I listened to a fascinating debate on the BBC’s The World This Weekend about the ideological origins of that thing, populism. The agreeably thuggish Javier Milei had just taken the reins of Argentina and, perhaps a little late in the day, the TW2 (as it is known in BBC circles) production team had noticed that almost every election held anywhere these days – except perhaps Australia and here – tends to result in a win for a party which is either overtly populist, as in Argentina, or is called populist by its opponents and the BBC. What the hell is going on, they wondered, only ten years too late.
Who did they choose to ‘debate’ the issue? Prince Harry and Wolf from Gladiators? The suave game-show presenter Ben Shephard and Herbie the Skateboarding Duck? Both would have offered greater illumination than the two people actually roped together – a left-wing professor from the University of Cardiff and the hunky left-wing Greek politician Yanis Varoufakis.
All ideologies end up grotesquely overreaching and thus sowing the seeds of their downfall
And so we heard what populism actually was, according to them and the programme’s presenter, Jonny Dymond.
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