Most people, when they hear the word populist, will think of Marine Le Pen going mad about Muslim immigrants or a Ukipper saying he wouldn’t want an Albanian living next door. But yesterday we witnessed a different kind of populism: the deceptively right-on variety, which aims its black-and-white moralistic fury not at cash-starved people at the bottom of society, but at wealthy individuals at the top. The purveyor of populism this time was Margaret Hodge, panto queen of the Public Accounts Committee, her target was some HSBC suits, and it made for an unedifying spectacle.
Hodge has in recent years become Parliament’s poundshop Robespierre, a one-woman mopper-up of moral rot in the establishment, the purifier of the political realm. In her capacity as crusader-in-chief of the Public Safety Committee — I’m sorry, the Public Accounts Committee — she has barked at Google bosses, drugs companies and other corporate nasties.
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