Populism and Nationalism

Lord Bruce of Bennachie Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2017 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Bruce of Bennachie]

That this House takes note of challenges to the liberal international order posed by the development of populism and nationalism around the world.

[Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)]

My Lords, I am pleased to be able to move the Motion in my name. I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Lords’ Interests.

Tomorrow, President Trump will be inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States. This is something that most commentators did not expect and critics did not take seriously. Indeed, it appears that the majority of American voters did not, and do not, want it. In March, Theresa May will trigger Article 50 to begin the process of leaving the European Union—again, unexpected and not overwhelmingly supported. Because these events were not predicted by most decision-makers, the populist and nationalist rhetoric that fuelled the campaigns were not challenged as forcefully and effectively as many of us feel they should have been.

How did we get here, and what should we do about it? It appears now to be conventional wisdom that globalisation has led to increasing complexity across society and across the world, and this has also led to inequalities of impact, even given that the world economy has grown faster as a result of globalisation. The shock of the 2008 crash has exacerbated all this. Post-war decades of sustained improvement in living standards have been followed by a period of relative stagnation for many individuals and communities. Well-paid industrial jobs have been lost and have been replaced by, in many cases, lower-skilled and lower-paid jobs. Public investment has been cut, services are under pressure, and that is leading to a sense of alienation—aggravated, I would suggest, by the conspicuous earnings and consumption of a few individuals and corporates at the top, who are beyond the reach of Governments, in some cases, being internationally footloose.

Into this ferment, populist and nationalist movements have found opportunity to exploit grievance and fuel anger. The standard analysis from them has been along these lines: “The liberal elite are out of touch. They don’t care about you”. Ironically, these words have been delivered by well-off, expensively educated groups, who have not themselves suffered as those they seek to recruit. Being dedicated to promoting anger and resentment, with a chorus of media cheerleaders behind them, it has been relatively easy to build support in the wake of complacency among those who believed that the benefits of international trade and open liberal societies were somehow self-evident. Misrepresentation of facts, contempt for experts or informed opinion, and the promoting of lies, half-truths and post-truths have gone largely unchallenged, in the belief that established wisdom would prevail.

We have seen the success of the Brexit campaign, the election of Donald Trump and the rise of populist and nationalist movements across Europe. Their success at storming the bastions of the established order has not been replicated by them in the form of any coherent analysis or forward plan. It is characterised by a series of vacuous slogans such as, “I want my country back”, and “Make America great again”, implying some vague, half-remembered and non-existent memory of a golden age. In Scotland, the SNP slogan is similar: “Help us build a better Scotland”.

Now that these movements have secured their place in decision-making, what will they do? The Brexiteers do not agree on how leaving the EU should be achieved and what form non-membership of the EU should take. I suggest that Theresa May has hijacked the referendum, claiming that it meant the end of freedom of movement and leaving the single market, when no such clarity of intent conceivably exists. More seriously, she does not appear to take account of how the other 27 members will react. She seems to think we can leave the EU without making any further contribution or being bound by any of the rules, but retaining most of the benefits. What it may mean for immigration is even less clear. We will end free movement but continue to accept immigrants on our own terms, yet many—but by no means all—of those who voted to leave did so in the belief that we could halt or drastically reduce immigration. It is now pretty clear that that is not going to happen.

Another strand of the argument was that we could bring home the budget and spend it on the health service. Looking at the Trump agenda, we see similar manifestations. Just as leaving the EU appears to mean tearing up not just our comprehensive trade agreement within the single market but all the EU external trade deals, so US international trade agreements are to be torn up or abandoned. On the one hand, we are being lectured that the existing agreements inhibit trade, with no evidence to support that assertion; on the other hand, the new world order starts with scrapping most of the international agreements. In America, restrictions are to be put on Muslim immigrants to the USA, millions of Mexicans are to be deported and a wall is to be built at the Mexicans’ expense. The implication is a bit like a movie being reversed: the loss of jobs and investment in America’s rust belt—or the north of England, the south-west or south Wales—will simply be reversed.

How should we respond to this challenge? First, we must face down lies and misinformation and offer alternative information. We must demand explanations of policy options that can address the grievances that are highlighted. We must also examine policy options which may aggravate grievance and promote those that can offset them. We should not overreact. George Osborne’s alternative budget undermined the case for remain by being far too specific about the likely outcome of a highly uncertain situation. We should surely avoid similarly vacuous or offensive slogans such as, “Brexit means Brexit”, “We will have a red, white and blue Brexit”, or, “If you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere”. Actually, that is precisely how some global corporations choose to behave.

In Scotland during the independence referendum, we had some success in facing down the claims of the nationalists, notably their claim that Scotland could leave the UK and keep the pound. Actually, they asserted that they could keep the pound under more favourable terms than any of the regions of the remaining UK. But post-Brexit the nationalists are at it again. Having spent almost nothing on the remain campaign, leading to SNP voters delivering the largest proportion of leavers, they are now expending a great deal of taxpayers’ money on a fruitless attempt to try to secure a deal that keeps Scotland in the EU as the rest of the UK leaves. This ignores the fact that the UK single market is crucial to Scotland and that the case, conditions and timescale for Scottish accession to the EU—post an independence referendum—are exceptionally uncertain.

Put together, all these arguments amount to: “Never mind the uncertainty. Although we have no idea what future arrangements can be achieved, how long they will take and how much damage will be caused by the long-term uncertainty, we should, to quote Churchill, ‘Just keep buggering on’”. I and these Benches beg to differ. To address Britain’s future responsibly, it is sensible to put the shape of our arrangements outside the EU to the people. Many of Britain’s friends—and America’s, for that matter—are concerned at where we might be heading. Are we turning in on ourselves? How will we work with allies as we dismantle many established co-operative arrangements?

Two issues which can act as litmus tests on how we face the world relate to our overseas aid programme and our membership of the European Convention on Human Rights. On the aid programme, the Government have made it clear that they will maintain their commitment to delivering 0.7% of GNI as aid. However, the Prime Minister has appointed an aid-sceptical Secretary of State and there has been a crescendo of media reporting with the objective of getting the budget cut. It is worth noting that social media and official comments coming from DfID consistently set out the positive achievements of our aid spending, but Ministers seem less willing to defend their department’s record, or at least to set it straight given the partial and inaccurate information in many reports. As it is, the dramatic increase in spending on humanitarian relief in the wake of the Syrian refugee crisis and the conflict in Yemen have led to some cuts in forward development programmes, which are further hit by the fall in value of the pound and deteriorating trade balances between the UK and developing countries. These development programmes are designed to build resilience and capacity, helping countries to better serve their own citizens and, in the long run, reduce their aid dependency. If we were to cut our spending and back away from longer-term commitments, it would reinforce the image of a Britain turning in on itself and away from its long-term relationships, many of which have involved close connections for two centuries or even more.

More alarming is Theresa May’s revival of her earlier ambition to take Britain out of the European Convention on Human Rights. She may seek to make an intellectual case for repatriating those rights and making the Supreme Court the final appeal. However, that would give an awful signal of a UK, which was the architect of the convention, downgrading its commitment to human rights in international law. In 2015, we celebrated the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, Britain’s gift to the foundations of political and human rights and the rule of law. The populists and nationalists whose voices are so loud now have, I suggest, at best a selective view of human rights but mostly a contemptuous one: that we should do whatever we please in whatever, at any given time, we believe to be the interests of the majority, however defined.

In four years, Americans will have the opportunity to throw out Donald Trump; by contrast, Theresa May has resolved that leaving the European Union, a highly complex process that fundamentally changes our constitution and redefines the rights of our citizens and legal residents in the UK, should be determined by a simple majority and resolved as she thinks fit. Few genuinely democratic constitutions can be changed so easily, certainly not the American one. That stance is, I suggest, profoundly undemocratic and entirely justifies the case for putting the shape of the final agreement to the people, whose motives and expectations on 23 June were clearly very mixed. What she claims to be a clean Brexit will be anything but.

We will not simply stand by if we see the Government taking free rein to pursue a strategy that we believe will leave Britain isolated and politically damaged for generations to come. We must not leave the field to the ultraconservative opponents of liberal and pluralist values. We must stand up to malicious populism and nationalism. To those hurting from the fallout of our faltering economies, we must show our determination that values of tolerance, openness and fairness can help to build vibrant and successful communities and opportunities across the whole of the United Kingdom and beyond.

It is not liberalism that has failed but the loss of liberal values, with too many financial and corporate institutions abandoning integrity and social responsibility, and political leaders tearing up the rulebook and undermining essentially liberal institutions. We should not succumb to the wreckers who are now in ascendancy. We should stand up to them and challenge them, with a reassertion of liberal values of fairness, inclusion, openness and tolerance. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bruce of Bennachie]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her very courteous and focused reply. I also thank all noble Lords who took part in the debate, which was thoughtful and wide-ranging. The right reverend Prelates gave us thoughtful and philosophical contributions which added considerably to the debate. I am grateful to the Minister for reiterating her commitment to 0.7%, and I am comfortable with 2% for defence as well. I say gently to the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, that as a consequence of the depreciation of the pound, our aid budget is already being sufficiently cut because of its reduced purchasing power and adverse trade relations with Africa, so we need to maintain it.

The particular point on populism was about addressing the interests of ordinary voters. There is no doubt at all that the populist and nationalist movements have done that very effectively, but I suggest to the House—I think the debate concurred with this—that it is liberal values and liberal institutions that will deliver the answers to those people. We have acknowledged our failings and our complicity in giving them disaffection, but it is up to us now to unite on measures which will show how liberal values can bring them back into the frame and address their concerns. I believe this debate has been a useful and constructive contribution to that.

Motion agreed.