Churchill, UKIP and the Populists

With the traditional political process struggling for legitimacy due to the ongoing financial crisis, populism is rearing its head in opposition.

Its presence is most readily felt in the protest votes cast at elections. Parties such as UKIP are doing well by gathering protest votes (57% of those who voted UKIP are unlikely to do so again; Ashcroft, 2013). The dangers of these populist protests at the ballot box are best highlighted by the contrast between the nationwide anti-cuts protests and the policies of the party that protest votes where cast for: not only are UKIP pro-cuts, but in their manifesto they include a cut to the top rate of tax to 31% (down from 45%), and the raising of tax on everyone else (over the personal income threshold) up to that 31% margin  (Randall, 2013).

These populist protests tend to be the voice of anger and frustration - but that alone is merely the asking of a question, a cry for help with problems unaddressed. What tends to move those movements forward is the emergence of groups willing to offer easy, and often insubstantial, promises to provide a solution. And those solutions often involve abolishing the bureaucratic complexities of the modern world in favour of a simpler time.

In such situations, particularly with the political right, it is not uncommon for those promises to come with visions of reclaiming a better past - but those visions are just romantic revisionism. Looking at history through the lives of aristocrats - with their estates and ballrooms; their wealth, splendour and accomplishments - can evidently give history the appearance of an age of romanticism and extravagance being slowly drowned in mediocrity.

But these beliefs in a 'better time', and other such sentiments, are evidently untrue.

The work of Professor Hans Rosling, reviewed in BBC4's Joy of Stats (2010), shows that humanity, far from falling, has in fact been engaged in a slow struggle to overcome the conditions that feudal and aristocratic society wrapped in chains around us. The opening up of movement and freedom, brought on by freer trade and greater interactions between diverse peoples dragged humanity towards a better world.

Then came the twentieth century. Welfare, spurred on in Britain by philanthropic projects like the poor reports of Rowntree and Booth, began to address the age old social ailments and injustices that had been escalated by the dawn of industrialism, or that had simply replaced the evils that went before. Rowntree's work astonished Britain in its day, dismissing the same myths that Professor Rosling's statistics do now, and elicited from Churchill (Marr, 2009) the response that:

'For my own part, I see little glory in an Empire which can rule the waves and is unable to flush its sewers.'

So if the myths used to harness the support of populist outcries are unlikely to produce the solutions promised, then what are they likely to offer? Let us turn once more to Churchill (Jenkins. 2001):

'We know perfectly well what to expect - a party of great vested interests, banded together in a formidable confederation, corruption at home, aggression to cover it up abroad, the trickery of tariff juggles, the tyranny of a party machine, sentiment by the bucketful, patriotism by the imperial pint... dear food for the million, cheap labour for the millionaire.'

Anti-establishment movements are essential in creating proper checks on the power of any organised body with the power to affect our world. But indiscriminately lashing out at the complexities associated to the newer, bureaucratic political world, misses the point.

Tearing down the structures put up as guards against corruption and poverty will only serve to give room for those evils once more. The barriers that populist parties, like UKIP, wish to see thrown down were not constructed as annoyances. We need better regulations - based on a solid understanding of the purposes behind them - and to make those regulations we have more efficient. We do not need to take bulldozers to them indiscriminately.

When delving into political matters, vigilance against our own passions and reactions is always necessary, lest in our anger we lash out at barriers without understanding, and find them to have been safeguards against the re-emergence of old evils all along.

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References:
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+ David Randall's 'Special Report: What voters should know about Ukip'; in The Independent; 3 March 2013.

+ UKIP Manifesto; April 2010; from UKIP.org, manifesto section.

+ Ashcroft's 'Lord Ashcroft: Here's why Eastleigh voted the way it did'; on conservativehome.blogs; 1 March 2013. Also covered by The Guardian, 1 March 2013.

+ Hans Rosling's 'The Joy of Stats'; on BBC4; 7 December 2010. See an excerpt here.

+ Andrew Marr's 'The Making of Modern Britain'; Macmillan, 2009. [Buy Now]

+ Roy Jenkin's 'Churchill'; Pan Macmillan, 2001. [Buy Now]

- Some articles on the changing attitudes toward poverty in Edwardian Britain:
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/lesson29.htm
http://jadesmg.hubpages.com/hub/Changing-attitudes-towards-Poverty-in-Britian
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty,_A_Study_of_Town_Life