Well, this is one of my bugbears, because the discussion on FWR is usually framed as how do we stop populism?
I know populism can go off the rails if you're not careful, but it's my firm view that democracy needs a certain amount of populism to function. Even if it's not possible for politicians to always give the voters what they want, there should be a bias towards meeting the voters half way, giving them what they want if it's workable, and talking to them like adults when what they want isn't workable. Because democracy has to rest on popular consent.
What we've predominantly got in the political class is a kind of anti-populism. Listen to high priests of the regime like Alastair Campbell and Neil Kinnock, and they'll openly say that the purpose of politics is to save the people from their own base instincts.
To translate: we need an expert caste to rule us for our own good. We will eat our broccoli and like it.
We're a broad church on FWR, and I think many here would be happy with that if the expert political caste would recognise what a woman is. Then there are those of us who think, if they've lied to us about something that basic, what else are they lying about, and spot parallels with other things.
I think the post-1997 UK regime is on its last legs, for a whole number of reasons. But you can see the fragility in the attempts to manage the narrative. The definition of disinformation, in the hands of people like Morgan McSweeney (look up the "Centre for Countering Digital Hate") has now been expanded to include things that are actually true but unhelpful to the government.
This brittle orthodoxy really is end of regime stuff. It makes Starmer look like a sort of Erich Honecker of Blairism.