This week we ask what many will say as among the most pressing political questions of our day: How can populists defeated? Can it be assumed that their incompetence in power will lead to their decline? Or is something more needed?
In recent years, populism has gained remarkable traction across the globe. If you see populists as leaders who stoke division and who peddle simplistic solutions that, for all their superficial appeal, cannot succeed – then the rise of populists is an unqualified bad.
So what can liberals (broadly understood as people who recognize social diversity and complexity in policy challenges) do about populism’s rise?
A new article in our partner journal, the Political Quarterly seeks to answer both of these questions. It delves into different theories of voting behaviour to understand the roots of populist strength, and explores what the optimal strategy may be through which liberals can respond. The authors joining us today are:
Mentioned in this episode:
Alan Renwick: [00:00:00] Hello, this is UCL Uncovering Politics, and this week we ask what many will say is among the most pressing political questions of our day: how can populists be defeated? Can it be assumed that their incompetence in power will lead to their decline, or is something more needed?
Hello, my name is Alan Renwick, and welcome to UCL Uncovering Politics, the podcast of the School of Public Policy and Department of Political Science at University College London. In recent years, populism has gained remarkable traction across the globe. If you see populist leaders as leaders who stoke division and who peddle simplistic solutions that, for all their superficial appeal, cannot succeed, then the rise of populists is an unqualified bad.
So, what can liberals broadly understood, people who recognize social diversity and complexity in policy challenges, do [00:01:00] about populism's rise? One view is that populists will precipitate their demise by their incompetence in office. If they peddle simplistic solutions that can't succeed, then once in office, they are surely doomed to fail. Yet many populists, once they gain power, hold it, and they do so, it seems not just by fiddling the rules, but they also maintain their popularity. So, what's going on and what can be done?
While a new article in our partner journal, The Political Quarterly, seeks to answer both questions, it delves into different theories of voting behaviour to understand the roots of populist strength, and then it explores what the optimal strategy may be through which liberals can respond. I'm delighted to say that the authors of that article join me now.
They Dr. Daniel Brieba, Assistant Professor at the School of Government at Universidad Adolfo Ibanez in Chile, and Professor Andres [00:02:00] Velasco, Professor of Public Policy and Dean of the School of Public Policy at the London School of Economics. Daniel and Andres welcome you to UCL Uncovering Politics.
It's great to have you on, let's delve straight into that central paradox in your article that I was hinting at in the introduction: populist leaders remain popular with voters even after governing poorly. Andres, could you maybe just unpack that argument?
Andreas: With pleasure and thank you for the invitation to the podcast. One subject of conversation around the world is Donald Trump. Donald Trump was re-elected even though he stormed the US Capitol. There were people who died during that episode. Even though he governed poorly the first time around, Donald Trump is not the only example of this, but maybe the most prominent one. If you look around the world, in the country, right south of the United States in [00:03:00] Mexico. President Lopez Obrador was in power for six years. The economy did badly, crime rose, the homicide rate went through the roof, and nonetheless, Lopez Obrador ended up with a record 60 some percent approval rating and was able to handpick a successor, a woman who had been part of his administration and who was elected with nearly two thirds of the votes. Those are two examples. They're not the only ones, but I could go on and on. And I think what they reveal is that the link between performance and popularity is much more complicated than we often think.
Most social scientists, and I'm sure we'll talk about this more during a podcast, most social scientists seem to think, economists, political scientists, et cetera, that if a president or a Prime Minister governs well, he or she will be popular. And if the person does not do a good job, he or she will be unpopular. It's [00:04:00] very mechanical, and pretty much based on economic performance, which seems across the world not to be the case. And I think that raises a fascinating question of what it is, then what other factors are determining whether somebody is popular, unpopular, re-elected, or sent home.
Alan Renwick: That's great. Thank you. Andres and Daniel, do you want to build upon that? Andres has pointed out that we have a kind of intuitive action that a lack of success will lead to unpopularity, but we also have an idea in political science and social sciences more generally, which is what we would expect to see as well.
What's the standard theory around this that leads to that expectation?
Daniel Brieba: Sure. So, thanks for the invitation. I think the standard model is about instrumental voting. People vote, hoping to get results, hoping to get something back. Some people vote because they want high growth or low crime. [00:05:00] So delivery is paramount, and I think that's what you always see that we are all discussing, whether populists will deliver or not. If they don't, we should see them out of office. But as Andres just pointed out, you get Donald Trump re-elected despite what he did. And in many cases, you get populist, re-elected who haven't delivered or not delivered very much. There are variations on that model.
In political science, the standard model is more ideological. You say if I believe in a left-wing policy platform, then I will vote for a left-wing policy candidate, and so forth, because I want those sorts of policies. Some people are more retrospective voters. You say, let's look at how the economy did, and then I'll vote that way. Or you might trust the person or the party. If this person is competent or this party is competent, I will vote for that. But what unifies these different models is the idea that it's about the policies and the results. We think, along with other social scientists, notably Aachen and Bertel, have pointed this out that it's more about the social identities [00:06:00], and that's the big thing that's not being considered.
When you vote identity, it's not so instrumental. It's not just about what you're going to get back, but it's about who you are and the sorts of people you trust.
Alan Renwick: Do you want to explain a little bit further just what identity-based voting means in practice?
Daniel Brieba: Social psychology tells us that we are very groupish, as humans. There are groups that we identify with and that are part of our own identity. So, if I say that I am, Chilean, that's a big part of who I am. For other people, it might be, I am from a certain social class or from a certain ethnic group. It might vary, but we all have social identities that are very important to us. So, voting your identity would mean voting for someone who is part of your group or someone who you think will do well for your group. It's about my group being well respected, considered, and having a prominent place in politics if it's someone from my group, it'll be someone I will trust more someone I can [00:07:00] identify with because I know that person is like me or considering my interests and my way of being as part of, of what they will do in office.
Andreas: Alan, if I may, let me change hats for a minute. Stop being a professor and put on my hat as a former politician. I've run for office twice and spent many days campaigning, standing on a street corner, talking to voters. And my experience is very much that people approach you and get a conversation going with you, and maybe express support based on the kinds of things that Daniel was talking about. Do you elicit trust? Do you seem to be the kind of person who would represent their values, their way of life? And after that relationship of trust has been established, after people have said, oh, you look like a nice guy. Maybe I’ll vote for you. Voters say, oh, and what is your policy on subject X or subject Y? And that stands the standard model on its head. [00:08:00] The Standard model says people have preferences over policies, and then they go shopping for the politician or the candidate who will carry out those policies. In my experience, not only in my academic work, but also in my experience as a candidate who works exactly the other way around.
Alan Renwick: How do you see that working in the cases of Trump in the United States and Lopez Obrador in Mexico. Can you walk us through how that is working in those cases?
Andreas: Sure. I think in the case of the US, by now, this has become a bit of a cliche but let me elaborate. There is a set of Americans, many of whom live in the Rust Belt states of the Midwest, many of whom are white, who are probably more males than females. Those who feel that their identity has been disrespected, that the country is being run by the elites on the East Coast and the West Coast. Those elites tend to have not only a college degree but also have been educated at elite institutions. They look down [00:09:00] upon people who don't fit those patterns, who don't have a university degree, who didn't attend elite institutions. Who doesn't have a prestigious white-collar job. Donald Trump may be a rich guy, but he's certainly not an intellectual. He may be from New York, but he was never accepted by the New York establishment as one of them. He comes across as loud, maybe a little vulgar, maybe a little crass, and therefore, people say, “Oh, if you are the kind of man who was looked down upon by the elites, the same happened to me, and therefore, you and I are in the same boat.
Therefore, I can trust you to represent me and my values and interests.” You may be a little erratic, you may be a little loud at times, but, you're better than the other politicians who seem too scripted, who seem, too much in debt to the bankers, to the large corporations, to the elites, intellectuals or otherwise, in California or New York. In Mexico, you get a similar pattern. [00:10:00] Mexico was governed for many years by highly educated technocrats. Most of them were linked to one party, the PRI. The PRI was in power for decades, and many Mexicans came to believe that the political parties were completely detached from the way of life and the interests of the average Mexican. They didn't speak like the average Mexican. They didn't reason like the average Mexican. They didn't go to the same schools or pursue the same hobbies. And as a result, here comes Lopez Obrador man who gives press conferences every morning. The conferences go on for an hour or two. He talks about every subject under the sun. He does it in a very colloquial way, that is sometimes very confrontational, that does not resemble how your standard Mexican politician speaks, and the voters say, “Hey, that's my guy”. He seems to reason like I do. He seems to speak like I do. He seems to know the kind of world that I come from, and that makes [00:11:00] him very popular. Even though again, the standard indicators of economic growth or job creation, and crime abatement aren't quite mediocre. The US and Mexico provide two examples. We could talk about India, Hungary, Brazil, or the Philippines. They all suggest a similar pattern.
Alan Renwick: Yeah, that sounds like a very persuasive account. I guess my question as a sceptical political scientist is, how do we know that it's right? I'm thinking that with a lot of these populists, it seems that there's a genuine public desire, particularly for action on immigration. And although it may be that these populists don't deliver some of the outcomes that political scientists tend to think that most people focus on, economic wellbeing. If voters are focused on that deliverable, then it may be that the populists are quite good at delivering it. And therefore, they do fit into the kind of standard model of how people vote. Do we [00:12:00] have clear reasons for doubting that account? Maybe Daniel, do you want to comment?
Daniel Brieba: I think that policy results get read through an identity lens. So, when you see that Obama or Biden deported a pretty large number of people. The machinery was working that just didn't get reported, and that just didn't seem to register with voters. In the UK, immigration was a huge issue according to polls, until conservatives were in power and Brexit got done, even though immigration was still high, polls showed that immigration wasn't an issue. Now that you have Labour in government. It may be resurging when you distrust the party because of what they represent, the issue gets highlighted again. You get this in other spheres. When Trump says he's delivering growth, that gets interpreted as something huge, but when the Democrats deliver growth, it doesn't get interpreted in the same way. So, I think it's, it isn't that results do not [00:13:00] matter at all.
I think it's important to stress that we do think that delivery is important. If people lose their jobs and see inflation rampant, that will matter. But we just don't think that is enough, an explanation of what's going on, because it's the narrative together with a policy. What we argue in the article is that it's not that policies don't matter, but that they are the product. What embodies a certain political narrative and a certain political identity that makes it coherent, and people say, yeah, that's what these guys are about.
Alan Renwick: That's very interesting. A lot of people are saying about Trump now that his policy failures are going to become more obvious to people. And as that happens, his popularity will decline. Similarly, we're recording this in the UK just a few days after the local elections that led to the election of Reform UK, which most people would regard as a populist party to executive office within a lot of local councils in parts of England. Again, people are saying now they're going to have to [00:14:00] govern and they're going to find that very difficult and that will lead to a decline in their popularity. What do you say about those expectations that people have?
Are those just wrong, or are they just a bit simplistic?
Andreas: I think simplistic or mechanistic is the right way to describe them. Again, as Daniel was saying, we are not arguing that delivery or performance is entirely irrelevant. When a country goes through a massive economic crisis or financial crisis, or inflation crisis, of course, that has an effect on the popularity of the person governing. But that link is not linear. It is not simple. It is not predictable. Let me give you a couple of examples. If you ask Republicans and Democrats about their views of economic performance in the US, it turns out that when the Democrats are in office, Democrats tend to evaluate the state of the economy as being quite good, and [00:15:00] Republicans feel exactly the opposite. Then you change the occupant of the White House, and the views reverse, even though the numbers are almost the same. It is extraordinary, for instance, in the US on the issue of the pandemic and the policies to contain the pandemic, how the views on the effectiveness of, say, masks varied massively depending on whether you are a Republican or a Democrat.
The evidence is out there. You'd expect people who belong to different parties to have more or less convergent views on how good or bad this policy is. No such thing. Another example, when Trump was elected the first time around, his big claim was, I will bring jobs and industrial recovery to those regions of the United States that were de-industrialized and were a lot of working men. And I say men, because most of them were men who had lost their jobs. Go look at what Trump did in those states during his mandate. In [00:16:00] fact, the share of industrial employment did not rise at all. The idea that you impose tariffs, you pick a fight with China, and suddenly manufacturing jobs begin to fall from the heavens into places like Detroit or Gary, Indiana, or Toledo, Ohio. That simply is false. Nonetheless, when those people had a chance to vote for Trump, they voted for Trump, but in fact, delivered those states to Trump in the last election. Again, this is not systematic econometric evidence, but there are people out there who've tried to provide more systematic econometric evidence, and in many cases, it points in this direction. The link between performance and popularity, and electability is, as Daniel was pointing out, mediated by something else. That something else is a relationship of identification, trust. You belong to my tribe, and therefore, I cut you some slack if things are [00:17:00] not going so well. At least you're trying. I believe that you're doing your best if the other guys are in the office.
Alan Renwick: Thank you. Is the count of voting behaviour clear and important? So, thank you for that. Let's move on to what's perhaps the most significant question in this discussion, which is how do liberals broadly understood, so non populists respond?
Andreas: Can I add one thought because we were talking about delivery when it comes to jobs or when it comes to immigration?
There's another point that we make in the article, which is just as worrisome, I think.
And this is bearing on the issue of the January 6th events in Washington, or what happened in the Brazilian Parliament when Bolsonaro was in office. It is not simply that performance, when it comes to economics or job creation, has a tenacious relationship with popularity. When populists, in fact, step on democratic rules, limit personal freedoms, storm parliaments, [00:18:00] that does not seem to cause many voters to say, hey, that's enough. I may have liked you in the past, but I will not tolerate that sort of behaviour. The same is true in places like Hungary, India, or Turkey, where semi-autocratic or illiberal Democrats have governed in those countries. They have played fast and loose with democratic checks and balances. And this seems to make very little difference to the opinion many voters have of them. And that's another complication, I think, and one that should worry anybody cheering for democracy, checks and balances, liberal institutions, and that sort of thing.
Alan Renwick: And I guess that relates directly to the bewilderment that many liberals feel about how it can be that Trump remains so popular post-January sixth? How can people not recognize that rules him out of the game in many ways? Daniel, do you want to pick up that question? What the [00:19:00] response should be to the populist challenge. How do liberals address this?
Daniel Brieba: Sure. We argue in the article that the main thing, the first step in this direction, is for liberals to recognize this problem that we've been talking about, how people vote through an identity lens and not just through policies. We think that liberals should start playing the identity game instead of just pretending it doesn't exist. And that means appealing to identities by doing so in a liberal way. And I think that's the key. So we argue for doing politics where we try to reinforce identities, but make them highly inclusive identities. And we argue mainly for liberal patriotism, as a way of doing that. The key is that because populists always divide people between them and us, and we are the good guys, and they're the corrupt elite. The only way to counter that is by providing a [00:20:00] more powerful identity, but one that unifies rather than divides. We are aware, of course, that patriotism, when we call it nationalism, has a pretty bad name.
And I think that scares liberals from talking about nationalism because you get into blood and soil nationalism and wars and so forth. But we think that's a mistake because nationalism also has a long tradition, recognized in the political literature, of course, of being a highly unifying force that has promoted equality and class solidarity. The creation of the NHS is a really good example, I think, created just after the Second World War at a point of high national solidarity. And that's what nationalism can achieve. So we think that might be a way forward.
Alan Renwick: And what does liberal patriotism look like in practice? Andres, do you want to go for it?
Andreas: Yes. I think it looks like the sort of thing you've seen in Canada or Australia in recent elections [00:21:00] in which a man who wants to be the prime minister of Canada can stand up to Donald Trump, but not based on saying that to be Canadian, you have to be white and Christian. Based on the saying that there are some values that Canada stands for. Canada is a country that is diverse country. It's a country that welcomes immigrants, but it's a country that stands for democracy. Or as Mark Carney put it when he went to the White House a few days ago, certain things are not for sale. We've seen something similar in the most recent Australian elections, in which Labor was re-elected by a very wide margin. And on the day of the election, Mr. Albanese says, these are votes that have endorsed what I would call Australian values. We've seen similar positions in other elections in Europe, in Holland, for instance, where green candidates and Labor candidates again, have said, what makes you Dutch is not your [00:22:00] surname or the colour of your skin.
What makes you Dutch is adherence to a certain set of values, like respect, like pluralism. Like inclusion, which is essentially a Dutch value. To put it differently, patriotism or nationalism can be based on shared values, shared political institutions, and shared culture, we love our homeland. Because of the quality of life there, reflected in a common attachment to dance, music, or food. Those are the things that bring people together. Those are the things that can make one be a proud Chilean or a proud Brit or Canadian; liberals should not leave that material. To the right-wing nationalists, to the populists. You can be a liberal, you can believe in liberal values, and be a patriot at the same time. Not only is that plausible, we think, and we argue that it is politically necessary and politically effective.
Daniel Brieba: If you look at the social psychology literature about [00:23:00] what makes a good social identity, there are two features: a good identity provides a deep sense of belonging, but also of distinctiveness. A flaw in the way liberals have thought about patriotism in the past is that they just go for adherence to these common-sense institutions.
So you have Habermas and constitutional patriotism, and different variations of that theme in Le Port's work. It's all about the institutions, which are quite universal because they're enlightenment-based. That's very valuable, but it's not enough. You need to create an identity that provides more distinctiveness as well, you have to celebrate some distinctive local features of your culture, your country. The beauty of its mountains, way of life, whatever it is. This is not about endorsing an official culture, but about creating a narrative that makes you proud to be from where you are. It cannot be just a reliance on universal values. It could be the particular way those universal values are enacted in your country. [00:24:00] You need something more than isn't just a purely political thing about values and constitutions, but about the way of life and how that unfolds in your country. That's quite distinct and that you particularly love.
Alan Renwick: And you quote George Orwell in the article talking about the features of English civilization, and you say it is somehow bound up with solid breakfasts and gloomy sundaes, smoky towns and winding roads, green fields and red pillar boxes. So that's the kind of thing that you're trying to evoke there.
I was going to ask you exactly about this kind of thing. Because if you look at what Anthony Albanese said after the Australian election, he said today the Australian people have voted for Australian values for fairness, aspiration, and opportunity for all. Those sound like incredibly undifferentiated values.
Just about anyone, anywhere of a liberal disposition could sign up to those kinds of values. So I guess you're suggesting that might be part of the narrative, but that isn't the whole narrative, and presumably elsewhere Anthony Albanese has [00:25:00] talked about the kinds of more specifically Australian bits of that narrative as well.
Andreas: No, I think that's exactly right. As Daniel was saying, you need to start from liberal values, otherwise, your patriotism is not liberal. But you need to explain very clearly, and provide examples that resonate with people of how those values are present in the culture. And it may be a historical figure, it may be a local cultural practice. But you need to appeal to those things. Put differently, a common mistake of centrist reformers, liberals, democrats, call them what you wish. Has been playing too strongly the Cosmopolitan card, and please understand me correctly, I am not against Cosmopolitan values.
I am not against migration. I'm a migrant myself. I'm speaking in a language that is not my native language. I am all for people getting along and understanding each other [00:26:00] across cultures. But ultimately, as Daniel was saying, politics is about belonging. It's about rootedness. It's about feeling that you belong in a certain place and you share that place with other people, and a good politician knows how to take that value and make it Canadian or Chilean or Australian by example. Let me illustrate that by recalling what the new Prime Minister of Canada said on the night he won. Carney said he was picking a fight with Donald Trump. He said, in trade wars, as in ice hockey, Canada always wins. And of course, it's not the trade bit that catches your imagination, is the ice hockey bit.
Ice hockey is the place for Canadians, rich and poor, meet each other. They meet at the rink. They have a beer. They watch a game. That is one shared feature of Canadian culture that cuts across [00:27:00] class, region, origins. And therefore, you can be for democracy, you can be for free trade, you're also for ice hockey. And I think that nail said, and that's what's made someone like Carney such an effective politician. He's a central banker. Most central bankers don't make very good politicians. He's the exception that confirms the rule.
Alan Renwick: Why is this so hard? The arguments that you lay out for it seem very obvious and very strong, and yet there are very few liberal politicians who have found a way of speaking in a way that responds adequately to populism. There are examples who are doing it in the face of a very strong threat from Trump that has maybe done quite a lot of the work for them.
Daniel, do you want to pick this up? Why does it seem to be so difficult for liberals to do this?
Daniel Brieba: We think it is in great part because of what we're saying at the start, that liberals have relied [00:28:00] on a wrong model of politics. Which thinks that it's about voters getting what they want in terms of instrumental voting. So if you think that voters just respond to policies and deliverables, then you're going to talk in that language and not in the language of identity. It's very simple, but it's also difficult if you rely on other assumptions. That's part of a broader argument we are developing with Andreas on liberals, relying on what you could call an antiquated or at least, insufficient view of human nature, which thinks that liberal politicians generally think that, they rely on a view of humans as individualistic rather than groupish, rational rather than emotional. They think about policies rather than about values. So we think that is the mental model that liberals need to change if they want to be more effective. I think that's at the heart of it. I don't know. Andress, if you want to complement that.
Andreas: That's exactly right. We liberals, [00:29:00] democrats, or centrists come at politics with a model of politics in our head that happens to be the wrong model. It is the wrong model because it is predicated on a model of human nature which is wrong from everything we know from colleagues in brain science, psychology, sociology, anthropology, human beings are not rootless calculating machines. We are not serene utility maximisers. We are not people who are naturally inclined to treat everyone the same, to uphold universal values. We can get there, but it takes some work. Therefore, we need a politics, a liberal politics that is rooted not in the way we wish people ought to be. We, rooted in the way people are.
Alan Renwick: Final question to you, Andres, you're sitting in London, many of our listeners are here in the UK. How would you translate that abstract advice [00:30:00] into specific advice for Keir Starmer?
Andreas: Very good question. I'm probably not the best person to answer that. I live in London, but I've only lived here for six or seven years. I'm not an expert in British politics, but I'd say two things. The first one is that we should learn from the populace the art of controlling the agenda. We all talk about Trump all the time because Trump makes it impossible for us not to talk about him. He is throwing idea after idea or initiative after initiative every day. I read the British press every day, and there are days that go by and I simply don't think of the Prime Minister. He's nowhere to be found. He is not setting the agenda. He's not controlling the agenda. He's not making the British public talk about him in the same way that other politicians, many of them populist, simply forced the conversation upon the electorate. That is idea number one. I think idea number two [00:31:00] is that the kinds of issues that we were talking about have a British incarnation. We are beginning to see Labour do a bit more of that. There were certain symbols of British patriotism, which in the past were limited to the Tories, maybe not so much anymore. I think the Labour Party could very usefully do more of that. Again, this need not retreat into jingoism or nationalism of the ugly kind. On the contrary, you can have a patriotism that recognizes Britain as it is today. It is a society of immigrants. It is a country that is very diverse and very multicultural. To some extent, that can be turned into a political weapon. And I think Labour has not yet learned how to do that.
Daniel Brieba: Can I just add something to that? Because I think when I hear Keir speak, he's always talking about how the Labour party will deliver, how his government will deliver. And it's great to deliver. But, it's [00:32:00] not often rooted in a narrative that makes it the end product of a coherent identity that gets expressed in certain views and policies. So with a rise of Reform, Labour again, it is very tempted to become ever harder line on immigration, for instance, and that could work, but only if you provide a narrative that makes it coherent with who you are. And I'm not sure Labour wants to do that or should. That's the problem when you start copying the policies of Reform, which expresses that identity much more clearly and better. Then you become a copycat because people say you don't represent those values. So I think the way for Labour to contain the rise of reform would be to propose an alternative identity, do not just copy the policies, and talk about delivering.
I think that would be my view of why what we are saying is different from what mainstream liberal politicians usually do.
Alan Renwick: Well, Daniel and Andres, that has been a great [00:33:00] conversation. You persuaded me it's a fascinating article and there's so much important stuff in it. So I hope lots of people will be inspired by this podcast to read the article further. Thank you so much to you both.
We have been discussing the article, The Populist Playbook, Why Identity Trump's policy, and How Democrats Can Adapt by Daniel Brieba and Andres Velasco. Published earlier this year in the Political Quarterly. As always, we will include the details in the show notes for this episode. If you haven't taken a look at it yet, do remember that The Political Quarterly is a journal that much like this podcast seeks to make the latest research about politics and policy accessible and relevant to wider audiences.
So it's well worth exploring. I recommend listeners take a look at a couple of our earlier episodes with my colleague Mark Stears whose book Out of the Ordinary, looks at what we can learn from the work of George Orwell, other mid-century thinkers, and how that might shape the discourse that [00:34:00] politicians use in the contemporary world, so well worth exploring that as well.
Next week, we will be asking how we should think about the existence of religious schools make sure you don't miss out on that or other future episodes of UCL Uncovering Politics
All you need to do is subscribe. You can do so on Apple, Google Podcasts or whatever podcast provider you use. While you're there, we'd love it if you could take a moment of time to rate or review us too. I'm Alan Renick. This episode was produced by Eleanor Kingwell Banham and Kaiser Kang. Our theme music is written and performed by John Mann.
This has been UCL Uncovering Politics. Thank you for listening.