Why populists are winning and how to beat them

Welcome to the LSE Events Podcast by the London School of Economics and Political Science. Get ready to hear from some of the most influential international figures in the social sciences. Welcome everyone to this LSE Public Event to mark the launch of the new book by Liam Bern and why populists are winning and how to beat them. So in this rather quiet, uneventful week for UK politics, it's great that so many of you could be here with us tonight, both in person and online. My name's Andy Solas. I'm an Associate Professor in the Law School here at LSE and Director of the Centre for Analysis of Taxation, at the top of it that we might get to at some point in this evening's discussions. Liam will appreciate, if I say right away, that copies of his book will be available to buy outside the lecture theatre after this event and indeed you can even get your copy signed by Liam. But first we have a wonderful line up of speakers to present and debate the book, so let me introduce them. Liam Bern is the Labour MP for Birmingham Hodg Hill and Solohel North, a member of the Privy Council and chair of the House of Commons Business and Trade Select Committee. He's also an influential figure within the Tribune Group of Labour MPs. But beyond all these impressive affiliations, he's also a deep thinker in his own right. He has written by my count no less than five at Solohel North and his latest has been received, I think it's fair to say, with some critical acclaim. Tonight I expect we'll hear both acclaim and criticism as we'd rightly expect from an audience at LSE and I'm really looking forward to it. To kick off that discussion, after Liam has presented his book, I'm delighted that we also have with us Zoe Williams and Sarah Hobbilt to offer their reactions and thoughts. Zoe has been a columnist for the Guardian since the year 2000 before which she wrote for the London evening standard. A broadcasting experience spans question time, newsnight, Channel 4 news and dispatches and the today programme. So I'm sure she will not be daunted by this evening's audience. She's also author of several books, including Get It Together, Why We Deserve Better Politics, The Madness of Modern Parenting and Bring It On Baby. Sarah Hobbilt is the Southern Chair in European Institutions and the Head of the Department of Government here at LSE. She's also the President of the European Political Science Society and the Chair of the European Election Studies. Sarah's research focuses on elections, referendums, public opinion and political parties. In her forthcoming book, Tribal Politics, How Brexit Divided Britain, she examines how the Brexit vote gave rise to new political identities in Britain. So I deeply placed, I think, to comment on Liam's book. So before we get underway, just a few logistics. This event is being recorded and hopefully we may be available later as a podcast, subject to no technical difficulties. We're not expecting any fire alarms, so if you want to curse, please do take it seriously and follow the student's instructions. LSE is committed to free speech and that means being open for debate, which we will do via the questions, but also respecting our panelists right to speak. So as I mentioned, there'll be a chance for audience Q&A after our panelists have spoken. We'll aim to preserve about 30 or 40 minutes at the end for that and I'll explain the format for fielding questions when we get to that part of the event. So in the meantime, just remind the remains for me to reiterate how pleased we are to have Liam here and say over to you, Liam. Good evening. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for coming. It is a busy time. We have thoughtfully organised this side show down the road in Westminster, just to help make sure that it pops tonight. Thank you very much for coming. I think we'll probably get into some overlap between the topics that we're going to talk about tonight and what's going on down the road. I have to say that for the purpose of this evening, as Lyndon Johnson once said, it's a real privilege to be someone who can escape the turmoil of our capital down the road for the calm of your campus. It's brilliant Andy, if I may say to be here with you, you've been a huge influence on me, the work that you did on the World Tax Commission in particular with Aaron in the team is something that I try to feature in the prequel to this, the inequality of wealth. Zoe and Sarah, for those of you who don't know their work, is just like just right at the cutting edge of some of the debates that we've got to navigate as a nation. So the starting point, I suppose, for this book is these cast list of characters. The book was begun in 2024 when we had this great democratic moment. So 2024, two billion people go to vote. And I think it's fair to say that the populists were amongst the biggest winners. Now, nothing is forever, including political office. And of course, one of these folks is already out of office. But I suppose if there's a provocation that I wanted to start the book with, it was this. This great, extraordinary democratic outcome from two billion people going to vote has left us with about a quarter of the world's democracies run by authoritarian populists or populists on the right. Yeah, I think the questions for those of us in the mainstream of politics is, well, is this populism's peak or actually is it the tipping point? And I think after the results that we had last week, notwithstanding the fact that reforms vote came down a bit, many people would say that in fact we may not yet be a peak populism. And I think we have to take that seriously because when you look at three of the big secular trends which help explain the politics of today, they're not going to diminish and force in the years to come if anything they're going to go stronger. So as I'll explain in a bit the kind of pressure on living standards, the inequality of progress that has be devolved so many Western countries can any one of us really anticipate that diminishing in the years to come actually could the artist spread of art, Russian intelligence, not in all that wages further in the years to come. Could we actually see a disillusionment with the global economy grow deeper rather than get easier. And second, the great divides that we have in our society today accelerated no doubt by social media but also the evisceration of social capital in so many of our communities that too could accelerate in the years to come. And finally this kind of new age of human movement that it's populist exploit with such success. Well, that too could become a more pronounced feature of our politics in the years to come. So the World Bank things over the next 10 to 15 years about 1.2 billion people will join the labour market in the emerging economies but at best those economies will grow maybe 400 million jobs. So what is going to happen to the 800 million people who are also in search of the quite miracle of a normal life. So there's a good case to say that many of these trends actually make her stronger in the years to come. And of course what history teaches us is that they really come to sharp focus when there's a crash and who amongst us would rule out a New York Stock Exchange crash over the years to come. That's a serious moment. New York Stock Exchange today is about 40% of global equity values. If that crashes at a moment when economies around the world are already tapped out at high levels of debt then it could well be possible for seer believe that you get an economic moment that tips over into a moment of political extremism. So it's not hard to paint a picture. It's not hard to imagine a scenario in which populism becomes actually more advanced rather than less than a year to come. This is not going to fix itself. That's the message from mainstream politics. Mainstream politics has to get a grip of this. And so what the book tries to do is a couple of things. So there's lots of great work on the demand side of populism and we add to that library by in particular doing some work on kind of a big segmentation study of reform voters. And I should apologize up front and say this is a book about right wing populism and the paperback which will be coming out a bit later on in the year I can see now it's going to have to have a chapter on left wing populism but for now you'll have to content yourself with the story about populism on the right. But we kind of get into just trying to kind of understand the market for populism in a bit more detail. But then what I felt as a politician is that the supply side of populism was much understood. And so we try and get into that by kind of unpacking some novel research into what is the message, what is the media and crucially, what is the money and what's the magical thinking that helps glue this coalition together. Let me just sort of start off with this point though just to kind of set the stage. This is from Jane Green's work who mentioned me at Nuffield College. 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A sídd, mThis ar contra iawn lewydwyd rhy buyingaltra ag i fo yn y fwestiat, ryd Dyngor sdol ei gyn Liberto i s scared ar Wneud fry gw baş un yw, Ry besser o o dweud eionau nhw acう cyrbreyn i'n 'ng Nghymdewn' i'r pryn inevitably yn y trându. Iytad y hwn, confused edwyd. a acil o tehóch samsyr dre down uniau dgydu gydwen i bod yn iaw i'r creus. i byn gyn. bahau g water a' wedi fydd behwn ar gyfleodd ar gy'ch wedi byn allwnau ond ag yr yr oeddDYŷo ar gyfer eu Прiffafa Llwyd. animation yn tuceith Ifedan ym unor; Mae'r gyfer ei ddiologiu jo hynny unost chilli ohereth sydd yma anodraeth sydd â'r creu yn gw過來u i funiaid o'r Broad47 crooked undon yn un maid o chêtes mathdiu'rngdd. O recept, ddim ar devenu yn meddwl ei gaelían changein. Cising i�� wedi de llawer un pocciol'r lysionom chi - 'el ei rhoi pe boxes cwthail ei ddatblygu'r Shewell fod ymwch dweud dro'n Ladyhovah Godd может'n meddwl ei co Sold ac yng Nghymru'r gwaith ysgol i'r gwaith yr anodd i'r gwaith ysgol i'r gwaith yr anodd. Ys gwaith yr anodd i'r gwaith yr amdol i'r gwaith yr anodd. Mae gwasio roedd yn ymwyr yn ysgol i'r ysgol i'r gwaith yr anodd i'r gwaith yr anod. Mae gwasio'r gwaith yr anodd i'r gwaith yr anod. Yng Nghymru'r gwaith yr anod. Mae gwaith yr anod, ac yn ddechrau'r gwaith yr anod. Mae gwaith yr anod. Gwyllwag i'r gwaith yr anod. Mae gwaith yr anodd i'r gwaith yr anodd i'r gwaith yr anodd i'r gwaith yr anod. Mae gwaith yr anodd i'r gwaith yr anod. Mae gwaith yr anod. Mae gwaith yr anod. Mae gwaith yr anod. [Applause] Hi, I'm interrupting this event to tell you about another awesome LSE podcast that we think you'd enjoy. LSE IQ asks social scientists and other experts to answer one intelligent question, like, "Why do people believe in conspiracy theories?" Or, "Can we afford the super rich?" Come check us out. Just search for LSE IQ wherever you get your podcasts. Now, back to the event. Thanks so much, Zoe and Sarah, for those really probing and I think different and complementary reflections on Liam's book. We're actually not doing too badly for time. So I think we have time to give Liam a few minutes just to respond, reflect on some of those mock remarks, and then we will open up to the audience. Okay, great. Wow. That's absolutely really quite thought provoking stuff. So let me just try and summarize this in three very quick points, which I think I kind of understated. So Zoe's point about asymmetry is not. I haven't kind of put it. I haven't thought about it like that, but you're right. I've talked about asymmetric fragmentation in the kind of the vote, but the way you describe asymmetric funding, asymmetric amplification, asymmetric money, asymmetric belief, that is. I think that's actually a very potent way of helping us kind of understand this sort of moment that we're in. And I think you're also kind of right to just kind of wind back to why everything changed with the financial crash, and you brought in quantitative easing, which is kind of super important. So the prequel to the book, the inequality of wealth, kind of makes this point that what we've basically had in Britain now, and the wound that both popular photos on the left-hand right share, is that they're really angry about the inequality of progress that's characterized our country since 2010. And the world economic data basically shows that the top 1% in Britain have grown their wealth by about 31 times more than everybody else. Why is that? Well, £850 billion worth of quantitative easing kind of helps. That held down interest rates by almost one point. That accounts for maybe two-thirds of the wealth growth that we had in our country, who owned that wealth, well, the top 1%, what tax did they pay on that? Well, how many people here at Red Rishi's who next tax return? Like none of you? Okay, so it's me and Andy, okay, well, it's lucky me and Andy are here. It's not very long, it's only like a page, isn't it? I mean, it's like a one page. It's not actually the tax return. And it's not like the accountant account of the tax return. So I'd like to see the real tax return. So what it shows is basically income of 2 million, and the tax rate was 23%. So how can you earn 2 million quid and pay 20 people a tax? Well, you know, as Andy's work kind of shows, you know, if you get that money from capital gains, so we've put in 850 billion of quantitative easing, the gains of that have gone overwhelming lead to the wealth growth. yw'n iawn i'r pwid i'r pwid i'r pwid i'r pwid i'r pwid i'r pwid i'r pwid. Bewyd yn cwylwfod eu eich sydd yn ei fwyillau'r pwyillau'r pwyd i'r pwyd, a'r pwyd yn cwylwfod eu eich sydd yn y cwylwfod, a'r pwyd yn y cwylwfod eu eich sydd yn ei ffyd. Mae'r pwyd yn cwylwfod eu eich sydd yn ei ffyd. Iowany isn't something that many of my colleagues call out as one of the great co-creators of this moment that we're in now and it's why the debate on Wealth Tax has gotten to gain strength rather than disappear over the years to come and Andy's work has helped us set that out. So the second point on the demand side there so this is a very, very thought provoking question. So the way that we did this research was to basically try and dial in to the behavioural economics that tells us that the social theory of wealth is a bit more revealing. So most reformed voters are actually median income and median wealth so they're not the poorest, they're kind of in the middle. But they feel that others have done much better than them both globally and sort of nationally. And so when you then kind of asked do you get a fair days pay for a fair days work? No, are you treated with dignity in the workplace? No, are your views respected? No. So this kind of wound of indignity I think is kind of more revealing and so I think the sort of social theory of wealth tells us a lot more about this and it is a subjective rather than an objective thing you're absolutely right to kind of flank that. But the reason this is so important in explaining the politics of today is that we are in a world of slow economic growth which means that politics becomes zero sum. And so if I think that you have gained something that you shouldn't have given I work so hard I should have had it then you're going to have these distributional battles. You're going to deport me. All the time. Well, which is the reform solution. And so that's why in a way my kind of last point is that we can't I don't think magically escape zero sum politics we can try to go the economy faster but if you look at all the kind of forecasts globally and for the UK we're in a you know we're not returning to pre crash growth. And that means you've got to name your enemies and if you and and and that's why you got to I think learn that lesson from Roosevelt and in particular his kind of Madison Golden speech I think is about 1935 when he kind of begins really reeling against the vested interest in America and says you know worst the effect of these people hate me will I tell you I welcome their hatred. You know he is prepared to kind of a lean into a big ugly battle with the vested interest that he thinks is holding back America and I just think that you can you can define the trade off in your terms and you can take account of those who've done really well over the last 10 to 15 years and take on those vested interest with a new kind of frankly aggression or others will name the struggle of distribution in different terms which are in which are in ways that are actually counter to our values and you know I don't believe in the politics of othering because I think you know mainstream politics on both left and right has to be all in it together and that is key to us building the kind of social capital and the civic inventiveness that we're going to need to get us through what is going to be a very bumpy decade ahead. But thank you brilliant brilliant great well we are at the stage of this evening where we get to hear your comments carefully discussed. As questions hopefully some questions as well so we have an audience both here and online if you're here in person a new issue ask question then please raise your hand and then when I indicate you can speak I am going to insist that questions do actually conclude with a question even if there's a bit of comment in there and please don't take a fentify cut you short if you're going on too long that's just because we do want to give an opportunity to have as many questions as we can. If you're online then please type your questions into the Q&A box I'm going to have my I/O for my colleague Peter who is going to be looking at those questions as they come in and I'll pass over to him to read some of them out. Where are you in person or online if possible can you please start by giving your name and affiliation and so who would like to ask the first question. I'm only looking for people who have their hands up. There's someone in the front here in the blue and white striped top someone on the balcony right at the front and someone I think waving a Tribune SA collection which gives him the right to ask the third question. I know it's the point. There's three there I'll collect them together and then he lambs thoughts. I kept thinking about the horseshoe theory about populism and how left and right populism can kind of merge with certain extent with that amplification of the other and the enemy. When we talk about the current situation and I'm an immigrant and I'm at a legacy so I'm doing my master's here and again I'm not someone who's been here for a while. I hear the kind of conversations going around immigrants are stealing our jobs, immigrants have spent we're being so much money. Immigrants pay a lot of money to this economy. I think about the packaging and how essentially the right has been able to package especially the reform has been able to package an enemy in a really articulate, clear, simple manner. When we talk about labor in general it feels very fragmented. What are you for? I'm not clear what labor does essentially. I know what Tories do, I know what reform does, I know what green does but I don't know what labor does essentially. I think I would really want to hear your perspective on the packaging part and how what can you do better as a party to make sure that everyone understands what you're for? That's a great question. And the gentleman at the front of the balcony? Melville regurgers. What are the solutions to accelerate economic growth in the UK? And the gentleman waving the book. It's just the leavelet. I'll victimality from the FT and I've also just written a book on the far right in France. I was kind of really intrigued by your, I think it was your second slide where you showed all the worlds and Europe's far right leaders together. I just wanted to ask you two questions really. One is what are the links between those far right or populist right parties? How do they cooperate other than just receiving money from the US and perhaps some social media assistance from the US? And then the second part of it is your business of solutions. Are the left liberals, the centre? Are they cooperating across borders internationally to try and counter that massive rise that we see across Europe of the far right parties? Thanks. Great. Liam, I'll let you take those in the order that you were taking. And then the third part is when you build these kind of models to analyse the semantics, you can then discover the weekend. It's like how I relax at the weekend. And the reform literature basically triggers almost perfectly all of those three tropes that I showed. And then the green literature is a little different. But when you do the two together, what it basically shows you is that reform captures the anger and the greens capture the hope. And then the greatchefidation, I thought, "Shit, I better put the labour literature through it as well." So you'll see what happens. And basically what you get, it's kind of to your point really. You get, it's a bit of a man. It's a bit. This is no criticism of party staff, I should say. This is all done for the politicians. But we're kind of marooned between the anger and the hope. Right. So we're in this business because we were invented by the working class as a collective force to advance working class interests. Because we believe that through the strength of our common endeavour, we achieve more than we achieve alone. That's clause for all the Labour Party constitution. That is what we believe in. And so we believe that you can basically advance everybody's freedom through effective cooperation. That's kind of what it kind of comes down to. But the way that we talk about that, explain that, the way that we narrate our pride in our past as a guide to what we're doing in the future is really, really poor right now. i'n gyd yn ffordd. ent deig llitar fis ia 실� meithol i ddumbfeld taxy erwyddyg?" Ond 'di'ns--dien anyway, unぎ y relay hein. Een j detailingyn godiesol budren astidrif wrth gynwon钾 dreisi i d演 gyda y thyrhin col un gwyda disguis Estate J тов G Lancashoddi peb ei gallw'n ni feontor i gifn settio-fŵr ynแลig mlawth o'r yslwy cousaeth. Gael ei ei hwtwyn ei hwyspwyl oedig enthusiastic ongy'r datig a'r patreid. and that is why I sort of think you do need a good populism in a way and I think good populism on the left is a kind of an economic populism soевидidPreppaclepoopera tirplwaldvinik us had a very good book about those that just come out recently which I would also recommend to people which kind of makes this point, there was a moment here there was a moment actually after the financial crash when you're reading this. I think but there weren't many bankers in handcuffs going to jail right after the financial crash and so and that was the beginning of a sense that the elites are just kind of getting away with it. Now on the kind of economic growth, I should kind of advertise my sub stack at this point so if you're on a sub stack, lean on a sub stack, it's where you can find it. So what we're deliberately trying to do on the business and trade committee is kind of set out exactly what that economic growth story looks like. So we're kind of fans of mission-driven growth but we do think you've got to remake the institutions of our economy in order to deliver it. Crucially you've got to couple it with a radical new settlement for small business, entrepreneurs, high streets, free-lancers, that is where we think a lot of the economic growth comes from. But then you've also got to completely remobilise the investment side of the economy and that's a big report that we're publishing out in kind of two or three weeks. So by the summer we'll have published a kind of a body of work which we think is actually both a pretty good diagnostic and also a pretty good prescription for where we want to go. And then VIX's point, I mean this is just so interesting isn't it? So CPAC obviously brought together the authoritarian right populist in a really significant way. And the funding story helps you, it's revealing. So some of the money going into right wing populism is obviously very dark. It's coming from the rushed intelligence service. It's coming in through cryptocurrency now into through proxies, CIA estimates, that's about what 30 million a year I think. But actually unheralded is the American Christian right is putting 30 million a year into European populists as well. So you've got a lot of money as well as all that money I've just sort of pointed to of sure that is coming in as well. So it's a very well kind of articulated system and things like alliance for responsible citizenship CPAC bring that together. Now it's taken the left a long time to kind of catch up but what was super impressive about Prime Minister Sanchez in Spain a couple of weeks ago was kind of bringing together the global left in Barcelona. And I would say the policy prescription is kind of 60 to 70% there. So they got a way to go. But my goodness there was energy in sizzling the room. And so that kind of global progressive mobilization is really I think beginning to start. It was exciting. And you know one of the things I'm saying to our party is look if you're going to if we're going to take the G20 presidency next year which is what we are let's have a road to the G20 and actually let's kind of pick up the batten from Sanchez and think about how we kind of carry that forward now. So I think the right has been a long way ahead of us. I'm sorry to tell you there is a global right wing conspiracy in case no one had kind of noticed. And it's got a lot of money. It's got a lot of money in it. Peter I think one question from online and then I'll be looking for two more from the audience. So you can put up your hands now while in the audience whilst Peter takes one from online. Yeah we've got one question online from Antonio who's a visitor at LSE. He asks would the situation be improved if we put restrictions on big money and donations entering politics altogether? Correct. So there is someone in the white jumper just toward the back of the lower row and then the gentleman in the red t-shirt up at the back in the corner on the balcony. So my question is that I think with right wing populism I guess the appeal is change that can be achieved in the short term but a party like Labour offering progress. I think a lot of the change that they promise needs the long term to be achieved. So I guess my question is how to bring people along on that journey and ask people to trust that that change can actually be achieved. Yeah. Love it so far. It's all been really good. Simon Kelly I'm a financial advisor. Given that sort of by definition you're talking to a group of critical thinkers who've bothered to turn up here this evening. How do we change it rather than just talk about it? Yeah. Wow. Okay. So through we've got question about political donations, how do we bring people along on the journey and change not talk? Okay well very interesting. It's always a view on all of this but I mean I think so there's a number of us who have been campaigning on the influence of Russia and British politics since about 2018 and we've been kind of calling for these kind of bands on foreign money donations for a long time. Ban and cryptocurrency donations at least for now is obviously a sensible thing to do. You know this is going to make me sort of deeply, deeply unpopular but you know I have come to the conclusion that ultimately you're going to need state financing of political parties if you really want to clean up politics. You're going to need big caps on big donations to really kind of clean up politics. I don't think the public is going to be in the market for that anytime soon and so you know the elections bill that is going through is going to get us a chance to do a bunch of this stuff. I think the thing that I worry about though is that if you're not kind of regulating the media money then are you really going to fix this? We've got lots of thoughts on this. So this point about short term long time is so so important and so you know I've been doing thousands of steps a day over last kind of a few weeks on the doors in my patch and I actually think that if you want to persuade people that change is possible in the short term you've actually got a focus first on the change they see outside their front door and what happened with COVID is that after COVID you know we used to have that kind of old-dangle politics is local but after COVID changed a lot of it after COVID policies became hyper local and that kind of space between your front door the green space where you walk the dog and the shop where you buy your milk that kind of triangle it's like a lens through which you look at the world and if it's in chaos then you think your life is bad and your progress is not moving so I actually think that you've got to change that hyper local stuff first in order to kind of change the lens through which people kind of look in the world and actually that stuff isn't gigantically expensive and you can make an impact on that sort of pretty quickly and I think I think so a good example of the mistake one of the mistakes the government is making at the moment is we have this big kind of program called Pride in Place it's about four and a half billion it's really important it's significant but the money doesn't start flying till 2028 you know the money should start flowing like on day one you know if you really wanted to kind of affect this and then finally how do you how do you change things I mean the book is kind of written I mean the folk are very kind about those sort of the ten points at the end you know which are ideas I kind of drew together by talking to people a lot smarter than I am and and what I'm kind of hoping to do by getting out and talking about this is to kind of say well look is that right is it wrong what needs adding what these companies kind of subtracting because you know I think it's kind of inevitable that there's going to be sort of quite a lively debate at least in the Labour Party about where the direction of the government goes in the months and years ahead I think the Conservative Party is going to have the Conservative Party is beginning to have that debate actually so what's that new thing though so a prosper UK? Oh yeah yeah okay well I mean there's some quite nice people in that right okay they're nice so I think and the Conservatives you know are in real trouble I mean so he said they're in life they're in real trouble so I and I do believe that politics is a battle of ideas so and so I am kind of hoping that over the next kind of six to seven months we can get really kind of clear about this so that by the time we get to the next election which will be in May next year people can't start voting for it but all I would say is there's no substitute for good people getting involved in politics standing as candidates and making the case themselves and it is sort of tough right now but you know your ability to make an impact as a candidate now is actually sort of quite significant and politics needs you right now yeah I mean I want to I want to just briefly talk about funding of the media and funding of think tanks and all the rest of it because I want to come back on what you were saying about choose your you know is it is it a serious proposition just tax the billionaires what if you tax them 90% what if they did what if they gave you however many millions that would be it wouldn't actually change the material you know you could give everybody a fiverr so what Nog o llyrdind roedd yn cael hw free pat, wrth roedd hynny mwyad eram Rhif chocolate, sy'n gydynwraith yw Instructions kit sy'n diphto Edgardithio Plyyddi fy� inicialis, o'rallo yn maanner os arall cymdi gydaeld. Bólogbeid mae bu taraf hyn weirbyddusydd yn ureadwym cyСi gw はい. offin somiad ac ac i fel fueh orch Trustio i pethyn focafui A парhأن go Chancellor B uğr y giftio. Mae'n hyn hynny mewn roesgfa hyn o'r Rel אח bowlsot�� bygodd' labhau'ridiwr From Überst ar dddans o'r yn Y Bibl兄 o 'Daid a H提ira' o 'Daimai 'Daamnaethau' yr aniptwaund fwsg oedd Cairdd un ar gyffredd i 'Daimai aethau euser wedi Islandr y Gymraedd, yn y chef, yn mysteud i 'Daimai. fynd o'n holl yn sefynd o ei dweud un arall argoedd linefyd o bheudid a diwynaens i Cl diellfawn. Mic flexible na f HE wholewch y fal wneud yn fw pirate gadefau'r i'r fi'r delivereda entr y ddwysig. Mae cael cyfarjadau mae cionalau cymelopyferdd 90% deir sut, dwi itelli・dŵenir investing, i gylaidwyrs executiveam, er ces yn ei defnyddiy trebau? Mae yng mesmoedd am Finnaeth. Ym gael 12 byd現, ym yain apag sut'r gael ei ailau rhum ar ei soylo 새�ね. Mae yng Nghymru yn ddiolch yn ymwyrs, mae'r gwirionedd am yr ei gael cyfarjadau yn yr unwyr i'r cyfarjadau cyfarjadau. Mae'r cyfarjadau yn yr unwyr i'r cyfarjadau yn yr hwnnwyr i'n gydynos, mae'n gael ei gael ei gael yma. Mae'r cyfarjadau yn yr unwyr i'n gael yma yn yr unwyr i'n gael yma yn yr unwyr i'n gael yma. A yn edrydiau i'r eithiad angyndro ay galla reעwm ar … Pastor Arm такое o sylச arm gydb yn iír ddynos ball… Mae'n primu fydd lle o llyfrig gre潜eg Iv o'r fan arewd. Mae'r eithiad yma i'r dynos ball, yn yma i'r eithiad yma, ac mae'r gwaswch yn yng Nghymru i'r yna. Mae'r hynny ymwch yn ymwch yna. Mae'r gwaswch yn gweld, mae'r gwaswch yn gweld. Mae'r eithiad yma, mae'r gwaswch yn gweld, mae'r gwaswch yn gwaswch yn gweld. Mae'r gwaswch yn gweld, mae'r gwaswch yn gweld yn gweld yn gweld yn gweld. Mae'r gwaswch yn gweld yn gweld yn gweld. Mae'r gwaswch yn gweld yn gweld. Mae'r gwaswch yn gweld yn gweld yn gweld yn gweld yn gweld yn gweld yn gweld. Mae'r gwaswch yn gwaith, mae'r gwaswch yn gwaith. Mae'r gwaswch yn gwaith. Mae'r gwaswch yn gwaith yn gwaith yn gwaith. institutions would tax pay as money partly the centre left. Well that's why I think that is why you're seeing so much anger with the Labour Party now. Because I don't think it is against, I don't think it's personal against care. Even though it's expressed incredibly personally and I only realised that two days ago because I have beef with them. I didn't have huge animals against Jeremy Corbyn so I would look at people hating him and think what the hell do they hate about him personally. And then when people hated care personally I thought oh yeah I can see that but it's certainly like suddenly dawn on me that nobody's angry in that personal visceral way with either of them it's about the Labour Party and it's about the Labour Party because I don't think it is a propping up system they were the party before the militants were quashed to went after capital and if they don't go after it nobody goes after it. But that's not your fault, that's not new. No but I think there's again this is I don't think certainly the debate I see inside our party at the moment is honest enough about this so we can see all of those kind of dynamics that I've just described about wealth inequality you know and I've gone to the lengths of writing a book about that but equally you know people are so worried about how do you raise the investment rate in the economy at the same time we have the lowest investment rate the G7 now second lowest and so how but like to get the top rate of investment in the G7 we have to mobilise 180 billion a year that's how big the gap is right and so there's a kind of a genuine anxiety about how do you discourage that investment if you're also going after wealth taxation now I think there is a way to do it I think you have to kind of remake your public finance institutions and this report we're bringing out shortly will describe how you do that but I just don't think we've thought about that by them hard enough and figured out the trade offs that are going to be needed but I'm now convinced there is a way to do it. I think we have time for one more round of questions and I'm going to take three from the room but we've got more and more elaborate attempts to attract my attention and I would like to hear on some topics and perspectives that maybe we've not heard so much from so far so I'm going to try to give preference to questions either from people who have maybe you don't want to say you've voted for reform but you can certainly say that or your reform sympathetic in some way I want to hear some challenge to Liam from their lot of hands have gone down now and another is I'm curious that we haven't heard that much about Brexit so if there are any Brexit related questions then now's your chance on those okay so gentlemen in the beige top white hair the person with the necklace waving their hand there on the bottom and somebody at the back he's waving another pamphlet so question would be how do you deal with assuming the populism actually gains more and more ground how do we capitalize in a sense on that Andrew Jackson was big populist in the United States he had a lot of issues over the Supreme Court things that we've been seeing recently but at the same time he did a lot for the little red schoolhouse and the development of the West so how can we capitalize on populism if parts of it are inevitable? Oh great question. Oh it does work. I am not a Brexit questioner or a form of a sort I'm Frankie I'm just one of the many gensi who will never in house but my question is about the recent elections and given the fragmented results do you think this truly is the end of the two party system or do you think whenever the next general election is this year next year who knows it will just go back to the same one or maybe two government policies in one main opposition? Yeah. Hi. Do you reckon the Manchester by election from February which I heard was bad for labor was about populism? Do you reckon any of it could have been about Palestine and it do you think does that mean that like Palestine is like a populist issue or like yeah what does that mean? Oh that's a great question. Yeah. Yes, yes please. Okay so how do we capitalize on it? So I guess you know my sort of observation about the authoritarian populist we got today and we we've skillfully avoided the definitional question here about how you define authoritarian populism which is not easy and the book kind of you know comes up with a sort of slightly lazy conclusion which is it is a bit like pornography and that you know it when you see it but the but one of the things that kind of characterizes authoritarian populism in the West right now is that they're basically there are it's a piecement when it comes to Russia it's authoritarian in terms of its prescription at home but it's avaricious everywhere so that kind of appeasement abroad avar authoritarianism at home avarice everywhere is like a common issue and we've not really talked about the kind of kleptocratic influences that you know appears to characterize a lot of populist leaders and so you know one of the ways in which I think you would end up capitalizing on it is a little bit like Hungary is that you do get counter kleptocratic forces and if you can kind of get a hardening of democratic capitalism against kleptocratic forces then that actually is one of the prizes we'll see how Peter Magger gets on in kind of rooting out sort of organism from political economy in Hungary and we've already got you know steps here in the UK to transform election finance reform partly can what we can see going on in and around reform so you know maybe I'm being naive but I think I think actually that is one of the counter forces that would be a good thing that we're going to see is it the end of the two party system I think is a great question so I think we are in the death roads of the two party system so are my contradicts me but I think we're in the death of the two party system but we're at the beginning of the two block system and so how block politics now unfolds is going to be kind of messy I think it's going to take a couple of elections cycles to settle down and I think what you're going to get at the next election is that I suspect that reform is going to continue conquering the right I think on the left you're going to get a bit of consolidation you know and I can see that in seats like my own but I don't think that's going to I don't think that's going to be the complete story and so I do think you may end up with more coalition politics at different bits of the British state and quite where it lands you know I don't know and that's why one of the reasons why the debate about proportional representation is going to kind of really grow in intensity and then on Palestine I don't think Palestine is a populist issue I think Palestine is a human rights issue and I think that you know the the Labour Party certainly before the election failed to take the right stance on Palestine it was you know I've only broken the whip once in 22 years of being in Labour MP I broke the whip on that issue and the Labour Party in government has still got a long way to go on getting it right and there's a lot that we can learn from both the Spanish government and the Irish government and quite frankly that change of position should start with a clear ban on goods from illegal settlements and that is something that we could do tomorrow. Okay we are right out of time unfortunately but that was a sort of fantastic discussion really great set of questions as well from the audience thanks again so much Liam for your account of your book and to Zoe and Sarah for your comments the book may I remind you is available outside to purchase and Liam will be sticking around for a little while I think to sign copies if you wish and so please do avail yourselves of that opportunity and thanks again and have a great evening. Thank you for listening you can subscribe to the LSE events podcast on your favourite podcast app and help other listeners discover us by leaving a review visit lse.ac.uk/events to find out what's on next we hope you join us at another LSE event soon.