Hello my name is David Ronsmann and this is Talking Politics. This week is one of our

regular episodes where we talk to a prominent contributor for the London

Rio books and I'm delighted to say today we're joined by Jan Werner Müller who's

written for the LRB over the past couple of years about Europe, the fate of

democracy, what politics means in Germany and about populism and that's what we're

going to talk about today. Talking politics is brought to you in partnership

with the London Review of Books, Europe's leading magazine of books and ideas.

There's a reading list of pieces to accompany this episode at lrb.co.uk forward

slash talking along with a special subscription offer for Talking Politics

listeners. Twelve issues of fearless, expansive, elegant writing for 12 pounds.

We're also joined this week by Helen Thompson, Chris Bickerton who's written

widely about populism. Helen not so much but she's certainly got views on this

subject. We're particularly going to focus on something that Jan wrote in the

period between Trump's election and his inauguration. So last December in the

LRB capitalism in one family which has stood the test of time pretty well I

think but is also an attempt to apply some of your arguments from your book, what

is populism to the Trump phenomenon and making some comparisons with other

authoritarian leaders around the world, other democracies. The core claim and

we'll talk about some of the other things too but the core claim and it comes

out of your wider work is that it's a mistake to assume that populism is a kind

of election winning strategy that you can get the votes by saying that elites

have stolen democracy and it's not a governing strategy because once you win as

...