Among liberals, “populism” is a warning sign. It brings to mind angry speeches, conspiracy theories, and politicians who promise easy answers while blaming outsiders. Many of us instinctively reject it.
That instinct is understandable. Yet it may also be a mistake.
Populism, at its core, is a simple claim. It says that power has become too concentrated in the hands of a few people, and that ordinary citizens deserve more control over the decisions that affect their lives. That idea is not automatically extreme or dangerous. In fact, it fits comfortably within the liberal tradition.
Liberals have always believed that power should be questioned. Governments should be accountable. Monopolies should not dominate markets. We believe communities should have a real voice in decisions that shape their future.
In other words, challenging concentrated power is not alien to liberalism. It is part of its foundation.
The problem is that the political right has largely captured the language of populism. Politicians such as Nigel Farage claim to speak for “ordinary people” against elites. The message is clear and emotionally powerful. They say the system is broken and someone is to blame.
Too often, liberals respond by rejecting the idea of populism outright. Politics should be calm, rational, and evidence-based. Those things matter. But when we refuse to speak about power, fairness, and frustration, we leave a vacuum. And someone else will fill it.
Many people across Britain feel that the system does not work for them. They see energy bills rising while large companies make huge profits. They see housing becoming harder to afford. They see decisions about their communities made far away in Westminster. Whether every complaint is justified or not, the feeling that the system is unfair is widespread.
If liberals cannot acknowledge that feeling, we risk sounding distant from everyday concerns.
The answer is not to copy the angry populism we see elsewhere. It is to build a different kind of populism. One that is socially liberal, democratic, and rooted in fairness.
A liberal populism would focus on the real issue: the concentration of power. It would ask why a handful of corporations dominate major sectors of the economy. It would challenge monopolies that raise prices and limit choice. It would be worth asking why so much political power is concentrated in Westminster rather than shared with local communities.
This argument is not new in British liberalism. When David Lloyd George introduced the People’s Budget in 1909, he did not shy away from confronting entrenched privilege. His argument was straightforward. Wealth and power should not be protected at the expense of the wider public.
That spirit remains relevant today.
A modern liberal populism would champion stronger local government and real devolution so that communities have a greater say over their own future. It would push for fair competition so that large corporations cannot dominate entire markets. It would demand higher standards in politics and an end to cronyism.
Most importantly, it would draw a clear line between challenging power and attacking people.
Authoritarian populists thrive on division. They blame migrants, minorities, or cultural enemies for society’s problems. Liberal populism must reject that approach completely. The problem is not diversity or openness. The problem is systems that allow power to concentrate without accountability.
That distinction matters because anger about unfair systems can be legitimate. People who feel ignored or powerless are not wrong to demand change. The question is how that anger is directed.
For the Liberal Democrats, embracing this language could also help reconnect the party with an important part of its identity. Liberal politics has often been presented as cautious or technocratic. Policies are explained carefully, but the moral argument sometimes gets lost.
Yet politics is not only about detailed policy proposals. It is also about values and power. Who holds power, who benefits from it, and how it should be shared.
Liberals should not abandon that conversation to others.
If we want to challenge illiberal populism, the answer is not to pretend the public has nothing to be angry about. It is to offer a better response. One that recognises unfairness, confronts concentrated power, and strengthens democracy rather than weakening it.
Populism does not have to mean prejudice. It can mean fairness, accountability, and a stronger voice for ordinary citizens.
Liberals should not fear that argument. We should lead it.
* Jack Meredith is a member of the Welsh Liberal Democrats and an active campaigner and canvasser with Swansea and Gower Liberal Democrats. His writing focuses on democratic reform, social justice, trade unionism, economic democracy, and the institutional foundations of effective government. He has written for the Fabians, Lib Dem Voice, Liberator, Nation Cymru, Bylines Cymru, and Centre Think Tank.
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17 Comments
I don’t have comments, but I appreciate the provocative piece.
Thank you.
I would be interested in a liberal view as to the Plan to give illegal migrants £10000 each to leave.
“Too often, liberals respond by rejecting the idea of populism outright.”
True. I have previously made the point that there’s no point in proposing policies which are likely to be insufficiently popular to have a chance of implementation. In a democracy any party has to be popular to win elections. It’s a fine distinction (too fine?) between being popular and ‘populism’.
The LIbDem penchant for trying to mitigate against increasing poverty via the taxation and social benefits systems is a prime example. The voters may go for wealth taxes but aren’t going to be in favour of higher taxes on them.
There needs to be a rethink on this.
Jack’s argument is more precise than the word “populism” might suggest. He’s pointing out that the liberal critique of concentrated power (which is foundational, not fashionable) connects with how a lot of people actually experience the world. That’s not electoral opportunism. It’s just following liberal principles honestly.
The goal isn’t to be populist. It’s to be consistent. And if we are, the argument will land with people’s real experience anyway, not because we’ve packaged it cleverly, but because it’s true.
Where this gets interesting is the Overton window question. You don’t shift what’s politically thinkable by finding the most palatable version of an argument. You shift it by making the principled case clearly and repeatedly, even when it’s uncomfortable.
The Liberal Democrats don’t need to adopt the language or register of populism. But we do need the courage to follow liberal logic wherever it leads: on power, on accountability, on who the economy actually serves. That hasn’t always been our instinct. There’s a tendency in the party to campaign on what seems winnable rather than what’s principled, or to distance ourselves from a good idea simply because another party is associated with it. Neither is a liberal reason to do anything.
If we get that right, the connection with people’s lives will take care of itself.
I’m with Tanya on this. For a start, to my mind “populism” is when politicians offer seductively simple, but impractical and undeliverable, solutions to complex problems. This often manifests itself via blame – blame the immigrants, the EU, judges or whoever.
To agree with Tanya and disagree with Peter – surely the job of politicians, particularly those of a liberal persuasion, is to try to lead the electorate when necessary rather than follow it?
Otherwise all parties will converge on the same narrow band of policy positions, arrived at without even a nod to principles and values. And frankly, a liberal party without principles is a pretty pointless thing.
@ Nick,
“surely the job of politicians, particularly those of a liberal persuasion, is to try to lead the electorate when necessary rather than follow it?”
Of course this sounds fine and highly principled. But, an alternative view would be that “politics is the art of the possible.” First said by Bismarck. It’s just as true now as it was in the 19th century.
I’m sure Lib Dems do want to banish poverty, so why not be more pragmatic and look ways that will generally be more acceptable to the electorate?
@Peter Martin, the art of the possible expands. That’s rather the point. Policies that seemed radical become mainstream not because politicians waited for permission, but because people made the case clearly and repeatedly until the ground shifted. Principled advocacy and pragmatic politics aren’t opposites; one is how you achieve the other. Abandoning principle in pursuit of acceptability doesn’t make you pragmatic. It just makes you ineffective, and a little pointless.
Populism is not so much opposing the concentration of power than it is opposing decisions that are being taken by those with power that impact adversely on the majority of ordinary people who don’t. We delude ourselves if we think we can ignore the decisions and issues that are driving people to back Reform and instead just speak about concentration of power.
So one thing that makes it very hard for Liberal Democrats to respond to populism is that it is very important to the Liberal Democrat self-image that they are the smartest people. So if anyone else reaches a conclusion which is not what the Liberal Democrat themselves has reached, it can only be because (charitably) they don’t have all the information or (uncharitably) they are to stupid to understand the issue. Because of course if they did understand the issue properly, they would agree with the Liberal Democrat.
In either case, the strategy is the same: the dissenter must have it explained to them, patiently, why they are actually wrong and the Liberal Democrat is actually right.
Of course, this comes across as incredibly condescending and patronising, and is not a good way to make friends, let alone get someone to vote for you.
This article is a perfect example: it starts from the premise that the Liberal Democrat knows what people are actually concerned about far better than they do, and therefore can tell them how to actually solve their real problems if only they had not been led astray by charlatans.
So the rest of the article is taken up with the question of how best to explain to people who disagree that they are wrong, that they are gullible, and that they should in fact agree with the Liberal Democrats.
Needless to say this will never be a winning electoral strategy!
I think this article very nicely captures a core point about politics, that you have to connect emotionally with people, and that requires more than being rational and evidence-based: It requires a degree of empathy and an ability to make people feel you are on their side. The problem is that actual workable policies are usually nuanced and generally come with all sorts of caveats. If your answers are simplistic one-word affairs, then it’s much easier to use them to create that emotional bond. I’m sure that’s a big part of the success of both Nigel Farage and Zack Polanski.
I’d challenge Jack on terminology though. When you say “Populism … says that power has become too concentrated in the hands of a few people, and that ordinary citizens deserve more control over the decisions that affect their lives. ” – unfortunately that is simply not what the word populism means (although the underlying point about people should have more control is indeed a big part of what we as liberals believe and should be pushing)
I also notice the only examples of populism you gave are right wing examples. We should acknowledge that left wing populism – which typically scapegoats rich people or companies or profits or alleged elites for all our problems – is just as harmful and divisive (look at Venezuela to see what happens when left wing populism gets out of hand).
I think “populism” is to an extent an even simpler claim than that – it’s the claim that the status quo isn’t working but can be fixed.
“Concentrated Power” forms a nice soundbite for whose fault the current problems are. (It’s even essentially true, which is a bonus). But the other half is missing from this proposal – what would Liberalism then do radically differently to the status quo?
Reform’s right-wing populism has an answer: they’d turn us into a macho white authoritarian ethnostate as both a means and as an end in itself.
The Greens’ left-wing populism has an answer: they’d focus heavily on environmental matters with the “economy” as an acceptable loss for the sake of the planet, and many of them would scrap capitalism entirely if they could (and consider your “against Concentrated Power” stance laughably naive if it didn’t plan to do the same)
“Liberal populism” … would do what?
@cim, The liberal remedy isn’t state control of the economy or nationalist retrenchment. It’s dispersal: break up concentrated ownership, reform political funding, introduce proportional representation, give people genuine economic security so they’re not dependent on whoever happens to employ them. The goal isn’t to replace one concentration of power with another, whether that’s a nationalising state or an authoritarian government. It’s to build systems where power can’t accumulate unchecked in the first place. That’s a genuinely distinct offer, and it’s more radical than it’s often presented.
@ Tanya Park It isn’t about state control of the economy, Tanya. It’s about introducing appropriate control, accountability and service levels in particular circumstances.
I frequently use LNER and Scotrail and have no regrets about losing their predecessors.
@Tanya Park This is my point – that’s mostly how the goals would be achieved, it isn’t for the most part what they are. Having disaggregated power to the necessary level, what would the Lib Dems then do with it?
“give people genuine economic security so they’re not dependent on whoever happens to employ them”
This bit could be the objective, then. I like it. But then what I don’t see is how the majority of liberal ideas seen on this site to achieve it (guaranteed basic incomes of various forms, better safety nets, more funding for carers, etc.) – none of them bad ideas – require decentralising power. Wouldn’t they be easier to implement from a strong central government? Given that people need genuine economic security right now, wouldn’t it be better to do that bit first and then decentralise power later?
There’s a danger that arguments get bogged down in definitions of words like ‘populism’. Jack makes the important point that to win against people like Reform UK we have to show we too are unhappy with the current systems and decisions in a number of ways and seek radical change. We are not happy with the establishment.
We can also claim to see that radical change needs to be both thinking outside the usual box and evidence based if it is to succeed.
ALL of this has also to be conveyed in language people can understand and illustrated by change of policies on issues they are concerned about. Like Farage, we need to spend more time going around the country engaging with people on this and therefore spending less time in Parliament.
@ Tanya,
“Abandoning principle in pursuit of acceptability doesn’t make you pragmatic…..”
The principles defined the strategy. The most important one, domestically, I think we both agree, should be a reduction in levels inequality and the elimination of poverty. I’m not about to abandon that. Neither are you and I wouldn’t accuse you of wanting to.
The tactics are where the pragmatism is important. Liberals want to do it almost exclusively via the social benefits and taxation system. Some of that can be an important element but its not going to be possible if it involves, or is seen to involve, making the slightly better off foot the bill.
So, as a simple example, instead of paying social benefits to those employed by supermarkets on minimum wages, the emphasis should be on the supermarkets paying wages which don’t need to be topped up by social benefits. Of course it can be argued that we’ll end up paying more for our groceries rather than increased taxes.
This could be true but it will be politically less objectionable.
Populism is one of those words that are so misused that they are worse than meaningless. Part of the problem is the media who love short hand words or phrases that simplify complicated issues. We seem to have lost our love of using the right word in the right circumstance to clarify meaning. jThey could do worse than define any term before using it for the first time in an interview, broadcast or commentary.