Idiocracy

So the Idiocracy has started [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy]. The worst choice in history for President of the USA has been sworn into office. The electorate set aside all the norms that should have prevented the election of a man who is a sexist, a misogynist, a racist, a fantasist, a conspiracy theorist, a liar, a bully, an utter ignoramus, and an overgrown child, and they voted him in anyway. And in the UK in March the Brexit process will be triggered - the biggest mistake the country has made in the last century, and one which will make it permanently poorer and less influential. In each case - Brexit and Trump - the 'shock' outcomes have been portrayed as a kick back against the political class and/or a metropolitan liberal elite by those 'left behind' by the march of globalisation. The warnings of the professional politicians and commentators were simply ignored and the maverick candidates were elected anyway seemingly on the basis that if your life is already crap, how much more crap can it get?

It is deeply depressing, but we are now in what has been called the post-truth era, where facts and evidence are irrelevant if they don't fit with preconceived opinions. I prefer to call it the era of wilful ignorance - rather than thinking through highly complex, nuanced issues with numerous shades of grey people choose instead to portray the same issues in simplistic black and white terms and propose blunt instruments as solutions. Professionals who spend their working lives getting to grips with these complexities are dismissed as bloated bureaucrats, experts and academics are denounced as parties to some unfeasibly wide and deep web of left-liberal conspiracists, and the entertainment of ideas is dismissed as ivory-towered elitism. The red-top electorate doesn't want to go to the effort of analysing anything longer than a headline so populist politicians gleefully offer up easy solutions rooted in misinformation.

The problem we will face in 2017 and beyond is that the 'populists' have been elected but they will be unable to deliver. The world is not black and white; it is painted in infinite shades of grey. Simple solutions inevitably fail in the real world; if the simple solutions worked they would have been tried already. Brexit will not reduce immigration, or if it does it will be at the expense of higher unemployment and a shrinking economy. Trump will not build his wall or lock up Hilary. Brexit will not result in an extra £350m a week being spent on the NHS, rather it will result in less money being available for the NHS and all other spending priorities. Trump will not be able to cut taxes and reduce borrowing and rebuild the nation's infrastructure - that circle cannot be squared. Brexit will not lead to a democratic renewal in the UK - we get the politicians and policies we vote for and for the last 40 years that has meant various shades of neo-liberalism. Trump won't quit NATO or start an arms race with China. Neither will he be able to improve the economic circumstances of the 'left-behinds' that voted for him - if he retreats into protectionism he will just make them worse off.

My concern is what happens when the populist politicians fail, which they will. Will they then swing further to the right and start another hunt for minorities to blame? Will they propose deportations as the next solution to their perceived 'problem'? Or will the electorates in the UK and the US realise they voted for a lie and that it is the system that is at fault - that neo-liberalism is to blame for the growing wealth gap and economic stagnation experienced by the majority of the population. Will they finally realise that the only way to truly address the cause of these frustrations is to continue to embrace openness and globalisation but to distribute the proceeds of the resulting national wealth more fairly - through wealth taxes, higher income tax for top earners, and the reduction or abolition of indirect taxes.

Improvements in the quality of people's lives will only come through investment in the services that the majority of us use and rely on (health, education, emergency services, childcare, social care, roads, railways, etc), through increased social housing provision, through subsidised public transport, through subsidised clean energy, through a genuine living wage or a universal basic income. It's not rocket science and I desperately hope the electorates on both sides of the Atlantic experience some sort of epiphany but I am not holding my breath - history leads me to believe we will simply double down on the collective madness that has led us to our current position.