How to make populism pointless

No this isn't about immigration. And it certainly isn't about Farage. It's about renewal everywhere for everyone.

Nostalgia is an interesting beast. It's a wistfulness most of us will feel at times. And more and more as we get older. We’ll feel it about something we believe has been lost - be that a childhood sweetie or a way of life. It’s a natural instinct and a powerful one that has been manipulated or triggered for good or ill by artists and charlatans, marketers and mythmakers, Politicians and snake oil salesmen for centuries. Even Shakespeare liked to indulge in the remembrance of things past.

Nostalgia sometimes gets a bad rap. I have a good friend who does a podcast specifically about remembering niche things and I’ve been a guest on it more than once. Happy memories are lovely. And wistful ones are lovely too in their own way. It’s when that wistfulness deepens from a fleeting sense of longing to a lasting sense of resentment that there starts to be the potential for manipulation (beyond Hovis style advertising - which, given that it first ran two years before I was born, I accept is now me being nostalgic about nostalgia).

Nostalgia alone is not a negative force but nostalgia triggered by a sense of decay really can be. Because the one thing a government can’t deliver is the past. Sure, we might go backwards in terms of policies. But it would be from a world that has been changed. So the policies wouldn’t feel the same, have the same impact or return the real things that have actually been lost. But anyone promising you they can make things how they were is lying to you and knows it. Your Wagon Wheel will still feel smaller however it’s sold to you.

And if we promise a return to the past, we will let people dow in the future.

Reform trade on this big lie. They sell a tale of nostalgia entirely to trigger resentment and to try to pretend things can go back to what they once were. They have a certain appeal - especially in uncertain times. And as we see right wing populism sweeping Europe and possibly returning in America we do need to talk about how Labour should - and should not - deal with them.

A Labour government could fall into two traps when it comes to Reform. The Tories are almost certainly going to fall into both of them.

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