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      Behold Trump's pre-election secret weapon: Nigel Farage, 'king of Europe' | Marina Hyde

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      How poignant to see KentgaragisteNigel Farage interfering in the US election, much in the way a drop interferes in the ocean. Farage is appearing at the odd rally for his emotional support president, Donald Trump, which tells its own story about where the US leader is at, psychologically speaking, for the final days of his campaign. On Wednesday, Trump gibbered to a crowd: “I’m glad I called him up.” So is Nigel’s agent.
      Nigel was brought on stage in Arizona by Donald, where the latter introduced him as “the king of Europe”. In fairness, he could just as easily have got away with passing Farage off as the duke of Ruritania or the sultan of Jupiter. Still, in for a penny, in for a pound, and Trump went on to hazard that Farage was “one of the most powerful men in Europe”, even though Nigel’s an unemployed radio DJ and has spent a good part of the past four years hanging round the old US-of-A hoping to get a 40-minute 6pm “dinner” invitation to eat a well-done steak with a self-confessed sex offender.
      By way of recompense, Farage rubed his way on to the rally platform and took the microphone to declare Trump was “the single most resilient and bravest person I have ever met in my life”. That is probably the only truthful thing to have been said on stage that night. Yes, Trump received five draft deferments – first for college, then for something called “heel spurs” – and once described the business of avoiding STDs in Manhattan during the 1980s as “my personal Vietnam”. But you have to remember that Nigel is himself a wildly overemotional nervous Nellie who would have been interned for spreading panic during the second world war he self-owningly fetishises. There is no one more histrionic, more whiny, and – let’s face it – more willing to make alliances with far-right German politicians. We simply couldn’t have risked him failing to keep calm or carry on among the general populace.
      Anyway, this week, he was giving it his best Lord Haw-Haw, informing Trump’s crowd: “You’ll be voting for the only leader in the western world with the real courage to stand up to the Chinese Communist party.” Stand up to them? He pays more tax to them than he does to the US. Later, Nigel justified his media credentials by explaining to Daily Telegraph readers that Trump had “what Americans call ‘the big M’ – momentum”. Is that what Americans call momentum? We’ll have to take this latterday Alistair Cooke’s word for it, I suppose.
      Then again, engaging with Farage on his own terms is like trying to debate a fart or conduct a symposium with cystitis. Though operationally pointless and redundant now, he somewhat horrifyingly endures – a vestigial tail on our body politic. It is increasingly accepted that Nigel will always be with us, like far-left antisemitism or a mutating respiratory virus.
      It is probably more helpful to step back and see him for what he represents in this case, which in some ways is nothing particularly new. British politicians have always nursed a certain desperation to be noticed by Washington power.
      The trouble for Boris Johnson’s government of superforecasters is that they seem not to have forecast in time that it was at least a remote possibility this Joe Biden guy could win the presidency instead of Trump. Thus, with no meaningful bonds forged at all with the current favourite, the omens for the UK should Biden prove victorious are not what you’d file under encouraging. Any appearance of Farage within a restraining order’s distance of Trump simply serves as a reminder to Biden’s Democrats of their long-held conviction that Brexit and Trump are of a piece.
      Furthermore, Johnson’s government still fails to understand that there IS a special relationship, it’s just that it’s between the US and Ireland. So when Biden last month warned that the Good Friday agreement must not become “a casualty of Brexit”, there was a very urgent need for the Conservative administration to do and say precisely nothing. As so often, alas, Iain Duncan Smith failed to get the memo, or certainly to understand the words crayoned on it, and consequently could be found across the airwaves honking that Biden shouldn’t be lecturing the UK, but should be trying for “a peace deal in the US” to stop “the killing and rioting” in cities following the death of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer. Quite what power Duncan Smith thought Biden would have at that point to strike a “peace deal” is unclear, but details aren’t exactly Iain’s strong point.
      Nor are they Farage’s. It was during the EU referendum campaign, you’ll recall, that Nigel lost his rag about Barack Obama “interfering”, after the US president announced that Britain would be “at the back of the queue” for a trade deal. This didn’t go down enormously well at the time, it must be said, but has regrettably increased in accuracy as we near the conclusion of the Brexit process, a full four-and-a-half years after the event and without a trade deal lined up. Unless any agreement with the US is signed by April, the legislation allowing it to speed it through Congress will have expired, meaning we will be at the back of a queue of queues. Already, our ability to strike a deal has by all accounts been hampered by the failure to put the NHS on the table, while the need to have anything at all on the table means the table is now heaving with heavily chlorinated chicken shit. Ah well. Perhaps Britain has had enough of exports.
      Speaking of chickenshits, you can be sure Nigel Farage will be a million miles away from that queue and all the other queues when they come to pass. What does he care? He’s a wrecker, not a builder. Perhaps the UK will live up to a vision “the king of Europe” couldn’t even be bothered to sketch on the back of one of his fag packets – or perhaps it won’t. Perhaps our chlorinated chickens will come home to roost.
      • Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist More

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      Inside Politics: Jeremy Corbyn’s suspension reignites Labour’s civil war

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      US researchers have warned that a huge asteroid dubbed the ‘God of Chaos’ could smash into Earth in precisely 48 years’ time. It is picking up just enough speed for an impact scenario to be “in play” for 2068. Which should give Boris Johnson’s government just enough time to fix the test and trace system. It might even give Labour enough time to stop arguing about antisemitism and try to win an election. Possibly. Possibly not. Unite and the socialist left are talking about “chaos” and splits after their great hero was suspended by Keir Starmer.Inside the bubbleOur political editor Andrew Woodcock on what to look out for today: More

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      A political populism far removed from Donald Trump | Letters

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      Andy Beckett presents an entirely negative picture of populism (This is a moment of truth for rightwing populists – but don’t celebrate yet, 23 October). There are many unfortunate examples in our present age of how destructive populist movements can be. However, he appears unaware of earlier and more positive episodes of populism, in particular the founding of the People’s party in 1891 in the US. This became a significant political party, gaining 8% of the popular vote when it fielded a candidate in the 1892 presidential election.The origins of the People’s party, also known as the Populist party, lay in the exploitation of sharecroppers and tenant farmers by business monopolies and the banking elite. These agrarian workers had been plunged into debt, after taking on loans to fund investments in new farming equipment, when they were hit by droughts and falling crop prices, together with extortionate loan terms and interest rates.The Populist party agitated for massive political reforms, which included the recognition of unions, regulation of the railway industry, the direct election of senators, progressive income tax, and women’s suffrage. These ideas were considered radical at the time, and still are!The current problem with populism is that most of it is not genuine, but is either generated by cynical groups with a hidden interest, or is hijacked by unscrupulous politicians for ulterior purposes. However, there still are populist movements that serve a higher purpose. Be careful not to diss populism per se, as it has a distinguished pedigree. It is the pseudo-populists who need to be challenged and brought to heel.Dr Stephen BlomfieldSheffield• Andy Beckett’s piece on populism was a brilliant discussion of one of the most pressing questions of our time. I only have one small quibble. He says we should remember that populists do sometimes “get re-elected”.But that’s not the point. Populism is democracy’s ugly sister. It flourishes when the primordial democratic promise of political equality is negated by a dysfunctional political system. The answer is the maximum possible diffusion of power. It’s not an accident that federal systems are less likely to be infected by the populist virus than centralised ones. A radical overhaul of our dysfunctional political system is the only way out of the populist trap.David MarquandPenarth, South Glamorgan• I disagree that the “predictable and cautious politics” of the 1990s and 2000s provoked an outburst of populism. It was because these political periods were unstable that there was a backlash. The administrations of John Major and Tony Blair produced boom and bust, two massive recessions with widespread unemployment and widening inequality.The Blair government was still essentially Thatcherite even though it tried to fiddle around the edges to make things a bit better for the least affluent. The inevitable crunch came in 2007 precisely because banking and housing remained unreformed. Then came David Cameron, George Osborne and austerity. Populism is the muddled reaction against 40 years of Thatcherism.David RedshawGravesend, Kent• David Runciman highlights the need for politicians with experience and judgment when faced with a crisis like the Covid-19 pandemic (Boris Johnson is learning that in politics you cannot simply ‘follow the science’, 24 October). The problem is that our pluralist democratic system is not designed to produce politicians with the wisdom and practical experience to use facts in a relevant way, but only ones that can gain resonance at the ballot box. Both Boris Johnson and Donald Trump exemplify the deficiency.Derek HeptinstallWestgate-on-Sea, Kent More

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      A Joe Biden White House will have little time and less love for ‘Britain’s Trump’ | Andrew Rawnsley

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      When the long race for the White House ends, another begins: the sprint to be the first European leader to be granted an audience by the new US president. In 2016, Theresa May was distraught to have got a wooden spoon in the competition to put in an early congratulatory telephone call to Trump Tower. That made her even more neuralgic about beating a path to Washington ahead of her European rivals. Mrs May had to throw in the promise of a Trump state visit to the UK – I rather rudely called it “pimping out the Queen” – to ensure that she got to the White House first.
      This desperation can make British prime ministers look pathetically needy, but there is a reason why they set so much store by displays of proximity with the Oval Office. How important a prime minister is to the United States, the planet’s largest economy and most potent military force, sends a message about how much influence the UK wields in the world. So it is telling that Number 10 is resigned to the prospect that Boris Johnson will not be the first name on Joe Biden’s call sheet if he becomes the 46th president. Nor is there any expectation that Mr Johnson will be first in line when they hand out invitations to the White House. He has already quit a race UK prime ministers are usually pretty good at winning.
      “There is an intrinsic problem for Boris,” observes Sir Christopher Meyer, the UK’s ambassador in Washington during the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W Bush. “The Democrats think Boris is a pea from the same pod as Trump.” Being “Britain’s Trump” goes down almost as poisonously as being Trump himself among many in Team Biden. They are bracketed together in the minds of Democrats not just because both are rule-breaking populists who have polarised their countries and trashed historic alliances. Likely members of a Biden administration remember examples of the Tory leader’s insultingly Trumpian behaviour. Ben Rhodes, who was deputy national security adviser when Mr Biden was vice-president to Barack Obama, has remarked: “I’m old enough to remember when Boris Johnson said Obama opposed Brexit because he was Kenyan.” A more recent inflammatory episode exposed a complete absence of thought in Number 10 about the man whom the polls suggest will be the next US president.
      One of the most essential things to know about Mr Biden – it would be on the first page if anyone wrote a book called Biden for Beginners – is that he is a Catholic who is extremely proud of his Irish ancestry. Mr Johnson was either blithe or ignorant about that when he declared that he was ready to break international law by dishonouring clauses concerning Ireland in the withdrawal agreement with the EU. Mr Biden was one of the voices in the chorus of American condemnation that the Johnson government was jeopardising the Good Friday agreement. “That was profoundly clumsy and stupid,” says Sir Chris. “It immediately ignited the Irish-American lobby in Washington, which is second in power only to the pro-Israeli lobby.”
      Mr Johnson can be quite adept at shape-shifting when he thinks it suits his interests. He was a liberal mayor of London before he became the face of the anti-immigrant Brexit campaign. Confronted with a Democrat in the White House, he may try to slough off his Trumpian skin and offer himself as a useful partner for an internationalist president. For his part, Mr Biden will say that America’s ties with the UK are important to him, if only because that is what all American presidents say. It is nevertheless set to start out as one of the frostiest relationships between Number 10 and the White House since Harold Wilson and Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s.
      Though Mr Biden has been a large figure in US politics for decades, one well-placed observer says that Number 10 is “absolutely clueless” about him and his key people. In the past, it has been usual for the Washington embassy to attach a diplomat to the campaigns of presidential candidates, the better to get to know their teams and likely priorities in office. Wary of any suggestion of outside interference in the US election, the Biden team banned meetings with foreign diplomats. Downing Street has found it hard to find other ways to establish connections. Previous Tory governments had good lines of communication to both parties in the US. This Brexiter-dominated cabinet has cultivated ties solely with Republicans. It was only very recently and very belatedly that Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, managed to get some time with Biden allies on Capitol Hill. If they were smarter, the Johnson government would also have paid a lot of attention to Mr Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris, because she will be a 77-year-old’s heartbeat away from the presidency.
      Even if a Biden administration decides to let bygones be bygones, the Johnson government will still struggle to make itself relevant in Washington. After a Trump presidency that has massively strained America’s historic alliances while often fawning to authoritarians, a Biden presidency will try to reassert US leadership of the world’s democracies. A critical feature of that will be detraumatising the transatlantic relationship. At a recent Ditchley conference of foreign policy experts from America, Britain and elsewhere, one question that preoccupied the gathering was who would become Mr Biden’s “special friend” in Europe. Emmanuel Macron is very eager to secure that status, though others familiar with thinking among the Biden team believe that their highest priority will be re-establishing strong relations with Germany. Almost no one expects the UK to have preferred partnership status.
      After the huge distress to European leaders of enduring a US president who willed the breakup of the European Union, a Biden administration will revert to something much closer to America’s traditional post-1945 policy. Namely that US interests are best served by Europe being stable and cohesive. Having severed its central bond with its neighbours, the UK can no longer hope to offer itself to Washington as America’s bridge across the Atlantic.
      Searching for areas where the relationship could still be close, some emphasise “the hard security issues” – military co-operation, counter-terrorism and intelligence – where there are mutual interests that have historically transcended the personalities of leaders. “When the Americans are looking for military help, they ask who are our allies and what have they got?” says one senior Tory who thinks this still matters. But Johnson government officials sound rather desperate when they try to talk up the importance of the UK’s much-reduced military heft. Mr Biden is not planning any wars and, even if he were, the United States can act without the help of Britain.
      The biggest foreign policy challenge of the Biden presidency will be managing his country’s tense strategic competition with China while avoiding a deterioration into armed confrontation. Britain’s ability to be of use to Washington in that sphere is limited because our capacity to apply meaningful pressure on China is not high. The UK government has protested in vain about China’s treatment of Hong Kong.
      Downing Street also sounds as if it is clutching at very feeble straws when it suggests that there will be an opportunity to win favour next year when Britain hosts the UN climate change conference. Mr Biden is not exactly a summit novice and his team have clocked that Britain was mealymouthed when Mr Trump ripped up American commitments to tackling the climate crisis.
      There are compelling reasons why a change at the White House ought to unnerve Mr Johnson. The Trump presidency emboldens populist nationalists around the world by encouraging them to believe that they are part of an irresistibly triumphant global trend. Defeat for him will give his one term in office more the character of a freakish spasm and leave imitators looking like purveyors of an ideological style that is going out of fashion.
      During the Trump period, Mr Johnson has tried to lever influence with other leaders by presenting himself as the man who has the ear of, and can help to interpret, the White House wild man. “Boris Johnson sold himself as the Trump whisperer,” says Jonathan Powell, a diplomat in Washington before he became Tony Blair’s chief of staff. “Without Trump, what is the point of Johnson?” More existentially, the British may ask themselves where his policies have left this country other than looking alone in a dangerous world. Brexit has fractured the relationship with Europe, one pillar of the postwar foreign policy. Now it looks highly likely that the other pillar, a close relationship with the US, will be shuddering.
      • Andrew Rawnsley is Chief Political Commentator of the Observer More

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      We’re endlessly told why populism works. Now see how it might fail | Nick Cohen

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      We have heard lectures on why radical rightwing movements win for what feels like an age. A more pressing subject gains less attention. Like catching a glimpse of the path from a dangerous mountain when the mist parts, we can begin to see how they may lose.When liberals treat their enemies as evil geniuses, they bestow a backhanded compliment. They imply that, however wicked it may be, the right has a supernatural power to manipulate the electorate and rig the system. Donald Trump is many things, but he’s no genius, evil or otherwise. If Trump were a beggar screaming at passersby on a Washington sidewalk, rather than a billionaire in the White House, we would have no difficulty in saying he was mentally ill. I accept Boris Johnson has the superficial charm and rat-like cunning of the journalist-conman. But if he were a political mastermind, he would never have confirmed the deep suspicion of northern voters that southern snobs view them with contempt.One day, their obituaries may record that Trump and Johnson destroyed the base of their support without realising they were doing it; that they no more understood the forces that brought them to power than plastic sheeting blowing down a street understands the wind.Johnson’s failure to protect the British is equal to Trump’s failure to protect Americans, as the death rates showAge does not bring wisdom and before it is anything else Trump and Johnson’s base is old. Sixty per cent of voters over 65 supported Leave in the 2016 Brexit referendum. American pensioners preferred Trump over Hillary Clinton 53%-45% in the 2016 presidential election. You don’t need me to tell you that Covid-19 targets the old. And you don’t need to be a genius to know that politicians shouldn’t give their supporters the impression they are happy to see them die. Trump’s failure to get a grip on the pandemic and the Republican party’s dismissal of basic health protections gives exactly that impression. Joe Biden can now tell old, white voters, whose backing Trump could once have counted on: “You’re expendable, you’re forgettable, you’re virtually nobody. That’s how he sees seniors. That’s how he sees you.”US polls bear out the staggering political insight that voters don’t want to die by showing that Biden has taken a substantial lead among pensioners. Far from making the clever choice and downplaying an issue that only harms him, Trump reveals his compulsive narcissism by refusing to let Covid-19 go. Moving on to talk about, say, the economy would entail accepting that he was in the wrong about the pandemic. Rather than bite his tongue, last week he was ridiculing the head of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, whom Trump loathes for the childish reason that Americans trust his medical advice more than they trust Trump.Johnson’s failure to protect the British is equal to Trump’s failure to protect Americans, as the near-identical per capita death rates show. Johnson is also displaying Trumpian levels of political ineptitude, although the reason for his blundering is different. If Trump is driven by a narcissistic compulsion, Johnson is driven by power hunger.Not a single cabinet minister visited Manchester to make the government’s casePerhaps you have to be from the north of England to understand the suicidal politics of behaving as if the south can humiliate the north. I moved away from Manchester in the 1980s and even I found myself overcome by volcanic rage as ministers issued ultimatums that Manchester must accept the government’s miserly Covid-19 relief or pay the price. Johnson’s behaviour is incomprehensible because he knows the power of northern resentment. Since the Brexit referendum, the right has spun the story that elitist Remainers, lounging in their Islington ivory towers, had the nerve to denounce honest northerners as “thick” for backing Leave. The opinion pages of the Daily Telegraph have been filled with little else these past four years.Exploiting anti-metropolitan feeling helped the Conservatives win. Now northern Labour politicians can turn the years of physical and economic suffering that coronavirus will bring into the story of how Westminster’s Tory elite refused to treat the north with common decency. The Manchester Evening News’s Jennifer Williams wrote of her incredulity that, as reports of Tories refusing the support the north needed cut through to such an extent that pubs were offering free pints to Andy Burnham, not a single cabinet minister visited Manchester to make the government’s case. Perhaps it isn’t such a puzzle. This government hates and wants to crush anyone who argues back: judges, broadcasters, civil servants, regional mayors. When the mayor of Greater Manchester stood up for his region, the right’s hatred of a rival source of power blinded it to the danger of confirming every northern suspicion about the south.A deterministic explanation of contemporary society has taken a deep hold. The corruption and incompetence of governments do not matter, we are told. The material reality of whether you have a job or are unemployed, whether you expect to live or die, no longer determines how you vote. If you went to university, you back the left. If you didn’t, you back the right. Or so the story goes. Johnson can break his promises about Brexit bringing a new dawn. Trump can break his promises about fighting for working-class Americans. It doesn’t matter. Trump’s boast that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters” encapsulates our age.If Trump wins, the cultural determinists will be vindicated. If he does not, however, the reasons for his defeat won’t be a mystery. Astonished US journalists won’t be wondering how to explain it. They will know that, far from helping him, Trump’s vicious culture war politics alienated white women, who came to find him repulsive, and his mishandling of the Covid-19 crisis alienated elderly people and many others besides.Northern Labour politicians I speak to still believe that Corbyn and the far left gifted the Conservatives another 10 years in 2019. But even they are wavering now and, like lost walkers when the mist parts on the fells, are catching the faintest glimpse of a way through the murk.• Nick Cohen is an Observer columnist More

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      Digested week: Spurs show why it’s best not to take a healthy lead for granted

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      West Ham came back from 3-0 down so Biden should probably be wary he’s ahead in the pollsThis wasn’t quite the return to north London that either Gareth Bale or Spurs had hoped. Bale had come on in about the 70thminute and Tottenham were seemingly cruising to a healthy 3-0 win. A quarter of an hour later and Spurs were hanging on to a 3-2 lead. Then Harry Kane put Bale through and the Welshman did all the hard yards of beating the West Ham left back only to stab the ball wide when it seemed easier to score and put the match to bed. Needless to say, West Ham equalised with the last kick of the game and for several hours afterwards I was almost catatonic with shock and disappointment. Then I calmed down a bit and decided the game must have been one of the most Spursy performances I had ever seen and if Bale had forgotten how football is played in N17 he had been given the perfect reminder. Besides, there was no point getting too upset about snatching a draw from the jaws of victory as there is so much more to get angry about in football. Starting with Sky Sports’ decision to start charging customers, such as myself, an extra £14.95 on top of our ordinary subscriptions to watch selected games. Sky has been reluctant to disclose just how many people have coughed up for the pleasure so far, which rather suggests that no more than a few thousand people are bothering to make the effort. Something that won’t please the advertisers who are presumably being charged an arm and a leg. The Tottenham Hotspur Supporters’ Trust has come up with the ideal solution. Anyone tempted to fork out the £14.95 to Sky should instead make a comparable donation to the Tottenham Foodbank. Consider it done. Continue reading… More

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      Young voters are disconnecting from democracy – but who can blame them? | Daniella Wenger and Roberto Foa

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      Across the world, and above all in Britain, the Americas and southern Europe, recent research shows that millennials are more dissatisfied with the performance of democracy than previous generations. Moreover, the gap has only worsened with time. When Generation X hit 35, the majority were satisfied with how democracy worked. Most millennials today take the contrary view.Inevitably, our findings have proved something of a Rorschach test for commentators who enjoy speculating about the attitudes of younger generations – including the usual mix of patronising condescension and disbelief. And yes, it is true, in developed democracies such as the US, the UK and Australia, millennials are less likely to join political parties or vote in elections, yet more likely to complain about the results. In the 2016 election, only 46% of young Americans voted, and that hasn’t added legitimacy to millennial objections against the current administration’s actions on the climate changecrisis, student loans or housing affordability.Yet an examination of millennial life trajectories makes clear the reasons for this generational disconnect. In the US, millennials aged 30 make up close to a quarter of the population yet own just 3% of the wealth, while baby boomers held 21% at the same age. In Britain, millennials are the first generation to earn less than their parents and grandparents. In Greece, Italy, and Spain, youth unemployment is approximately three times the national rate.If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, millennials can hardly be blamed for checking out from mainstream democratic politics. Hence young people are moving away from the political centre. All the enthusiasm with which young voters once backed moderates such as Barack Obama or Justin Trudeau has morphed into anger over unsustainable debt, high rent and low-paying lobs.And yet we also find that there is nothing inevitable about this youth disconnect from democracy. Our research shows that in countries such as Norway or South Korea, where jobs are plentiful and education and housing affordable, millennials can even be more satisfied with their political institutions than older generations are.Meanwhile, when leaders take measures to reverse youth economic exclusion, the democratic disconnect can be bridged. During Latin America’s “pink tide” of the 2000s, for instance, leaders such as Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil or Michelle Bachelet in Chile helped boost youth satisfaction with democracy by extending social benefits to poorer citizens. On average, across all pink tide administrations, young people’s satisfaction with democracy rose 12 percentage points by the end of the first term in office.Travelling further back in time, the election of François Mitterrand in France and Andreas Papandreou in Greece in the 1980s suggest that populism of the left can be a vehicle for young people’s re-engagement with political life. Populist rhetoric has in the past brought young people into the political fold, and continues to do so. Yet faced with this insurgency, the response of the politicians of yesteryear has been to attempt a revival of the political centre, citing Emmanuel Macron’s La République En Marche! or Matteo Renzi as examples of the new way forward.Alas, it doesn’t work: there are few signs of a reversal in youth dissatisfaction when “moderate” candidates beat “populists” into office. In France there may have been relief among the middle classes when Macron won the presidency in 2017, but youth discontent reached fresh levels little more than a year later amid the gilets jaunes protests. Today, the latest opinion polls show far-right candidate Marine Le Pen on course to beat Macron in the first round of the 2022 election, with her National Rally party gathering disproportionate support from disaffected French youth.Meanwhile in Italy, the relatively youthful Matteo Renzi proved a similarly damp squib as younger voters flocked instead towards the amorphous populism of Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement. Elsewhere, moderates have fared little better. In Argentina, Mauricio Macri’s 2015 victory over Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s successor might have brought realistic economics and calmer rhetoric to a country long accustomed to neither, but it did little to revive youth enthusiasm for the democratic process – or Macri’s prospects for re-election, as he was booted from office four years later.In the long run, populists offer few solutions to democracy’s current malaise. That is clear from political and economic crises engulfing countries like Venezuela and Turkey today, as well as more accelerated crises such as Greece’s abortive 2015 effort to revise the terms of its eurozone membership. As we show in our report, when populist parties of either left or right hold office for long enough to undermine democracy and economic prosperity, youth satisfaction declines precipitously.Yet despite their dangers, populists respond to real anger and frustration in society in a way that conventional politicians do not. For as long as this remains true, the populist brand of anti-politics will continue to thrive. So perhaps a paradigm shift is in order. Instead of becoming distracted by the “threat” of populism, we should do more to deliver on democracy’s founding promise – to represent the concerns of citizens and to deliver effective and timely policy solutions.If the populist challenge can shock moderate parties and leaders into taking measures to reverse the true causes of our democratic disconnect– ranging from wealth inequalities between successful and left-behind regions, to the growing intergenerational divide and the toxic nexus of money and politics – then it may yet prompt a democratic rebirth. But if all that mainstream parties can offer is a cosmetic rebrand of the politics of the past, then we should not be surprised if younger citizens continue disconnecting from democracy.Daniella Wenger is research associate at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy, Cambridge University; Roberto Foa is lecturer at Cambridge University and director of the YouGov-Cambridge Centre for Public Opinion Research More