Why Are Populists Winning? With Liam Byrne and Will Hutton

35 snips

Mar 27, 2026

Liam Byrne, Labour MP and author of Why Populists Are Winning, offers sharp analysis of modern authoritarian populism and its media, funding, and psychological drivers. He maps five voter “tribes” and explains why nostalgic, urgent rhetoric resonates. Conversations cover economic causes, coastal decline, national renewal, and policy paths to rebuild civic life and counter populist momentum.

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INSIGHT

Three A's Of Authoritarian Populism

Right-wing authoritarian populism combines appeasement of foreign autocrats, autocracy at home, and private greed as a repeatable three-part pattern.
Liam Byrne identifies recurring speech tropes: national renewal, nostalgic loss, and emergency that justify strongman rule.

INSIGHT

Populist Message Triad Runs Across Leaders

Authoritarian populists use a tight rhetorical triad: ethno-nationalist decline, nostalgia for a lost past, and crisis language demanding a strong leader.
Semantic analysis of speeches shows these tropes recur across decades and countries.

ADVICE

Target Persuadable Voter Tribes

Focus persuasion efforts on persuadable groups, not hardcore supporters; target the civic pragmatists and the melancholy middle.
Byrne's polling shows these groups are progressive on climate, public services and dislike strongman leadership.

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Populism has been winning big in recent years. It is the wave that has buoyed Donald Trump’s second term in office, Marine Le Pen’s popularity in France, and Reform UK’s recent leaps and bounds in British polling. Across the West, authoritarian populists now govern one-quarter of the world's democracies.

But what explains the surge of populism across the democratic world - and can it be reversed?

In this episode, economist and commentator Will Hutton speaks with Labour MP Liam Byrne about his new book Why Populists Are Winning: And How to Beat Them. Drawing on original polling, international reporting and interviews with leading thinkers, Byrne narrows down the meaning of populism, interrogates the funding, media ecosystems and language deployed by populist leaders, and the psyches of those who are persuaded to vote for them.

Byrne explains how populist leaders mobilise what he calls five distinct ‘tribes’ of voters, and which of these can be appealed to. He sets out his argument for rebuilding what he calls the ‘radical centre’ of Western politics, and why confronting populism requires more than simply condemning it.

Liam Byrne is a Labour MP, a member of His Majesty's Privy Council and the Chair of the House of Commons Business and Trade Select Committee. He served in Gordon Brown's Cabinet, in No. 10 Downing Street and HM Treasury, and chaired the Global Parliamentary Network on the World Bank and IMF 2019-2025. He is the author of more than twenty publications on economics, foreign policy and public service reform including The Inequality of Wealth. His latest is Why Populists Are Winning: and How to Beat Them, which is available now online and in bookstores.

Will Hutton is the former Editor-in-Chief of the Observer. He is a commentator, columnist, and author of books including The State We’re In, How Good We Can Be, and This Time No Mistakes: How to Remake Britain.

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