For not understanding why "populism" is seen as such a bad thing

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Is the point of democracy not to have popular support?

The problem with populism is that it tells people what they want to hear without being able to make any of it happen. The Reform manifesto in the last GE was a perfect example.

And of course populism exists on both extremes of the political divide, and is a shitshow no matter where it is coming from.

I think people wanted national sovereignty. Why isn't that possible

I voted Reform with no idea what was in their manifesto. Why would it matter? Politicians renege on their word all the time. They weren't going to be in a position to implement it anyway.

To give a UK example, Nigel Farage is an example of a polulist. On the one hand, he claimed that Brexit would be the answer to everything.350m million for the NHS, less immigration? Fantastic what's not to like? Except for the fact that he knew that putting Brexit into practice would be somebody elses problem.

Then there is Reform UK Ltd. Once again, it claims to be the answer to all of the nation's problems. Once again, it is easy to promise the earth when you know you won't actually get into power.And on the off chance that he does get into power, his policies fall apart once you look at them for more than 5 minutes.

Disagree strongly with this. The right you speak of is a mirror image of the left who blame trabsphobes and racists for the crises they perceive

Corbyn iand Farage are both classic populists, suggesting simple solutions to complex problems.

"Kick out all the foreigns then everyone will have a job and house."
"Tax the millionnaires at 80% then everyone will have a free pony."

I wonder if you underestimate voters. For many, their opinion of politicians couldn't be lower. They're simply voting for who they feel despises them the least

And it looks to me that Farage knows that his policies are bullshit. Underestimating this man's intelligence is dangerous IMHO. He is actually a very savvy political operator, which is what makes him a danger to a certain very inexperienced government, with a PM what only became a politician in his 50's.
It also makes me wonder why his party is still a limited company, not a party, if he has serious ambitions to be PM.Basically, he wants to be a protest vote.

Can you give an example of a mirror image party on the left which reflects Reform and their policies?

Reform say that immigrants and asylum seekers are to blame for everything wrong with the country: housing crisis, infrastructure crisis, NHS crisis etc and the solution is to shut the door on immigrants.

Which left wing populist party is the mirror image?

With so many people on this thread believing the electorate have an IQ of 80, and many of the problems we face being so infinitely complex that we have little chance of finding any kind of consensus on what to do, let alone having access to the levers with which to do it - is that not all that is left? To put on a wee theatre show so we can all go and post our ballots and feel involved having 'participated' in 'democracy'

All politicians over promise. If you take the NHS, not a single political party is willing to be honest about the trade offs between quality of services and cost. They all claim to be capable of sorting it out. Mainstream politicians all bought into critical race theory and genderism, which are based on distorted assessments of reality, scapegoating others and envisaging a utopia in which all disparities are eliminated. Even feminists can be populists. Imo ‘populism’ is a matter of degree rather than type.

What's wrong with being a protest vote? There are no other channels through which a voter can signal their discontent. If that's all that's offered, these votes will naturally cluster there. Even if the only thing they have in common is 'none of the above'

Surely it’s corbyn’s labour? Blame the rich, blame the white/male/privileged, blame America, blame Israel…

s. "The Brexit vote was a good example of how populist politics exploits peoples' ignorance and prejudice and results in a poorer outcome for nearly everyone, except for the populists themselves."

Except there are good reasons to support brexit. I personally supported remain and am generally massively in favour of free trade but there are arguments on both sides. You can't just claim one opinion is invalid because you don't agree with it

Don't you think we should at least close the door until some of these crises have stabilised? Genuinely. Make it make sense

This. Populism is necessary in my view as a check to stop the elites getting too far from what the people actually want. But I do think traditional populism tends to be reactionary so tends to be short term dismantling of elite structures. This can be beneficial though eg Trump dismantling trans ideology and making sports safe and fair for little girls again

Corbyn hasn't been leader of Labour since 2020. Corbyn was talking about redistribution of wealth, poverty and elites hoarding wealth. He wasn't scapegoating a community and blaming them for everything wrong with society.

Surely it’s corbyn’s labour? Blame the rich, blame the white/male/privileged, blame America, blame Israel…"

@Clanke - absolutely. Scapegoat Jews or "global elites". Another side of the same coin

No because I don't think immigrants are solely responsible for everything the Tories did and we can't stop immigration. How is the NHS going to function without immigration?

I think the Trump 1.0 and 2.0 terms are interesting to watch.

Trump 1.0 is "tear it down, this is not working, the people are mad, the people have spoken, tear it down, I don't know how to fix this but it's simply got to go, so I'll claim anything outrageous to just make sure that happens"

Trump 2.0 is a team of people who've applied some intellectual effort to the problem and have thought through a set of policies and approaches that they think will be effective (regardless of whether you think those things are good or not, the energy is undeniably different this time)

I think they are both about listening to the will of the people, but there's a question of effectiveness. I put Brexit in that category - I think the Tories were out of their depth and didn't know how to lean on something other than immigration when shit hit the fan.

That isn’t what populism is.

Populism is triggering people’s emotions rather than rational thinking and pretending simple solutions to an ever more complex world’s problems will fix things.

"Corbyn hasn't been leader of Labour since 2000. Corbyn was talking about redistribution of wealth, poverty and elites hoarding wealth. He wasn't scapegoating a community and blaming them for everything wrong with society."

@username299 plenty corbynites are still in the Labour Party. Corbyn and his ilk are quite happy to blame certain communities for all the ills of society. He (together with John McDonald a then Labour mp and others) was arrested just a few weeks ago by the police for trying to march past a synagogue on one of their anti Israel marches. There absolutely is scapegoating in this part of the left.

If you voted for Brexit because you wanted to reduce EU immigration, you got it.
If you voted for Brexit because you wanted Britain's immigration policy to be decided by British politicians rather than the EU, you got it.

EU immigration is down. Overall immigration has shot up because British politicians basically opened the door to anyone who wasn't from the EU who was vaguely qualified to do a job in order to keep wages down. Brexit's a failure for the most part because our politicians made sure it was a failure. They made sure because they wanted to remain in the EU, so Brexit can't be seen as a success otherwise we'll never go back.

Yes, democracy should be that, but only up to a point. If you asked the population what the tax rate should be they'd probably settle on a very low number. I wouldn't start to pretend I'm informed enough to answer specific questions like that.

You have to form a committee of some kind to actually work out if we tax x amount we can do y etc. And then we vote for the committees (parties )that we feel do best overall/share our values. Really a lot of it is also about negative voting - the threat that voters will punish a government who have bad outcomes; holding people to account.

"No because I don't think immigrants are solely responsible for everything the Tories did and we can't stop immigration. How is the NHS going to function without immigration?"

@username299 there is certainly a broader issue here if we are relying on immigration to staff the nhs (there is conflicting evidence if this is true). I don't oppose immigration per se but we should be training adequate numbers of medical professionals and it seems that we are not. Of course then some may emigrate and we want to attract good quality emigrants but we should be training sufficient numbers of drs (etc) in the first place- and we are not.