Beating Populism: How To Fight Back

Summary

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The Rest Is Politics – "Beating Populism: How To Fight Back"

Date: April 16, 2026
Host: Alastair Campbell
Guest: Liam Byrne MP

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Episode Overview

In this second part of The Rest Is Politics’ miniseries on populism, Alastair Campbell sits down with Labour MP Liam Byrne to explore strategies for defeating right-wing populism. Drawing from Byrne's recent book and his own experience as a former immigration minister, the discussion focuses on reclaiming the narrative for progressive, democratic politics. The episode emphasizes practical ways to reconnect with the so-called “melancholy middle” and “civic pragmatists” – voters seen as crucial for any progressive electoral victory. The conversation is rich with references to historical lessons, pragmatic policy ideas (notably with frequent nods to Franklin D. Roosevelt), and a call for bold, imaginative responses to today’s challenges, both old and new.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Target Voter Groups and the Limits of Outreach

• [00:00–01:32]

• Who Can Be Won Back?

  • Focus is on two groups: the “melancholy middle” and “civic pragmatists.”
  • Other segments (e.g., “disgusted disruptors”) are seen as out of reach for Labour and the Tories.
  • “70% of Reform voters will have not voted Labour for the last 20 years.” — Liam Byrne [01:26]

• On Targeting

  • "If [you] voted for Tony Blair, you're never going to vote Labour, are you? We know that." — Alastair Campbell [01:32]
  • There’s a clear-eyed acceptance that some segments are not coming back, regardless of party strategy.

2. Immigration: Striking the Right Balance

• [01:54–05:11]

• Twofold Approach Needed:

  • Strong Borders: “You’ve got to have strong borders, and that is why you have to fix the boats crisis.” — Liam Byrne [02:28]
  • Earned Citizenship: The path to citizenship should be clear and fair—learn English, obey the law, work hard, pay taxes.
  • “People are perfectly reasonable. They say... it comes down to three things: learning to speak English, obeying the law and working hard and paying tax. Beyond that, you should be live and let live.” — Liam Byrne [02:52]

• Narrative Control:

  • Parties should acknowledge the need for reform to reduce the salience of immigration as a wedge issue.
  • "The big way that you beat Reform is by reminding people that his economic plan is basically Liz Truss on steroids." — Alastair Campbell [05:11]

3. The "Fairness Code" and Civic Capitalism

• [05:15–09:56]

• Holding Big Interests Accountable:

  • Criticism of companies like Fujitsu for not paying Post Office scandal reparations.
  • "Why has Fujitsu not contributed a bean to the £2 billion pound bill for restoring justice to the Post Office Horizon victims? Not a penny have they paid. Wrong, wrong, wrong." — Liam Byrne [05:40]

• Workforce and Consumer Rights:

  • Examples of major companies shortchanging workers (Amazon, Every, McDonald's).
  • Consumer harm through rip-offs is a real issue, costing billions.

• Policy Response:

  • Need for “civic capitalism”—not a war on business, but targeting those not playing by the rules.
  • Wealth Inequality: The top 1% has seen much greater gains since 2010.
  • Advocacy for "universal basic capital" over UBI—policy to help people build assets (e.g., home deposits, pensions).

• How to Fund It:

  • Proposes equalizing capital gains and income taxes, referencing past cross-party support.
  • “If we had not given away North Sea Oil, we would have a sovereign wealth fund of £500 billion right now.” — Liam Byrne [08:02]

• Vision for a "wealth-owning democracy":

  • “Maybe we would call it the wealth owning democracy today. But that's got to be one of the ideas that is in the radical center of politics.” — Liam Byrne [09:14]

4. The "Civic Gospel" and the Role of Community Institutions

• [09:59–12:54]

• The Civic Gospel:

  • Inspiration from Joseph Chamberlain’s Birmingham and the tradition of inventive civic engagement.
  • “It was not a terrified response, it was an inventive response...” — Liam Byrne [10:23]

• Local Government and Community Resilience:

  • Praise for government investing in community renewal, e.g., the multibillion “Pride in Place” fund.

• Decline and Importance of Community Institutions:

  • The fading influence of churches and trade unions and what that means for society.
  • Institutions like faith groups and schools are highlighted as critical “glue” that held communities together during crises.
  • "The way primary schools kept our communities together over the last 10 to 15 years has been one of the unsung miracles of British national life." — Liam Byrne [11:43]

• New Threats to Civic Cohesion:

  • Need to confront new divisive forces: Big Tech and “kleptocrats trying to surge dark money into British politics.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “People are perfectly reasonable. They say, look, do you know what? It comes down to three things. It comes down to learning to speak English, obeying the law and working hard and paying tax. Beyond that, you should be live and let live.” — Liam Byrne [02:52]
• "Why has Fujitsu not contributed a bean to the £2 billion pound bill for restoring justice to the Post Office Horizon victims?... Wrong, wrong, wrong." — Liam Byrne [05:40]
• “If we had not given away North Sea Oil, we would have a sovereign wealth fund of £500 billion right now.” — Liam Byrne [08:02]
• "We need to be the party of a more kind of civic capitalism." — Liam Byrne [06:48]
• "Maybe we would call it the wealth owning democracy today. But that's got to be one of the ideas that is in the radical center of politics." — Liam Byrne [09:14]
• “The way primary schools kept our communities together over the last 10 to 15 years has been one of the unsung miracles of British national life.” — Liam Byrne [11:43]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [00:00–01:32] — Focus and scope: which voters matter
• [01:54–05:11] — Immigration: balancing enforcement and integration
• [05:15–09:56] — Fairness code, civic capitalism, and asset-building reform
• [09:59–12:54] — The civic gospel, community bonds, and fighting new threats

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Conclusion

This episode offers a trenchant yet hopeful exploration of how progressive politics can recapture the initiative in a populist age. With practical policy ideas, a focus on fairness, and calls to rebuild civic life, Byrne and Campbell present a roadmap for those who "still believe in politics as a force for good." The tone is urgent but not despairing, optimistic about the possibility of "radical centrism" and renewal—if boldness and moral clarity can prevail.

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Transcript

[A]

Thanks for listening to the Rest Is Politics. To support the podcast, listen without the adverts and get early access to episodes and live show tickets, go to therestispolitics.com that's therestispolitics.com welcome to the Rest Is Politics. With me, Alistair Campbell without Rory, but shortly with Liam Byrne MP for the second part in our miniseries on populism. Liam's written this very, very interesting book about populism, where it comes from, what it means, how it's exploited. And we're talking particularly about right wing populism, as people who've listened to will know. But that was really all about diagnosing the problem. What this episode seeks to do is to go through how it can be defeated by those who still believe in progressive democratic politics and politics as a force for good rather than the force for exploitation by charismatic charlatans. So here you go, a few ideas, and don't be surprised if you hear the name Franklin D. Roosevelt quite a lot in this episode. We talked in part one about these, these five groups, the disgusted disruptors, the left behind collectivists, the traditional conservatives, the melancholy middle, the civic pragmatist. I want to focus on the bottom two. Yeah. Because you're basically saying the top three, the Tories and Labor, might as well take the bat away and go home because they're not going to come back to them.

[B]

And they were never. And they were never within reach.

[A]

They might have been with the Tories.

[B]

Some of them, some of them were the notorious. But I mean, there were never labor. 70% of Reform voters will have not voted labor for them in the last 20 years.

[A]

Well, if voted for Tony Blair, you're never going to vote Labour, are you? We know that. We know that. So. But of that 40%, you alluded to this in part one. But let's just dig into it now. See, I would argue in the approach on immigration, I kind of understand the politics of it, but I do think the rhetoric of it through this parliament has been, in a sense, about aiming at all of these people.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

Right. Which has alienated a lot of people who you're losing to the left of labor and to the Greens. So based both on your analysis of all this, but more importantly, in a way, your experience as immigration minister under new labor, what is the right balance between we're going to sort this and we're going to be tough and we're going to stop this and stop that, and what's the balance that is most likely to at least get these people thinking Differently.

[B]

What we learned the hard way is that there's basically a double balance you've got to strike. So, one, your borders have got to be strong. So if you think about what we had to do, we had to create the UK Border Agency, put people in uniform, create these kind of offshore checks before people got anywhere near the border. You've got to have strong borders, and that is why you have to fix the boats crisis. But the second balance you've got to strike is that people have got to kind of earn their stay, earn their path to citizenship. So earn citizenship with the big set of reforms that I prepared, you know, we ran out of time before implementing them. Shaban and Mahmoud has picked them up. And I spent a lot of time going around the country talking to people about, okay, look, what is the deal to be British? How do you. How do you earn the right to be British? And, you know, the thing that struck me is that actually people are perfectly reasonable. They say, look, do you know what? It comes down to three things. It comes down to learning to speak English, obeying the law and working hard and paying tax. Beyond that, you should be live and let live.

[A]

You're talking here about all of these people, or some of these people, your

[B]

civic pragmatist in your melancholy middle. Actually, I mean, I think your more hardcore reform voters are just so fixed that all immigration is bad, can never be good. You know, you're not going to win them back on an argument about immigration. You know they are. You know, they're not going to lead.

[A]

But in which case, in which case you're going to lose other people on the economy. Those people are more driven by the economy, doing well. Because if you don't, let's be frank, with the birth rate declining, with our demographics as they are, we are going to have to keep making the case for immigration.

[B]

We are. And look, the big question in Western economics right now is how do you maintain economic dynamism in an aging society? So you are going to. But I think you can win a story about immigration if you say you fix the system, provided you can basically say, look, it is a system that is in control, not out of control. And actually, if you want to be part of the country, you've got to earn your right to stay here. Those are kind of two perfectly reasonable kind of propositions. And all of the work that people like Seneca Waller has done at British Future shows that that kind of pragmatism is actually where most people are. But if you don't fix immigration reform, then you're not going to win these people back. And that, if you like, is one of the messages to many people in the Labour Party which is, look, don't pretend this not an issue because we are going to have to make progress on. Do you put it at the top of the list of things that you talk about every day on your messaging? No, you don't actually, you fix it because what you're trying to do is to reduce the salience of the issue at the next election because actually Labor's got to run on the economy at the next election because all of our message testing shows that the big way that you beat reform is by reminding people that his economic plan is basically

[A]

Liz Truss on steroids promising the earth.

[B]

And what does that mean? It drives up your interest rates.

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. Maybe that discussion on immigration leads us into one of the key points of your prospectus for how to beat the populace, which is what you call fairness. The fairness code.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I guess that's what you're saying about immigration. We need a system that people understand and respect and they think is fair. But which other areas?

[B]

There's two. So one is that we have got to be puncture in taking on this selfish minority who don't play by the rules. And on the Business and Trade Committee we see them week in, week out. Why has Fujitsu not contributed a bean to the 2 billion pound bill for restoring justice to the Post Office Horizon victims? Not a penny have they paid. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

[A]

And what's the answer to that?

[B]

Why they can get away? They haven't had the moral courage to do it. And B ministers have not been demanding enough, you know, to actually sin on both sides. But equally if you think about the companies that we've had to bring in for shortchanging their workers now they would all kind of argue this but we have had to bring in companies like Every and companies like Amazon and companies like McDonald's who, because we've had real concerns about how their workforce is being treated. We think that consumer harm in our country the kind of rip offs at bills and tills. So it's not a small problem. It costs consumers 71 billion pounds a year. These are, these are kind of big problems that people feel at a time when they're under financial pressure and so,

[A]

so why aren't we doing anything? Well, why aren't we doing, why aren't we taking that on?

[B]

I think from a lack of self confidence, the reason they're not doing it of course is that they're worried about you Know, disincentivizing investment in the economy and all that kind of thing. And I get that there's a balance to strike, which is why I'm saying we're not, we're not here to launch a war on capitalism. We're here to pick a fight with some vested interests who are not playing by the rules. We need to be the party of a more kind of civic capitalism. So that's fairness point number one. Fairness point number two is in the Social Security system, where we now have a country where it is very difficult for people to build wealth and assets. And as I've said, the top 1% has multiplied its wealth by 31 times more than everybody else since 2010. So the big idea in the book that came before this on the inequality of wealth is an idea not universal basic income, but universal basic capital. And the idea here is that you restore savings matches tax breaks and incentives for people to build up assets, to put down a deposit on a home, to call their own, to retrain, restock their human capital and to save more into a pension.

[A]

Is that being done anywhere?

[B]

It's being done in places like Singapore. So Singapore is probably the best example. And the way you pay for it is actually by building a sovereign wealth fund, which we're beginning to do, which

[A]

we should have done when we had North Sea Oil.

[B]

If we had not given away North Sea Oil, we would have a sovereign wealth fund of £500 billion right now. But the way that you build it now is by restoring fairness to this tax system and actually introducing not necessarily a wealth tax, but higher taxes on wealth. So if you think about Rishi Sunak's tax return, which I don't know if you've read, it's not very long, it's about a page long. Last tax return.

[A]

23% was it?

[B]

Bang on. There you go. 2 million in income tax rate, 23%. I mean, how can that be right? They can't be right, be wrong. So if you begin restoring a bit of fairness to the tax system actually, like that old socialist Nigel Lawson did, equalizing capital gains tax rates and income tax rates, you would begin to raise the money over the course of five to six years to build the kind of sovereign wealth fund that could help you finance those kind of tax breaks, to restore an old idea. Actually once upon a time we used to talk about the property owning democracy. Noel Skelton, who was a Tory, talked about it in the 1920s. John rules, the, you know, left wing philosopher, talked about it in the 70s. Maybe we would call it the wealth owning democracy today. But that's got to be one of the ideas that is in the radical center of politics.

[A]

Right. If I add what you've just said to what you said in part one about small businesses and the high street, you're saying, I think that if we're going to counter this, we have to have bigger, bolder strategies for the budgets that remain between now and the election.

[B]

100%. 100%. And they're not going to be easy because Iran has just put the cost of everything up. But if we don't do this, what is going to happen? We are going to end up with weaker governments in the future, not stronger governments in the future. And democracies promise this idea that if you work hard, play by the rules, you can get on is not going to be restored. And that is fatal to the health of a democracy.

[A]

You also talk about something called the civic gospel.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Are you a faith guy?

[B]

Kind of. I'm a sort of struggling Catholic, I would say. I kind of grew up in a Catholic family and my dad was much influenced by the kind of social catholic theory of the sort of 50s and 60s.

[A]

Okay. Because your civic gospel, which look, I believe in, I'm not a faith guy, I'm not a God guy. But the worry I had about reading this part of your book was the state of local government.

[B]

Yeah, but the idea comes from actually Joseph Chamberlain in Birmingham, I'm town. And the insight is that, you know, the time Birmingham was being built, you had kind of thousands and thousands of people leaving the farms and villages, coming into these strange new places called cities. And the response was not, oh my God, this is terrifying. Let's go back to the farm and the village. It was, right, a revolution in civic inventiveness. We invented this kind of incredible clubs, you know, we invented, you know, the powers of municipal government back then, gas and water, socialism. You know, it wasn't a terrified response, it was an inventive response. And people like Robert Putnam have written about this for a long time. This kind of reinvention of social capital and civic connectedness is what we need to glue communities back together again. And this is where the government has actually got, it's got its plan bang on. So this big multibillion pound Pride in place fund that it's launched, 10 year fund, a bit like our neighborhood renewal fund back in the day, is actually one of its biggest and boldest and best ideas.

[A]

How important as a negative for the sort of world that we're now living in. Has been the relative decline of the church and the trade unions. Speaking as a. From an atheist or what do you call a struggling Catholic?

[B]

Struggling Catholic.

[A]

Does that mean you go to confession a lot?

[B]

No, it means I worry about not going to confession. It's been important. But I mean, if you think about a lot of our communities today, it is actually the faith institutions that have held things together. So I had to spend a lot of time over the last 10 years running food bank collection systems in my constituency. Very high rates of child poverty. You know, very often it's the churches and the temples and the mosques that I'm working with, as well as the primary schools. Much underrated, actually. The way primary schools kept our communities together over the last 10 to 15 years has been one of the unsung miracles of British national life. We should be giving OBEs to head teachers, in my view, left, right and center. But we've got to build on those foundations now for new times. And then we've got to have the courage to take on some of the forces that are deepening division. One American big tech. Two kleptocrats trying to surge dark money into British politics. So there's a fight there as well. It's not just about, let's just refresh fraternity and build a more United Kingdom from this diverse nations that we've got. There's also. They need to get a lot punchier with some big and powerful interests.

[A]

So there you go. That was part of the conversation in part two of our miniseries on populism. And if you want to hear the whole thing, you've just got to join the Club. Go to TheresaPolitics.com and subscribe.