Peter Hyman was an advisor to Blair, and was then brought back to steer Starmer’s campaign as well. In article in The New European (editor one Alistair Cameron) that, presumably, is intended to be thought provoking to the left, but which is of no surprise to those of us looking a things through a wider lens, he succinctly summarises where liberal/centre left/right political is at, without resorting to taunts of “far right” and ‘“Tory bo t”, so I thought perhaps it might spark a more centre/liberal debate than has otherwise been the case on MN recently. Some of those of a left leaning inclination might like to reflect on his analysis of their ‘waves of superiority’ and why they are flawed:
The tagline - “Stop shouting about how appalled we are by Trump and Farage and learn from our mistakes, to build our own disruptive new agenda of change, respect for ordinary people and pride in our country” sums it up neatly.
But first part of the article is pasted below as the New European is behind a paywall.
2025 is the year of Donald Trump’s return. It must also be the year of our fightback. But first, let’s step back. We are to blame for Trump. We created him. We gave him, and other far right populists, the space to manoeuvre and the mistakes to exploit.
We couldn’t beat someone with 34 felonies, who called all Mexicans rapists, who encouraged an insurrection, was called Hitler by his vice president and deemed unfit for office by almost every senior person who worked for him. We are the reason he is becoming president on January 20 – for the second time.
It is our collective failure – we, the progressives, the centrists, the remainers, the political elites. It’s look-in-the-mirror time. Cold water to the face time. Enter the I’m A Celebrity… jungle and eat a kangaroo’s penis time.
We have been asleep at the wheel while the populists have dusted off their megaphones, fine-tuned their algorithms, and got to work exploiting the gaping chinks in our armour. Yet somehow, we are undeterred. We are still surfing wave after wave of superiority, each one propelling us forward to the promised land of political oblivion.
The first wave is to denounce the far right populist as a monster; worse, a fascist – “he’s a threat to democracy”. “Surely this must disqualify him?”
The second wave is to be shocked that the “fascist” has won – “why are people so stupid?” “Can’t they see he is a con man?”
The third wave is to wrap ourselves in the smug embrace of a certainty – populists never have solutions, they thrive on grievances, not answers. “Mark my words, it will all go wrong very quickly.”
Just as with Brexit, nine years on, we comfort ourselves in being proved right usually well after we’ve lost the real battle and the damage has already been done.
Trump is the wake-up call that liberal democracy has needed. But it’s not the first. We’ve had the wake-up call of Brexit. Viktor Orbán in Hungary. Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. Giorgia Meloni in Italy. Coming soon, Marine Le Pen in France? The AfD in Germany? Perhaps even Nigel Farage in Britain?
Wake-up call after wake-up call. Yet we are still sleeping through the alarm, turning over and pressing the snooze button. We saw the storm too late; the world changed, and the centrists were left shouting “democratic norms” while the populists went viral.
In summary, according to his article, the Seven Deadly Sins of the Left are:
(1) It is patronising
(2) it is complacent
(3) it is too abstract
(4) its is censorious
(5) it is gullible
(6) its is conservative (small ‘c’)
(7) it is bland
Which begs the question, if their advisors know that, and why the public don’t like it, and how they’ve been outwitted, why aren’t they being advised better?
https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/how-you-can-beat-populism-peter-hyman/