Populism and Nationalism

Baroness Finn Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, for calling this important debate on the challenges posed to the liberal international order. I should say from the outset that I am a firm believer in that order and in a rules-based international system; indeed, I am here today because of it. My father defected from communist Czechoslovakia. He arrived in the liberal West as a refugee and went on to gain a place at Princeton University and become a professor at IMD, the international Swiss business school. It is something that I have never forgotten and for which my family will always be indebted and grateful.

No one on these Benches is likely to defend demagoguery or so-called post-truth politics. Yet it is all too easy to be lofty about populism. We should remember that none of us was elected to this Chamber by popular vote. Indeed, many of us, myself included, have never been elected by popular vote. We need to be especially careful that we avoid even a scintilla of condescension or disdain for the concerns of normal people. Most people are not prone to intolerance or prejudice and we should always challenge the demonisation of minority groups both at home and abroad.

It is too simple, however, to dismiss a politician seeking to address legitimate popular concerns as a populist. It is precisely that undertone of incomprehension, merging sometimes into contempt, that is causing damage to politics right across the West. Take, for example, Italy. Last month Matteo Renzi’s failure to secure approval for a series of complex constitutional changes was widely attributed to populism, yet many Italians had substantive and legitimate concerns about the proposals themselves. Some feared, ironically, that the very same populist politicians opposing the changes could benefit from them in the future. They worried that the proposed weakening of the upper House would give politicians such as the Five Star Movement a greater ability to change the country for the worse if they were to gain control of the lower House. Those people therefore voted alongside the Five Star Movement against the proposed changes. A vote dismissed as populist was for many the exact opposite.

There were others in the Italian referendum who may have chosen to vote with the Five Star Movement because they felt it understood, better than other politicians, Italy’s contemporary problems. Italy has suffered two lost decades of growth and the danger to Italian politics has been the failure by mainstream politicians seriously to address this. All of us who are truly democrats must remember the importance for politicians of understanding the reasonable concerns of the electorate.

The noble Lord, Lord Bruce, asks us to take note of the challenges posed by nationalism as well as populism. Here, too, we must be cautious. As I said at the beginning, I believe passionately in an international order, and that order ought to be just that: international. A system of nation states, freely trading with one another under the rule of law, remains the most effective way of protecting personal rights and enriching peoples. It must surely be legitimate for those nation states to defend their own borders and define their own national narrative.

I do not believe that the damage to western politics is inevitable or irreversible. I thought the Prime Minister was right in her speech at Davos to talk about the need to respond to those who feel left behind by globalisation. She was right to address it and right to resist the siren calls to slow or reverse the open movement of talent, trade and investment that, for me, is an indispensable part of the liberal international order. At our best, this has always been the British way and I believe it will continue to be so.