In Part 1, I introduced some ideas about how we beat populism, focusing on immigration. Today, I am going to look at the NHS, the economy and our political system.
Saving the NHS from Populist Scare Tactics
The NHS is under siege, and the populists love it. They use its struggles to push their own agenda, claiming that the solution is to privatise services or cut back on waste. But the NHS isn’t failing because of inefficiency or because too many people are using it. It is failing because governments have underfunded it for years, forcing doctors and nurses to work under impossible conditions while patients wait months for treatment.
The Conservatives say they are investing in the NHS, but in reality, they have allowed it to be slowly privatised, handing contracts to private companies and driving doctors out of the system. Reform UK claims it will get rid of NHS “red tape” but offers no actual funding or plan to stop the crisis. If we want to save our health service, we need real investment, not slogans. That means recruiting and retaining more doctors and nurses by increasing pay and improving working conditions. It means guaranteeing a GP appointment within a week, so people don’t turn to A&E out of desperation. It means properly integrating social care with the NHS so elderly and vulnerable patients aren’t left stranded in hospital beds because there’s nowhere for them to go. It means shifting the focus to prevention, tackling long-term health issues like obesity and mental illness before they become crises.
Fighting Economic Populism – Real Prosperity, Not Empty Promises
Nothing fuels populist anger more than economic insecurity. Wages are stagnant, housing is unaffordable, and bills keep rising. People feel like they’re working harder for less while the rich get richer. And they’re right—because the system is rigged.
Reform UK’s answer is to slash taxes and cut regulations. The Conservatives promise tax cuts too, despite 14 years of economic stagnation. Both parties push the idea that lower taxes will magically create jobs and growth, but we’ve seen this experiment fail again and again. Cutting taxes for the rich does nothing for working people.
The real solution is an economy that rewards hard work, not just wealth. That means raising wages so that people earn enough to live, not just survive. It means fixing the housing crisis so young people can afford a home again. It means backing small businesses so local entrepreneurs can thrive instead of being crushed by big corporations. It means making the tax system fairer, so billionaires and multinationals pay their share instead of shifting the burden onto working people.
Restoring Trust – Cleaning Up the Corrupt Political System
Populists thrive when people stop trusting politicians. And after years of broken promises, lies, and scandals, who can blame them? Reform UK claims to be different, but it’s run by the same people who gave us Brexit chaos. The Conservatives talk about integrity but lurch from scandal to scandal.
If we want to take down populism, we need to clean up politics—for real. That means ending big money’s grip on democracy, banning shady donations, and corporate influence. It means introducing proportional representation so that every vote actually counts and no party can take power with a minority of support. It means giving local communities real power instead of concentrating decision-making in Westminster. And it means making politicians properly accountable, ensuring they can’t break promises and get away with it.
The Real Way to Defeat Populism
Populism feeds on failure. It grows when people feel ignored, when their struggles are dismissed, when the system stops working for them. If we want to stop populism, we have to stop giving people reasons to turn to it. That means fixing immigration, not with fear but with fairness. That means saving the NHS, not with slogans but with proper investment. That means building an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top. And that means cleaning up politics, not with empty words but with real reforms.
Britain doesn’t need more fear. It needs fairness. It needs competence. It needs leadership that listens, delivers, and stands up for every citizen, not just the loudest voices in the room. Populism is a con, a trick played on struggling people by those who want power without responsibility. It’s time to call it out for what it is—and replace it with something better. A country that actually works for the people. A government that delivers. A future built on hope, not hate. That’s how we defeat populism. That’s how we take our country back—for real.
* Mo Waqas is Chair of the Lib Dem’s Stockton branch and was the PPC for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East.
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16 Comments
All of this is well and good and on paper, sounds fantastic. The problem with the last paragraph of the section on fighting populism is the same as the section which talks about taxes – where is the money coming from? We can’t just throw around ideas and platitudes such as “saving the NHS with proper investment, not slogans” and then not talk about where the money for that investment is coming from. That’s one of the very reasons populism has grown so strong to begin with.
@ Daniel,
“where is the money coming from?”
How about starting off with a wealth tax? We could even give the much spruiked Georgist Land Value Tax a go. That used to be Liberal Party policy at one time. Although the idea of a “single tax” is flawed. it is never going to be anything other than just another tax. We could also step up on taxes on carbon emissions. Step up taxes on road usage especially for those drivers who clog our cities by using their cars rather than public transport.
Taxes on any property which isn’t a primary residence could be increased. Taxes on air travel could be higher. It’s often cheaper to fly somewhere than take the train.
I’m sure we can all think of something that won’t too much disadvantage the less affluent members of our society.
I agree with Daniel. I think one of the ironies of this article is that Mo talks about defeating populism, but the antidote he’s offering is actually just as populist and simplistic – it’s just that he’s offering left-wing populism instead of right-wing populism. (In the form of, let’s just throw money at everything and assume that will fix all the problems).
There are the seeds of some good ideas in the article. Fixing the housing crisis , training more doctors, reforming the tax system and also reforming the electoral system are all things that I agree with Mo are badly needed. But we also need to be a lot more thoughtful about how we go about and resource those things.
“where is the money coming from ?”
Here we go again …….. that tired old slogan. It was heard in 1908 when Asquith introduced old age pensions……. and again in the late forties when Nye Bevan and Beveridge introduced their reforms.
We also heard it between 2010-15 and, of course, earlier than that in the Thatcher years.
Fact is there are plenty of wealthy folk (especially in the Home Counties and London…. I bet that touches a nerve) as well as plenty of non dom billionaires (the Abramovich yacht scam comes to mind) who could pay a bit more for a more equal and more compassionate society.
It’s just a matter of political nerve and not being afraid of scaring the horses. I’m sure Mr Tice could pay a bit more air fuel tax on his weekend jaunts to Dubai and GB news a bit more.
My early political memory includes Jo Grimond proclaiming loudly, “We in the Liberal Party are members of a radical party”. This still ought to be true, and timidity wins few friends.
This article does not properly scrutinise the populist’s ideas and agenda. I agree with much of Mo’s feelings and it is right to criticise the populist’s play on people’s anti-establishment feelings, as well as some people’s simplistic thoughts, fears and prejudices.
Mo is not always right about Reform. For example, he implies they believe in cutting taxes only for the rich but in fact they propose increasing the allowance level to £20K thus cutting tax for the less well-off. They also propose increased spending on the NHS though they think it can be paid for by cuts to other public services as well as big improvements in efficiencies and red tape. So I think we must do much better than this if we are to take on the populists.
Can a group within the party analyse the effect of the populist’s proposals fully expose where they do not have any solutions at all and come up with arguments why other solutions are much better and then condense this into simple messages that can be put across to relevant sections of the population?
The analysis on the NHS doesn’t address the impact of a growing, ageing population. Yes, addressing obesity and mental illness will have an impact, so to would an integration with social care. But as people live longer, they become more susceptible to more complex conditions (e.g., dementia, cancer), that are more costly to treat (both in terms of facilities, drugs, and health and social care professionals’ time). Past reforms aimed at making the NHS more efficient has led to more day surgery and fewer hospital beds, but didn’t address the long-term impact of demographics.
The assumptions underpinning investment in the NHS today aren’t fit for purpose, partly because the necessary discussion isn’t an easy one, and partly because the pay as you go nature of pension provision and senior care generally doesn’t give much room for manoeuvre. The biggest problem is that the further this discussion is kicked down the road, the less room for manoeuvre there will yet be.
It’s all well and good to say that it’s a tired old slogan to ask where the money is coming from – but perhaps one might consider that aside from scrimping into a coalition with the Tories it’s been years since the Liberals have been the party of government, and there might be a reason why. A refusal to properly cost for things might be one of them. One of the most common complaints is that parties promise X, Y and Z and then don’t deliver on them because of costs.
It’s fine to suggest you’ll pay for it by increasing taxes on a small percentage of the population which I agree, are wealthy and should pay more. But that can’t be your only way to pay for things. When those individuals decide to move abroad, or move their businesses elsewhere, or lose their money in a banking crisis, we can’t then go “oh sorry, we can’t afford to pay for the promises we made in our election manifesto because we don’t have other people’s money to pay for it like we expected”. That’s poor politics.
excellent. MO for PM. It’s been done before in Europe and can be done again, we need to pay more into the system for public services and the wealthiest shoud pay most.
@Daniel Stylianou
I agree we need to say from where the money comes.
So let’s implement a land value tax. Land doesn’t get up and move away.
Not necessarily everywhere – start with large organisations with warehouses etc and make them pay more. If they want to operate in this country they can pay.
It seems to me that people and governments avoid making changes to tax systems. They put the job on the ‘too difficult’ pile. But doing so means the tax system becomes ever more complicated, with ever more scope for fancy accountants to find loopholes for wealthy clients.
Mo Waqas correctly identifies what needs to be done to stop Populism such as funding the NHS adequately, fixing social care, ending the housing crisis, building an economy that works for everyone, cleaning up politics and having a government that delivers. Without coming up with solutions to provide these things people will continue to turn to populists to provide them.
Can we get the party to offer solutions for these issues and set out how they would be funded? Can we get elected to the Federal Policy Committee and Federal Conference Committee this year people committed to deliver these solutions by the time of the next general election?
Far from “Restoring Trust – Cleaning Up the Corrupt Political System”, the world is moving rapidly the other way….
Churchill in a post war address (House of Commons, 11 November 1947) said, “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…”
It looks like the world will, yet again, try one particularly nasty ‘other form’..
I recall that one of our ideas to raise taxes fairly was to tax company share buy-backs, and I read the other day that a big company, GKN perhaps, was just planning a big new share buy-back scheme. As several commentators above have mentioned, there are plenty of ways of raising the needed taxation to pay for better services if the will is there, and we should surely be pressing for them.
Really good discussion, I know I’m in the right party when I read comments sections like this.
@Nonconformistradical I agree with your point about never getting radical change in the taxation. This is illustrated by how small c conservative Rachel reeves economic reforms have been. Did she think the reason there was no growth was purely because business believed the Tories were incompetent and as soon as she came in they’d invest? Was she worried about market reaction to new taxes? Or did she have more radical ideas than were shot down by the treasury ‘yes minister’ style? Does Liz Truss have a point about treasury orthodoxy?
I wouldn’t worry about Reform’s tax policies, they don’t need to cost anything and the electorate don’t believe that they would raise TFA to 20k, they exist just to reflect anti immigrant/globalist sentiment, attempts at more rounded policy are a token effort.
Question is whether we should put forward a comprehensive economic plan, I don’t know whether it would benefit us electorally, we’ve been more fiscally hawkish In the past ‘penny on income tax’ and it hasn’t helped. We could just reflect pro social care, pro Europe sentiment and leave it at that (last election). Id personally rather us campaign for tax rises (land tax) and if it costs us votes c’est la vie.
Peter Martin ” Step up taxes on road usage especially for those drivers who clog our cities by using their cars rather than public transport.”
I agree. increase fuel duty with the escalator, end the “temporary” fuel duty tax cut, congestion charges in most large city regions..
But
“That’s a brave move, minister!”
and
“you’ll take my 3 tonne SUV out of my cold dead hands. I insist it’s my human right to park it on the pavement outside my house.”
@ Rod Treadwell,
“campaign for tax rises (land tax) and if it costs us votes c’est la vie.”
You’d presumably make a tax free land threshold sufficient to exempt a typical family home. Land isn’t in principle different from any other form of wealth so it could be crafted as part of a general wealth tax. Again there would a tax free threshold of say £1million or so.
So you aren’t going to lose too many votes directly. Those who would be adversely affected probably aren’t going to vote for you anyway.
You’d certainly upset the rich and the powerful, though. You’d have to expect dirty tricks from them in an attempt to thwart your plans.
I’m beginning to understand what populism is, thanks. it’s offering actions that appeal to a section of the electorate that believes in easy solutions and is more interested in fueling its prejudices than providing solutions. They might contain some truth but lack coherence and understanding of how society and government works.