The People's Forum: Thoughtful post - the problem of populism vs professional politicians…

The consolidation of a professional political class has been long in the making and yes, one facet of this is overrepresentation by lawyers. Such professionalisation is perhaps inevitable, but as a poster said below, the products of mainstream politics have become considerably harder to sell to an increasingly fragmented and impatient electorate since the financial crash. Optimistic narratives about globalisation and technological change run up against the reality of stagnant wages, widening inequality and shrinking resources to sustain a welfare state. When mainstream politics struggles to deliver, electorates become ever more sceptical of its tired clichés and evasive language.

This has created us base for populist politics, particularly in its right-wing form. This often focuses on authoritarian .outsiders' who appear to be more 'authentic' to sections of the electorate who have been culturally and economically left behind. This anti-elite politics is utterly fake as nothing populist do threatens the corporate elite, who either back or benefit from them. Nor do populists actually deliver The promised glorious future or indeed the return to past nostalgia.

The left finds it much harder to construct a populist project because it is stuck inside identity politics whose main effect is to Hector, sneer and police the thoughts of anyone outside the progressive consensus.(see clip posted by Maximus)

We are stock in search of a radical, realist politics that can offer transformative change in a language and emotional register that electorates might find meaningful.

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Political education of the population is terrible and political journalism is equally terrible and increasingly cozily sycophantic. 24/7 media and social media mean all sorts of crackpot ideas find a platform and repetition makes them seem less unacceptable. Others actively see benefit to themselves in undermining established institutions and processes.

Politics by focus group and spin has become increasingly principle free propaganda and that only plays into the hands of those trying to perpetuate distrust and disillusionment.

Funding of politics is an opaque free-for-all ripe for corruption. Global finance in the online age is filled with murky characters who prioritise personal gain above all. Regulators are largely toothless and ineffective.

Global conflicts and criminal gangs have together created a substantial increase in migration by ‘unconventional’ means at a time when even conventional migration was causing localised social and economic issues in some disproportionately hit, often poorer, communities (even if the national impact was positive).

The laws and legal structures we rely on are less robust than many believed having been drafted from the flawed assumption that people would be honest/honourable.

Lots of people are struggling and they/their families have been largely failed by business as usual politics for generations. They have no faith in mainstream politics and are easy-pickings for outsider ‘politicians’ offering up scapegoats and simple ‘solutions’.

We could keep going but in essence there is much wrong across so many aspects of our societies that our political systems are increasingly unstable. Things got worse from 2010 in a UK but I think many of the issues date back much further.

It would take a massive, sustained, sincere, widely supported principles-led anti-corruption purge to even begin to reset things. That is as likely as a Dyche team having 90% possession over a season.

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genuinely interested. When did the rot really set in?