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Hi there and welcome to The Restis Politics with just me, Alistair Campbell. We're doing something a bit different today.

Pretty much most weeks in the

four years we've done this podcast, Roy and I probably use the word populism. And we've taught

anxiously about the growing influence of populist leaders and populist appeal all around the

world. And I really wanted to get right to the bottom of why people do seem to feel such a pull

towards leaders that, frankly, Rory and I both see as charismatic charlatans, people like Trump,

people like Farage, people like Orban in Hungary.

And then even the ones that have been found out like Bolsonaro and Boris Johnson, there's still the kind of, oh well, you know, they're quite

this, they're quite that, they're quite funny, they get things done, which is nonsense.

And so what's it all about? And also, what does it mean? I think the word populism itself

needs a bit of kind of exploration and understanding. But above all, how do progressives,

Democrats, call them what you want? How do we counter it? And what's at the heart of it?

Is it a sense of personal loss? Is it that populace are the only ones who acknowledge what has been lost? And,

of course, as we see with all the false promises they make, that they're promising to return it all.

Or is it just kind of pure rebellion that people don't like the establishment, whatever that means,

don't like elites, whatever that means, and voting for these right-wing populists is a way of

kind of rebelling against that. So I've been thinking about this for many, many years. I've been

talking about it on the podcast with Rory. And then a few weeks ago, I got sent a book by the Labour MP

Liam Byrne.

The title says it all, why populace are winning and what we can do to beat them.

And Liam Byrne is a, he was a minister in the Labour government, which I worked for.

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