A tender article on the letters Obama received -and often replied to- when he was President (he had a rule: read ten letters every day after work), and a conversation with a friend, has prompted some thoughts on Populism.

I don't know if there is, or can be a single definition of Populism, because to me the idea that it represents the broad mass of views of 'the People' as opposed to the ruling political class, which may also include the journalists who thrive on politics, the academics, the think-tanks and lobbyists; begs the question: what do the people think? Or, what do the people want?

Populism is inherently unstable, because at any one time, what the people want is liable to change. Those who voted leave in the EU Referendum debate in 2016 may not have known how difficult it was going to be, and that it would undermine the economy, so have changed their minds. People who vote for a President in his first term, vote for the alternative next time, or vice versa.

We might say most people want security, they want a home to live in, to earn enough money to live without the fears associated with ill-health and job insecurity; to live confident that their children will have the same or better opportunities than they did.

It might also be the case that people can believe their problems are caused by outsiders, and that this 'fear of the other' is easily manipulated by Politicians who vow to 'deal with it' and 'give the country back to the people' or some variant of that.

But, can 'the people' be manipulated, can they can be persuaded to believe something that is not true? A good example is the way in which people in the UK associated their economic and social problems with the EU rather than the management of the country by successive Labour and Conservative governments, a point that was often allowed to pass unchallenged in the tv and radio debates. Some Americans may believe Muslims intend to take over the world and impose Shari'a law on them, yet live not far from Muslims who don't want that at all. You wonder how many people who think marriage can only be between a man and a woman have friends whose children -whom they knew when growing up- are in same-sex relationships?

A question that may not have a clear answer is, does the media affect the way people think? Can the news media shape popular opinion to the extent that it wins -or loses- elections? The Murdoch press in the UK campaigned with extraordinary zeal against Jeremy Corbyn in the 2017 elections -but when the exit polls suggested the Tories had lost their majority, Murdoch stormed out the The Times election night party, having for the first time failed to back a winner.

But in the US Murdoch was one of the key players in the abolition of the Fair Broadcasting rules that had tried to ensure US networks offered a balance of views when reporting politics -something that the UK retains to its credit- so that broadcast news in the US is now so biased viewers rarely have their opinions challenged. But does it make the difference?

This is not an argument for elites in politics, though there must always be a place for experts to explain what they know about policy issues to help voters make up their minds. But at the same time, politics in democratic societies thrives on an interaction between government and the governed, and if that bond was -if not broken, damaged- in the the last 25 years, was it the fault of government, or a mistaken belief that capitalism would always deliver economic benefits for all? And, if so, what is the alternative to capitalism?

The article on the letters Obama received is here-
https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng...ency-interview