A lot of people are woefully misinformed when it comes to politics.

And one of the fundamental mistakes that has been made in the USA, is thinking a celebrity who promises easy solutions to what are actually very complex problems can fix everything and quick.

It’s going to be chaos.

If Trump goes ahead with the tariffs he is threatening, he is categorically going to make the vast majority of people who voted for him poorer. Not that any of them were thinking about trade when they cast their votes.

Everywhere the threat of right wing populism is rearing it’s ugly head and I would be lying if I said I was not concerned about this trend. Because the people who promise to fix everything and weaponise your anger and outrage are all self serving narcissists.

What has Nigel Farage actually done for the U.K. over the last decade or so? Nevermind what he has done for his constituents since becoming mp? I’ll credit the fella for what he is good at, which is wrecking things, then blaming immigrants and then posing for a crocodile smile at a pub with an ale in his hand.

He captures a particular zeitgeist though, one of which is some skewed idea of particular British values all iced up with another skewed idea of British nostalgia and people get behind him, not because of policy…but vibes.

Heck, he rattled the conservatives with UKIP so much you could argue he has played a huge hand in them opting to go down a loony populist rabbit hole themselves.

Anyone remember when we all used to laugh off the BNP back in 2010? Those guys would be mainstream now.

I’d love to know what a reform supporter thinks they are voting for when it comes to the economy, our public services like education or health, or foreign policy, or whether they have an actual immigration policy beyond ‘taking back control’. Another populist term used ad infinitum to which I am not sure of it’s particular meaning.

What are these people signing the general election petition (that is if they are people and note bots) expecting to get? It’s not how democracy works for a start and what would their alternatives be? Kemi Badenoch or Nigel Farage? Give me a break.

Labour have had a rocky time of it in their first hundred plus days in office. Whoever their advisors are need to get on top of the narrative.

The freebies were a stupidity that the right wing press were happy to use as leverage to target them. No matter how not as bad as it was comparably to Tory cronyism, set the standards from the get go! A large swathe of the population is disenfranchised and unhappy. They don’t want to see politicians going to see Arsenal and Taylor Swift for free whilst wearing designer clothes. Pay for them like everybody else!

Then there’s Labours budget and policy. As controversial as it may be, I am behind the changes in place but God almighty the narrative once again is terrible.

Freezing pensioners! The truth of the matter is that winter fuel payments were being made to wealthy people, a lot of which who have willingly said they do not need it. Do I think the threshold for those payments are too low? Yes, but you can’t get into the nuance because everyone is too busy feeling the outrage of the first two words of this paragraph.

Protect our farmers! Once again, I am not sure how aware people are that this is ultimately going to affect a tiny minority of farmers, given how big the threshold is. I’ve read 500 farmers from one source. This new inheritance tax policy is for people who own land worth above three million pounds. The tax amount is 20% which is half of any normal inheritance tax percentage at that moment and it can be paid interest free over ten years! It is also to discourage people such as Jeremy Clarkson and James Dyson buying up land to avoid such a task. Clarkson himself admitted that and got snookered when interviewed by Victoria Derbyshire at the BBC. Now as someone who has taught in impoverished areas where children are in poverty, this seems pretty reasonable to me, but no…Labour want to destroy farmers and they are communists and they are going to tax you to oblivion!

Farmers are struggling for a variety of reasons (legacy of that old chestnut ‘Brexit’ once again included) and it needs addressing but this policy is the least of most farmers concerns.

Guess who also owns over £3 million pounds worth of land too…Nigel Farage, but he’s just like us wanting to take back control of our beloved country.

Labour in one way are playing their cards right, by doing the difficult stuff first, but the image could certainly be better so the sooner they address that, the better. Because the press and opposition and the public will be waiting to pounce anytime a mistake is made or gaff occurs. This is all without even mentioning the frankly ridiculous two tier policing narrative that that self proclaimed messiah and tech bro overlord Elon Musk is obsessively ‘X’ing about. He is all levels of wrong on his take on the U.K. but there will be those that take his word for it, and it’s dangerous.

Who cares about facts when you have feelings? All those feelings that your newsfeed on social media want you to feel so you can spend more time on there weighing in with your misinformed outrage.

I am grateful any time I can have a grown up conversation about this stuff where people do a bit more reading beyond merely a headline.

No one is perfect, but I do believe Starmer is a PM who is capable of acting in good faith, and I believe he is trying to get public services back in order after well over a decade of them being decimated.

And I will say it…we totally take our public services for granted.

Starmer and Reeves are aware that to fix these problems will require a great deal of time and difficult political tugs of war but whilst someone such as myself who is admittedly curious about politics will buy into it, the majority of the public won’t care one iota, and if they don’t see the benefits, they will be swayed towards the populists, because…political vibes.

Labour has to walk that fine tightrope of managing policy and the overall narrative well, or they’ll fall into the same trap as the Democrats, and find themselves in the jaws of the populist crocodiles in the river below.