Tasos Papathanasiou gives his take on populism: it does not begin when voters lose their reason. It begins when politics loses its purpose.
24 February marks another year since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Yet, while the war grinds on abroad, its political consequences are unfolding quietly at home. Britain is still being asked to accept a familiar language of sacrifice — higher bills, tighter public finances, and lower expectations. What receives far less attention is what fifteen years of overlapping crises have done to Britain’s own democracy. My suspicion is that the damage runs deeper than we are willing to admit.
The rise of populist politics is often treated as a cultural malfunction. Voters, we are told, have grown irrational, tribal, or nostalgic. It is an explanation with the virtue of simplicity, but it also lets institutions off the hook. Britain did not drift toward populism because people suddenly lost their judgment. It did so because the political system gradually stopped delivering visible improvements in daily life and instead settled into governing through emergencies.
What I call permanent crisis politics has quietly become the default mode of modern British government. One emergency replaces another: the financial crash, austerity, Brexit, the pandemic, the energy shock, and now war in Europe, yet the country never returns to the slower work of reconstruction. Each crisis is framed as temporary. Taken together, they have become the norm. The real danger is not simply that Britain experiences crises, but that politics has become comfortable managing them rather than solving them.
For much of the post-war era, British democracy rested on a simple promise: different parties would offer different paths toward rising living standards. The pace might differ. The ideological language might clash. But the direction of travel was assumed to be upward. Since 2008, that assumption has steadily eroded. Politics increasingly resembles an exercise in damage limitation. The vocabulary shifted to familiar phrases, of hard choices, fiscal discipline, and there is no money left. Governments stopped promising progress and began promising restraint.
The consequences are visible. Trust in MPs has collapsed, electoral volatility has risen, and millions of voters no longer expect politics to make their lives materially better. When that expectation disappears, elections change character. They stop being contests of competing programmes and instead become opportunities to register anger.
Economic stagnation does not automatically produce populism, but it makes it plausible. Cultural conflict, media ecosystems, and social media amplification all play a role. Yet none of these forces gains mass traction without material frustration beneath them. When mainstream parties converge around competence, restraint and “stability”, they often leave a vacuum for actors who promise disruption.
Reform UK’s appeal lies less in policy detail than in tone. It speaks to a growing suspicion that the entire political settlement has stopped working. Its message is blunt: nothing will change unless something breaks. That message resonates not because voters have suddenly become irrational, but because too many people no longer experience the state as materially effective.
Under Keir Starmer, Labour’s tougher rhetoric on borders and enforcement reflects this altered political terrain. When governments struggle to promise rising wages or expanded public services, they often reach for something else: visible demonstrations of control.
Labour’s recent history reveals the deeper dilemma facing British politics. Under Jeremy Corbyn, the party attempted to articulate a break with the economic settlement that had taken shape after the financial crisis, proposing large-scale public investment, redistribution and a more assertive state. The project mobilised genuine political energy, even if it ultimately failed to persuade a majority of voters that it could govern credibly. By contrast, Labour’s recent landslide owed as much to the collapse of Conservative support as to a surge in enthusiasm for Labour itself. Britain changed governments, but the underlying economic settlement remained largely intact.
Nowhere are these tensions more visible than in the politics of migration. Immigration itself is not new to Britain. What has changed is the state’s ability to manage its consequences. High migration can be absorbed in societies where housing expands, public services function, and integration is properly resourced. In a country where housing is scarce, NHS waiting lists stretch for years and wages stagnate, migration becomes entangled with a broader sense that the state can no longer organise everyday life effectively.
The war in Ukraine intersects with this domestic unease in an uncomfortable way. Supporting Ukraine is not the problem. But it reveals something politically difficult to ignore: when the state decides something is strategically necessary, resources appear quickly. When it comes to rebuilding housing, health services or local government, we are suddenly told there is no fiscal space. Voters notice this contradiction.
Britain did not run out of money. It ran out of priorities.
This perception corrodes democratic consent. It suggests that the state retains capacity but hesitates to deploy it for domestic reconstruction. Once that belief takes root, appeals to responsibility begin to ring hollow. Democratic consent rests on a modest expectation: that participation in the political system can gradually improve one’s material conditions. When that expectation disappears, volatility is not irrational. It is predictable.
A democracy that can mobilise billions in moments of geopolitical urgency but struggles to invest in the foundations of everyday life will eventually face a reckoning. People will search for answers elsewhere – not because they have abandoned democracy, but because they are no longer convinced that democracy is working for them.
Populism does not begin when voters lose their reason. It begins when politics loses its purpose.
Britain Did Not Run Out of Money – It Ran Out of Priorities
Tasos Papathanasiou gives his take on populism: it does not begin when voters lose their reason. It begins when politics loses its purpose.
24 February marks another year since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Yet, while the war grinds on abroad, its political consequences are unfolding quietly at home. Britain is still being asked to accept a familiar language of sacrifice — higher bills, tighter public finances, and lower expectations. What receives far less attention is what fifteen years of overlapping crises have done to Britain’s own democracy. My suspicion is that the damage runs deeper than we are willing to admit.
The rise of populist politics is often treated as a cultural malfunction. Voters, we are told, have grown irrational, tribal, or nostalgic. It is an explanation with the virtue of simplicity, but it also lets institutions off the hook. Britain did not drift toward populism because people suddenly lost their judgment. It did so because the political system gradually stopped delivering visible improvements in daily life and instead settled into governing through emergencies.
What I call permanent crisis politics has quietly become the default mode of modern British government. One emergency replaces another: the financial crash, austerity, Brexit, the pandemic, the energy shock, and now war in Europe, yet the country never returns to the slower work of reconstruction. Each crisis is framed as temporary. Taken together, they have become the norm. The real danger is not simply that Britain experiences crises, but that politics has become comfortable managing them rather than solving them.
For much of the post-war era, British democracy rested on a simple promise: different parties would offer different paths toward rising living standards. The pace might differ. The ideological language might clash. But the direction of travel was assumed to be upward. Since 2008, that assumption has steadily eroded. Politics increasingly resembles an exercise in damage limitation. The vocabulary shifted to familiar phrases, of hard choices, fiscal discipline, and there is no money left. Governments stopped promising progress and began promising restraint.
The consequences are visible. Trust in MPs has collapsed, electoral volatility has risen, and millions of voters no longer expect politics to make their lives materially better. When that expectation disappears, elections change character. They stop being contests of competing programmes and instead become opportunities to register anger.
Economic stagnation does not automatically produce populism, but it makes it plausible. Cultural conflict, media ecosystems, and social media amplification all play a role. Yet none of these forces gains mass traction without material frustration beneath them. When mainstream parties converge around competence, restraint and “stability”, they often leave a vacuum for actors who promise disruption.
Reform UK’s appeal lies less in policy detail than in tone. It speaks to a growing suspicion that the entire political settlement has stopped working. Its message is blunt: nothing will change unless something breaks. That message resonates not because voters have suddenly become irrational, but because too many people no longer experience the state as materially effective.
Under Keir Starmer, Labour’s tougher rhetoric on borders and enforcement reflects this altered political terrain. When governments struggle to promise rising wages or expanded public services, they often reach for something else: visible demonstrations of control.
Labour’s recent history reveals the deeper dilemma facing British politics. Under Jeremy Corbyn, the party attempted to articulate a break with the economic settlement that had taken shape after the financial crisis, proposing large-scale public investment, redistribution and a more assertive state. The project mobilised genuine political energy, even if it ultimately failed to persuade a majority of voters that it could govern credibly. By contrast, Labour’s recent landslide owed as much to the collapse of Conservative support as to a surge in enthusiasm for Labour itself. Britain changed governments, but the underlying economic settlement remained largely intact.
Nowhere are these tensions more visible than in the politics of migration. Immigration itself is not new to Britain. What has changed is the state’s ability to manage its consequences. High migration can be absorbed in societies where housing expands, public services function, and integration is properly resourced. In a country where housing is scarce, NHS waiting lists stretch for years and wages stagnate, migration becomes entangled with a broader sense that the state can no longer organise everyday life effectively.
The war in Ukraine intersects with this domestic unease in an uncomfortable way. Supporting Ukraine is not the problem. But it reveals something politically difficult to ignore: when the state decides something is strategically necessary, resources appear quickly. When it comes to rebuilding housing, health services or local government, we are suddenly told there is no fiscal space. Voters notice this contradiction.
Britain did not run out of money. It ran out of priorities.
This perception corrodes democratic consent. It suggests that the state retains capacity but hesitates to deploy it for domestic reconstruction. Once that belief takes root, appeals to responsibility begin to ring hollow. Democratic consent rests on a modest expectation: that participation in the political system can gradually improve one’s material conditions. When that expectation disappears, volatility is not irrational. It is predictable.
A democracy that can mobilise billions in moments of geopolitical urgency but struggles to invest in the foundations of everyday life will eventually face a reckoning. People will search for answers elsewhere – not because they have abandoned democracy, but because they are no longer convinced that democracy is working for them.
Populism does not begin when voters lose their reason. It begins when politics loses its purpose.
Author
Invest in Students, Not Arms, says trade union UNISON
The Horror of Obsession is the Loss of Body Autonomy
Glasgow STAR Celebrates the Beauty of the Voice