When trust leaves the room, populism like a cancer grows

If trust in politics fails, it opens the door to autocratic snake oil salesmen. We are in a moment where trust has left the building and the vacuum created is causing us to abandon common sense.

Photo Illustration/Getty Images

As someone who has been around the block a few times and witnessed a litany of political failures, pointless wars, and economic calamities at the hands of incompetent politicians, you would think the situation we find ourselves in today would be just another day to me. Let me be very clear: it’s not, and if we continue to treat it as a passing phase, nothing will change. Despite two world wars and countless military adventures to secure oil and resources, it seems we have learned very little.

I’m afraid it speaks to who we are as a species, and the uncomfortable truth is that we have become a threat to our own existence. Far too many of us have abandoned critical thinking and common sense, instead placing our trust in incompetent, self-serving elected representatives to decide what’s best for us. History tells us that, time and time again, affordability and a lack of opportunity provide fertile ground for malign political actors to sell us the fairytale that they are the only ones who can save us from imminent further decline.

It’s all about creating political Patsies to divert the masses' attention and creating an enemy for us to focus on. You will note that the enemy is NOT the rich; it’s immigrants and ‘lazy people’. There’s no sophisticated magic formula; it’s just about creating a boogeyman, mixed with a cocktail of religion and a copious helping of lies, topped with promises of a land of milk and honey. It’s somewhat ironic when you think that lies and persecution are the antithesis of the moral values that define religion. The common-sense question would be, “Which idiot would fall for that nonsense? In the US, over 70 million did just that in 2024, and here we are.

Unfortunately, we’re at sea on an ocean of greed-fueled debt with no land in sight. For 90% of the population, there is no happy ending to this Shakespearean tragedy. The only survivors on this voyage to moral self-destruction will be the asset class, and that’s exactly as they have designed it to be. Any loyalty to the human labour that produced the very wealth they enjoy is fast disappearing, because just as corporate America threw the workforce under the bus in search of cheap Chinese labour, they believe AI will deliver the technological equivalent to slash the cost of human labour yet again, making workers irrelevant in large swathes of the economic landscape.

The last time the wealth gap was as large as it is today, it took 2 World Wars and the Great Depression to level the playing field, but the rich learned from that mistake, as demonstrated in the 2008 crash and the subsequent pandemic in 2020. Far from reducing the wealth gap, it accelerated, proving that they have now insulated themselves from the mistakes of the past. If only we could do the same with wars, maybe the US might win one.

By the law of averages, we are in pitchfork territory, and revolution should be beckoning. I have said many times before that we are where we are through choice. The US chooses not to provide healthcare to all its citizens. In what bizarre times do you host the football World Cup, and you, as the host nation, are the only one among the competing nations NOT offering universal healthcare as a right? It’s a choice not to provide paid family leave and a living wage, not a necessity. Until we come to terms with that, how can we make progress on a fairer society? The short answer is that the last thing these monsters want is a fairer society. There is no upside for them in such a world.

Tragically, given the makeup of the current Democratic leadership, these aren’t things that can be delivered by electing a Democratic President either; years of electing them have proved that. We need to stop thinking that changing deregulated, free-market, unbridled capitalism is a simple matter of handing corporate America a blue suit to wear instead of a red one. The system is rotten to its very core, and until a leader comes along who redesigns the economic engine, I’m afraid we are destined once again to suffer the same old failure through tokenistic change.

Please don’t misunderstand: I remain optimistic that we are not ultimately destined for failure, but I remain sceptical that a change of government is the simple answer either. Of course, leadership under a Democratic government will be less autocratic, less cruel and hopefully fairer. But the inability to put people before the party and turn down a seat on the special-interest gravy train has become an inevitable fact of life in modern politics. Democrats simply offer an easing of the ‘foot on the neck’ politics that American society has become accustomed to. Indeed, the current Democratic leadership’s proposition to the American people is as it has been since 2016: vote for us because the other guy is a fascist.

There is no better example of politics out of control than in the UK, where we have had 6 new Prime Ministers in a decade, and we are about to make it 7 in a matter of weeks, assuming Andy Burnham takes the role next month. It’s simply not normal and is a testament to the chaos caused by Brexit in 2016, when right-wing populism made its debut alongside Trump. In a world of sound bites, social media and memes, we have become a society addicted to quick fixes. Changing Prime Ministers has become the new political speed dating, and serving a full parliamentary term is the exception rather than the rule.

For context, unlike in the US, the UK Parliamentary system elects a PARTY and NOT a Prime Minister. In 2024, the British people elected a Labour government, and the party leader became the Prime Minister; that’s how the system was designed to work. Should the Prime Minister subsequently resign as Keir Starmer has during a Parliamentary term, he or she is then replaced by the choice of his/her parliamentary party colleagues. Usually, there is an internal election in which the parliamentary member with the most votes is handed the keys to 10 Downing Street. In the current situation, following Keir Starmer's resignation, it appears that Andy Burnham is unopposed to date. This means that there would be a simple transfer of power next month.

We can discuss whether a new leader should trigger a General Election, but on that basis, we would have had 3 more elections, as the Conservatives played musical chairs during their 14-year tenure in government. I personally believe that a change in leadership should indeed trigger a General Election, if only to stop this swipe left political mentality that has become a cancer. Having said that, as noted by Andrew Blick in a piece for History and Policy entitled “Unelected” Prime Ministers:

In the UK, prime ministers are not popularly elected. Unlike, say the presidents of France or the United States, voters do not choose them directly. Prime ministers are appointed by the monarch and retain their office by virtue of their ability to command the confidence of the House of Commons. While ‘confidence’ as a concept is difficult to define with precision, it does not rest directly on the support of voters. Normally, it involves being the accepted leader of a party with a majority in the Commons. The connection to the electorate is that it chooses the members of the House of Commons to act as its representatives.

So why have I deviated from my story? For good reason, which will prove a litmus test for whether a change of leadership can protect and preserve a fragile democracy under attack from the very same malign forces that are currently tearing America apart. It is worth noting that the US right is also supporting far-right parties in the UK and across Europe. I know the British Parliamentary system intimately, just as I do the US system. Much like the US, the British system has long been a two-party system until the likes of Nigel Farage (Reform UK) and Rupert Lowe (Restore Britain), along with a resurgence of the left-wing Green Party under Jack Polanski, have recently changed the electoral landscape.

Just as the US has seen a rise in far-right-wing politics, so have we here in the UK. The growing popularity of the right, allied with what appears to be an alignment of the mainstream media with their messaging, is almost a mirror image of what is happening in America. We, too, have swing seats, which play a disproportionate role in determining which party is elected to government. Now we even have our own version of Fox News called GB News. In 2024, Keir Starmer’s Labour Party was elected to power in what was regarded as a landslide, but just as Trump claimed a landslide, having been elected by just 34% of eligible voters, Starmer, too, won a working majority of 165 seats with just 33.7% of the national vote.

It all points to one common conclusion: there is a massive trust deficit in politics on both sides of the Atlantic, and that’s a major problem. The reason populists are able to break through is that they identify our fears and create a narrative around them in order to weaponise our anxiety. What could be simpler than creating an illusion that we are becoming increasingly less well off because of immigrants, layabouts, and gay people? It requires no thought on our part because the answer to all our problems has been handed to us by a guy who is ‘just one of us’. Someone who’s not a politician but a perceived successful businessman, despite, in Trump’s case, being responsible for SIX bankruptcies. It seems people are wedded to someone who’ll run the country like a business. What could possibly go wrong?

Here in the UK, before Starmer was elected in 2024, the UK had endured 14 years of Conservative rule that had not just delivered Brexit but also a Prime Minister NOT elected by the people, who, in a catastrophic mini-budget, lost £30 billion overnight, £20 billion in unfunded tax cuts for the rich and £10 billion in higher interest rates from government borrowing that were the result of the £20 in unfunded tax cuts. The bottom line is that this has resulted in an estimated 6% loss of GDP from Brexit alone. At a conservative estimate, it has cost the UK economy over £1 trillion in the decade since the UK left Europe. We have become the poster boy for a failed, nationalist-driven, isolationist policy. An example of what NOT to do.

Image - SAUL LOEB / AFP via Getty Images

What I’m trying to do here is to highlight that you don’t have to speculate on the outcome of Trump’s economic agenda; simply look across the pond for all the affirmation you need that it doesn’t work. It’s just easier for Trump to hide the evidence, given that the US holds the world’s reserve currency. Just as in all his businesses, he can cook the books, which appears to be exactly what he’s doing. Tracking US economic performance is opaque, to say the least; hence, Trump is able to perpetuate the false success narrative propped up by US taxpayers paying the price.

I think I can say, without fear of contradiction, that once Trump is in the rearview mirror, the revelations of corruption currently hidden will be off the charts. Trump is a man who has played fast and loose with the law all his life. I think we can safely say that nobody knows how to cheat better than he, and Lord, has he cheated the American people since he came to power for the second time.

The problem we face on both sides of the pond is that our way of life is under siege by a dark force that wants to run government like a transnational business. On paper, it seems like a sensible approach, except that governing a population is not the same as controlling a workforce. In a workforce, you get to choose who you employ; in a nation-state, you don’t. There can be no doubt that both governments and businesses have a fiduciary responsibility to investors. Just as investors put their trust in a business to deliver a return on their investment, voters lend their vote to a government, trusting that they will see steady growth in prosperity and security. How is that going for the bottom 90%?

The common denominator is prosperity, but delivering that prosperity is very different for society versus the wealthy elite. Can you imagine a set of asset-rich, wealthy investors being dictated to as to how they should invest their money? I think not, yet that’s EXACTLY what happens to taxpayers. Americans, as taxpayers, are the largest investors in US LLC. 90% of government revenue comes from individual and corporate income taxes, payroll taxes, and consumption taxes. In 2025, the US collected $5.23 trillion in tax revenue, which is roughly 17% of GDP. The only problem is that it spent $7.01 trillion, resulting in a $1.78 billion deficit. There is little accountability for spending like drunken sailors to make the rich richer, while the rest are left to scratch their heads as their prosperity evaporates.

Surely the US taxpayers should sack the CEO, and the cabinet should resign because the business is insolvent. You might say, That’s what elections are for, and you would be right if those elections are free and fair, but what happens when the guy spending all your money without your consent decides that he should choose the voters rather than the voters choosing to decide whether to show him the door?

Now I’m back in the writing seat after a short absence, and I’m pleased to say my daily contributions are back as of today. My garden remodel is now in the final stretch, and I’ll share some images of the fruits of my labour in a couple of weeks once the planting and final touches are in place. I decided to do all the lifting in a concerted effort, culminating in a week spent filling a dumpster with garden debris from my ground-clearing work. The next couple of weeks are about the creative part of a planting scheme to work hand in hand with my new veg planting area; the backbreaking elements are thankfully complete; it’s now about creating a tapestry of a space of beauty to sit and write in, as was my original plan just a short time ago.

It’s a pleasure to be back, and I am really looking forward to sharing thoughts that have accumulated since my green-fingered adventure began, and there are MANY. This week, we’ll examine in detail my thoughts on the transformative change required and how I believe it can be delivered regardless of which side of the pond you live on, if we can just muster the strength, fortitude, and vision to believe in better. Change can only emerge from a new generation of ‘people-first’ leaders. Those leaders DO exist; we just have to give them the time and space to create a new proposition for a better, fairer, and more prosperous tomorrow.

If you appreciate my work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to help offset some of the ever-increasing costs of research and analysis. It really does make a big difference and is always greatly appreciated.