Populism and Nationalism

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord on his timing: tomorrow, under the populist President Trump, we will see American power renewed and reasserted, while this week the Davos elites are holding a wake at the death of their globalisation dream. I entirely support the rules-based international order as enunciated by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, but that is a million miles away from international liberalism, which I do not support.

Never have I more enjoyed reading the left-wing press—I read them all, every day—with its agonising articles, in the Independent, the Guardian, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the New Statesman, all complaining about the rise of populism. I have them all here. These articles are in four contradictory groups. First, there is absolute outrage that the right has commandeered populism, which has been, ought to be and is the sole preserve of the left; secondly, there is anguish that their enlightened socialism/liberalism has not been understood by the ignorant masses, such as white van man and redneck man; thirdly, populism must be completely denounced now that Brexit and Trump have won; and fourthly—but only in the Guardian, the Independent and the New Statesman—“How can we turn Jeremy Corbyn into a left-wing populist to capture the populist vote?”. I kid you not—I have the articles here.

Populism and populist leaders were to be applauded so long as they were all extreme left, such as Castro, Chavez, Fernandez de Kirchner and Evo Morales. However, as soon as the people in the US and England supported Trump and Brexit, the whole left, elitist, liberal establishment decided that populism is a bad thing and the very devil incarnate. In an article in the New Statesman entitled, “The Strange Death of Liberal Politics”, the left-wing writer John Gray writes:

“As it is being used today, ‘populism’ is a term of abuse applied by establishment thinkers to people whose lives they have not troubled to understand. A revolt of the masses is under way … the ordinary men and women at whom they like to sneer”.


International liberalism is easily identified by looking at its principal proponents, such as those regular Davos attenders, just denounced by the Prime Minister this morning. It says something about the Davos elite when the keynote speaker defending globalisation is that paragon of democratic and human rights—the President of China. It is people like Juncker, with his notorious saying,

“If it’s a Yes, we will say ‘On we go’, and if it’s a No, we will say ‘we continue’”,


or President Obama, interfering in our referendum vote telling us to vote yes, and then the preposterous John Kerry saying that Trump should not have commented on internal German politics. To paraphrase the late, great Willie Whitelaw, he wanders the world “stirring up apathy”.

Tomorrow, we will be rid of the most useless American President I have ever seen in my entire lifetime, whose only legacy is rhetoric. He has withdrawn America from the world stage and left a disastrous vacuum that has been filled by Putin and China. He withdrew troops prematurely from Iraq and allowed ISIL to flourish. He laid down “red lines” on the use of gas in Syria, but did nothing to enforce them when they were breached. He turned a blind eye to Russian hacking for seven years and nine months but suddenly became concerned about it after Hillary lost the election. But never mind, he has his place in history: the next time I visit the United States, I will be able to use the transgender toilets.

I quote President Obama because I consider him to be a perfect example of the liberal international order which is now being routed around the world. But among all the articles I have read in the last two months, crying about the death of international socialism, the odd bit of truth and self-awareness creeps in. Mr Timothy Garton Ash, writing in the Guardian on 13 October, says:

“Liberal internationalists have to own up: we left too many people behind”.


The BBC home affairs editor, writing on 23 December about his visit to Port Talbot, said that people,

“did not think anyone was listening to them. They felt powerless and ignored ... people all over Britain were desperate for a democratic system that gave them some semblance of control over their destiny, in a globalised and interconnected world where decisions often seem to be made by anonymous elites a long way away”.

I say to the noble Lord that there is no challenge to the current international order because I think that its time is over and it is finished.

No one can accuse the Labour Party of not being democratic. I would never dream of doing that, because it is democratic. The Independent of 20 December reported:

“The Labour Party is ‘ramping up’ preparations to relaunch Jeremy Corbyn as a left wing populist”.


It continues that senior party officials believe that his,

“unpolished authenticity could gather support from the same anti-establishment sentiment that has heralded the popularity of … Donald Trump and Nigel Farage”.

So there you have it: populism is a wicked and evil thing if it is a right-wing President Trump but a great thing if it is a socialist Corbyn. Nobody can do hypocrisy better than the left liberal elites.