The Rise of the Outsiders

How Mainstream Politics Lost its Way

Steve Richards

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781786491442
• eBook ISBN: 9781786491435
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Globalisation
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Discover why outsiders from Trump to Corbyn are succeeding like never before - and what this means for you. In recent years, voters have deserted the political centre like never before. Whether it's Trump, Brexit, Le Pen, or Corbyn, outsiders and populists are flourishing on the far left and far right. Celebrated political commentator Steve Richards explores factors from globalization and fake news to rising immigration and stagnant wages. Richards argues that the reasons for the success of the outsider also sows the seeds of their eventual demise. If they do gain power, they inevitably become insiders themselves - and fail to live up to their extravagant promises. This landmark book examines the rapidly shifting global political landscape of the last decade, and is essential reading for anyone who has been bothered by Brexit, troubled by Trump or confused by Corbyn.

1

THE OUTSIDERS ON THE RIGHT

Globalization is a consequence of revolutions in technology and transport. It is not a government policy. No party leader can say credibly, ‘We will introduce globalization.’ Globalization is happening. But the political consequences are inevitably huge. The challenge for governments, and those that aspire to govern, is to address many of the thorny questions that arise from tumultuous change.

Will a steelworks close, with lifelong jobs no longer lifelong, as it struggles to compete with cheap imports? Will immigrants distort a jobs market that is already changing and offering few of the old, familiar securities? Will the housing market make it impossible for voters, or their children, to buy – or even to rent in some areas? Is it safe to fall ill or become old, when health provision fails to meet demand? Will machines make human beings redundant in vocations that traditionally provided long-term security? The turmoil is bound to fuel the insecurity of voters – many voters, and not just those in the US Rust Belt and equivalent regions in other countries. How do politicians respond to such complex questions in ways that are both reassuring and candid? The right-wing outsiders appear to have the answers.

In one respect, they do. Compared with the timid mainstream left and the small government mainstream right, they are statists. They are willing to intervene in markets, or at least pledge to do so. They will manage immigration. They will protect their industries against cheap imports. They will be tough on crime and security. Their nationalism propels them almost leftwards in their faith in government, at a point where those on the mainstream – guided by an attachment to imprecise liberalism – have become confused about the role of the state. The outsiders on the right prefer to talk of the nation state rather than ‘the state’, but it is their promises to be highly active in government that resonate. Their faith in the state has connections with left-wing outsiders, except that they struggle to make sense of their attachment whereas those on the left espouse a more coherent argument about the significance of a more active state.

The ideological pitch of right-wing outsiders is combined with an erratic charisma – enough of a distinctive public personality to get noticed, even if the attention derives from their unpredictable eccentricity. Some voters like the eccentricity, as it stands out from the cautious, determined normality of the orthodox insider. The character details become irrelevant. The difference from a perceived robotic norm is what matters.

The far-right candidate in the 2016 Austrian presidential election, Norbert Hofer, was disabled in a paragliding accident. Although slim and youthful, he often walks with a stick. Hofer said he had been deeply hurt throughout the first presidential campaign by how often his disability had been used against him. ‘They have repeatedly abused me, saying I’m a cripple,’ he said. ‘But I tell you, the stronger the pressure they put me under, the stronger I become.’¹ The vulnerability helped to humanize him, an important part of the right-wing outsider’s allure: the tough leader who suffers, just as voters suffer. He was his party’s spokesman for the disabled. At the same time he was a gun enthusiast and carried a Glock pistol, conveying an enigmatic machismo.

Geert Wilders, the founder of the Party for Freedom, is one of the more telegenic leaders in Holland, known mockingly – or admiringly – as the ‘blond bombshell’, although the colour of his luxuriant hair is closer to grey. Frauke Petry, the chairwoman of the Alternative for Germany party until the 2017 election, with a pixie haircut and a trim, athletic build is also telegenic. Fluent in English, after studying at Reading University, she is a patient, gracious interviewee, even in the face of aggressive interviewers. But she is not a gifted orator. Her speeches tend to be dull, with ornate sentences and technocratic talking points. She is more comfortable citing economic studies than discussing the lives of ordinary people. Still she stands out as a figure who does not conform to the caricature of a far-right leader, if the stereotype is closer, say, to the undisciplined exuberance of Donald Trump.

Trump’s candidacy was based largely on his own unpredictably wilful charisma. At the start of 2016 he declared, with a provocative flourish, that he ‘would gladly accept the mantle of anger’.² Anger was the driving force of the candidate and of his followers. Voters were angry, and he was equally angry on their behalf. At the beginning of the presidential campaign The New York Times noted that Trump’s supporters ‘directed their wrath toward career politicians, unlawful immigrants, terrorists and people who they said were taking advantage of welfare’.³ That was a lot of anger and a lot of targets. Trump promised single-handedly to protect them. He was the mighty business leader who could make the US great again. Crucially, Trump became the personification of the state. He did not make overt left-wing arguments about the benevolent potential of government. Instead, he framed an argument about the benevolent impact of himself. Here is a sequence from a typical Trump rally in the summer of 2016, shortly before he was confirmed as the Republicans’ candidate – an address he had been making, with few variations, since announcing that he was standing for the candidacy on 16 June 2015:

TRUMP: Our country is in serious trouble. We don’t have victories any more. We used to have victories, but we don’t have them. When was the last time anybody saw us beating, let’s say, China in a trade deal? They kill us. I beat China all the time. All the time.

[APPLAUSE]

AUDIENCE MEMBER: We want Trump. We want Trump.

TRUMP: When did we beat Japan at anything? They send their cars over by the millions, and what do we do? When was the last time you saw a Chevrolet in Tokyo? It doesn’t exist, folks. They beat us all the time.

When do we beat Mexico at the border? They’re laughing at us, at our stupidity. And now they are beating us economically. They are not our friend, believe me. But they’re killing us economically. The US has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems.

I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me, and I’ll build them very inexpensively, I will build a great, great wall on our southern border. And I will have Mexico pay for that wall.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes.

TRUMP: Mark my words.

[APPLAUSE]

TRUMP: Nobody would be tougher on ISIS than Donald Trump. Nobody.

[APPLAUSE]

TRUMP: I will find – within our military – I will find the General Patton or I will find General MacArthur, I will find the right guy. I will find the guy that’s going to take that military and make it really work. Nobody, nobody will be pushing us around.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes.

[APPLAUSE]

TRUMP: I will stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. And we won’t be using a man like Secretary Kerry that has absolutely no concept of negotiation, who’s making a horrible and laughable deal, who’s just being tapped along as they make weapons right now, and then goes into a bicycle race at 72 years old, and falls and breaks his leg. I won’t be doing that. And I promise I will never be in a bicycle race. That I can tell you.

[APPLAUSE]

TRUMP: I will immediately terminate President Obama’s illegal executive order on immigration, immediately.

The crowd cheered the warrior Trump, as similar large gatherings hailed Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. The euphoric crowd saw Trump as a figure who, like Coriolanus, could save them, as a solo warrior. Under Trump, with the wave of a wand, there would be no more immigration from Mexico. He would build barriers to make such movement of labour impossible. Later in the campaign he proposed banning all Muslims from entering the US, a solution even more drastic than his plans to block the Mexicans. He would defeat ISIS almost on his own. He would control any nuclear ambition in Iran. After winning in New Hampshire, he declared with intoxicating imprecision, ‘Nobody is going to mess with this country any more.’⁴ He meant that, when he was president, nobody was going to mess with him.

His fans did not shout in response: ‘We want the government to act on our behalf.’ That would not be one of the great rousing slogans of our time. But in proclaiming, ‘We want Trump’, that is what they were calling for. They wanted an elected figure to intervene to protect them from the harsher consequences of free trade; they wanted investment; they wanted protection from the terrorists’ threat; they wanted job security. They wanted Trump. They were succumbing to a message about the role of the state via the charisma of the TV celebrity.

But there was little or no explanation from Trump as to how these mighty ends would be achieved. Charisma only goes so far in politics. The outsiders proclaimed their ends without a clear route-map as to how they would be achieved. Much depended on an assumption that the charisma of the outsider would in itself deliver the specified ends.

Nonetheless they stand out in a noisy media environment with their swagger and self-confidence about what they can achieve on behalf of a nation state. Standing out is part of the electoral trick, as parties fracture and multiply. There is competition for attention, and right-wing outsiders are tabloid communicators. They can secure headlines. Indeed, Trump’s policy programme was closer to a series of headlines.

As well as the wider background and their charisma as distinctive individuals, such outsiders have an issue to help them in their bid to be distinctive. For decades mainstream politicians have twitched nervously or opportunistically as they read polls suggesting that immigration tops the list of voters’ concerns, or comes close to the top. One way or another they have made a series of misjudgements as to how best to address the issue. Sometimes they ignore it. When countries from Eastern Europe joined the EU there were few (or no) speeches or press conferences from prime ministers and presidents explaining the impact of free movement. In the UK, where no constraining transitional arrangements were deployed, the then prime minister Tony Blair made major speeches on just about every other topic, and held a monthly press conference to project on all matters, from public-service reform to Iraq. Free movement was never a chosen theme. Alternatively, prime ministers made big claims to cut immigration, which were never met – and could never be met – as they must have known. Long before Brexit was an issue, some Conservative leaders sought popularity by highlighting the issue in the UK. In the 2005 general election the Conservative leader, Michael Howard, opened his campaign on the issue by pledging an annual limit on immigration. He could not explain how this would be achieved, which was one reason why he later campaigned for the UK to leave the EU in the referendum. Before the 2015 election, David Cameron made impractical pledges to cut immigration, which were never met. He was in power, whereas Howard was not. He did not have the excuse of being in opposition. Over-promising on immigration was as bad as not saying anything very much at all. Some voters noted the gap between promises and reality, concluding that the reality had to change and that mainstream politicians were liars.

Immigration is a complex and highly charged policy area. Politicians are expected to take clear positions, as in ‘immigration is good’ or ‘immigration is bad’, as if they were talking about a single tangible object. Instead they are grappling with sensitive economic and social questions that can disrupt or improve an economy, cause social tensions or stimulate diversity, improve public services or increase demand on them and, above all, can lose them an election or divide their party, if they fail to be clear and yet nuanced. Immigration raises questions about economic security and national identity. For some voters, the issue serves as an explanation for wider worries, anxieties and anger about poor public services and insecure job prospects. Quite often there is no connection between the issues, but sometimes there is; and even when there is not, it is easy to see how the idea of immigrants moving into another country could be seen as the cause of disruption.

But this is not an era for nuance. In interviews, mainstream leaders are asked persistently whether they want immigration to come down in their country – and within the next twelve months. They are not asked whether they want food prices to fall, because interviewers recognize that prices are largely beyond the control of a leader. But immigration is framed as a simple good-or-bad question. If leaders qualify their answers – arguing wisely that the level of immigration will depend on demand for labour, and that in turn will be determined by the state of the economy and the ambitions of government – they are slaughtered: ‘But what is your answer? If you were in power, would you reduce the numbers? Yes or no?’ These were the binary questions posed constantly to UK politicians responding to the Brexit referendum, which was itself a binary question that allowed no room for nuance and qualifications.

The right-wing populists do not qualify their assertions. Without hesitation they cry, ‘Yes – we will reduce the numbers’ and appear strong as they make that unqualified promise. The pledge to ‘take back control’ became a defining one for the leading supporters of Brexit in the UK referendum. And Trump used the same phrase in his campaign.

Yet the vote-winning slogan also leads us towards a fundamental weakness of the right-wing outsiders. They do not know what they stand for. In a way that is almost childlike in its confusion, right-wing outsiders are supposedly anti-government and yet they pledge to utilize the levers of government like none of their mainstream equivalents.

While being an inadvertent statist on a grand scale, Trump can hardly bear the idea that he is even a politician, because he also loathes the state. ‘I suppose that is what I am now, a politician,’ he declared with revealing despair at his Washington press conference in February 2017, almost regretting becoming president, as that makes him a politician.⁵ The slogan at a rally in Florida that Trump held a few days after the press conference was ‘We are going to put People before Government’ – a contortion of illuminating confusion.⁶ Trump views politicians and government with disdain. Yet he has become a politician who has pledged to govern more actively than Democrat presidents. Other right-wing outsiders making waves in Western democracies despise the state, regarding it as a large, inefficient monster. Yet they are also statists, intervening not only in labour markets but also in the free trade of goods, and in proposing big spending increases. They pledge to take back control.

This gaping and transparent ideological contradiction should be an insurmountable problem for the far right. The source of their popularity is a pledge to intervene in the labour market and to do so on vast scale. Several leading outsiders, including Trump, plan to increase spending on capital projects in ways that make some on the left seem miserly. Yet on the whole they disapprove of government and politicians. They are anti-government and pro-government intervention simultaneo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 The Outsiders on the Right
• 2 The Rise of the Left-Wing Outsiders
• 3 Choosing to Be Powerless: The Mainstream Left
• 4 Choosing to Be Powerless: The Mainstream Right
• 5 The Powerlessness of Power
• 6 Taking Back Control
• 7 Trust
• 8 Powerlessness and the Media
• Conclusion
• Political Parties and Politicians/Advisers
• Notes
• Acknowledgements
• Index
• About the Author
• Copyright