections grinds on through the increasing dark and cold, you can pick up a striking sound: partisans and activists loyal to either Labour or the remain cause becoming exasperated with the public. Over the weekend, their annoyance and bafflement was triggered by opinion polls that suggested a widening Tory lead: “Why am I so out of sync with voters? What is wrong with people?” asked one tweeter. But over the past three weeks there has also been a sense of another gap: between people feeling wound up and passionate, and an electorate that still seems cynical and detached.

The ocean of cynicism maintained by social media means that big political figures tend to be figures of fun

Posted in Guardian RSS | No Comments »

For real change, Labour should ditch its top-down thinking | John Harris

Monday, November 18th, 2019

Genuinely modern socialism would revolutionise Westminster and Whitehall and disperse power to local government

Nearly every Jeremy Corbyn speech these days is punctuated by the words “in our society” – a basic indication of what the Labour leader thinks politics ought to be about and the terrain on which he feels most comfortable. And so it goes with Labour’s election campaign. The party’s prospects essentially depend on whether enough people are prepared to put the tortures of Brexit to one side and concentrate on the state of our social fabric.

If they are, Labour has an effective vocabulary to nail Tory failure, as evidenced by the words Corbyn used to launch his election campaign: “If you want to live in a society that works for everybody and not just the billionaires, if you want to save our hospitals, schools and public services from Tory cuts and privatisation, if you want to stop the big polluters destroying our environment, then this election is your chance to vote for it.” However bad his personal ratings, the potency of his moral kind of politics endures: on Tuesday, when he debates with Boris Johnson on ITV, it will be by far his strongest suit.

John McDonnell seems to have some of the right instincts about the state and how it should work

Posted in Guardian RSS | No Comments »

Anywhere But Westminster: are the Tories losing their suburban heartlands? – video

Saturday, November 16th, 2019

As their national election trek goes on, John Harris and John Domokos hit the Surrey town of Guildford, recently won by the Conservatives with a big majority, but shaken up by Brexit, a new cosmopolitan culture, and people’s rising unease about poverty and homelessness. The former Conservative MP is running as an independent; the Lib Dems think they’re on the march. Only one thing is certain: all the old political categories and cliches are useless

Posted in Guardian RSS | No Comments »

« Older Entries |