Populist rage, falling wages & the art of misdirection
Image by fotografierende from Pixabay
By Tim Thorlby
7 min read
At the heart of the current wave of populist rage in the UK is a deep frustration that our economy is not working for most of us. The average wage has not risen in real terms for 18 years. There is real concern about immigration too, for sure, but a deeper malaise lies beneath it all.
Yet many of these legitimate social and economic grievances of populism have been captured by political parties who are actually taking us in the opposite direction.
This blog looks at how the agenda of populism in the UK has been deliberately misdirected. In particular, there are important economic issues which underlie a lot of the rage – especially stagnant wages - but the Reform Party in particular have policies that would make this worse. A confidence trick is being perpetrated today in our national political conversation; a deflection of attention.
We need to bring our eyes back to the UK economy, and how it is ‘wired’, because this lies at the heart of the populist rage. Should our economy prioritise billionaires or workers?
Many of my blogs seek to demystify complex economic issues.
Well, welcome to the big one.
Populism is rage
“Populism is the politics of anger. It makes its appearance when there is widespread discontent with political leaders, when people feel that heads of institutions are working in their own interest rather than that of the general public, when there is a widespread loss of trust and a breakdown of the sense of the common good.”
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (from his book, ‘Morality’)
The UK has changed in the last decade. It is not the same country that it was. Our politics has changed out of all recognition.
The Reform party now consistently tops opinion polls of voter intentions for the next general election; Ipsos MORI currently have them on 30%, 8% points ahead of the next party. That would put Nigel Farage into No. 10 as Prime Minister.
Trust in politicians is at record lows; the last British Social Attitudes survey showed that 45% of those surveyed ‘almost never’ trust governments of any party to place the needs of the nation above the interests of their own political party[1].
Support for both of our two main political parties of the last century has been falling in recent decades, with a more fragmented political landscape opening up. Voter turnout is down. The Conservative Party looks like it may be facing an existential crisis; it is not unknown in British history for political parties to disintegrate and be overtaken.
Speeches from political leaders which would once have been frowned upon, and possibly not broadcast at all, are now daily events. The unthinkable becomes thinkable.
This slow-moving political earthquake has become very real.
Quotes from voters in the run up to the 2024 General Election included these[2]:
“I’ve had eight years without a pay rise”
“I’m no longer proud to be British”
“…we’ve got nurses using food banks. It’s disgusting. I’m so done.”
“I think society’s become corrupt, greedy”
“Places like this are just forgotten about”
The anger is about a rich mix of personal economic circumstances, immigration and culture, untrustworthy public leaders, failing public services – a diverse set of issues.
It has not come from out of the blue though. Its origins lie in the social and economic policies of successive governments – both Labour and Tory - since the 1980s. The unfolding trends of the 1980s and 1990s were turbo-charged by the impact of the Financial Crash of 2008 and the choice by the Coalition Government to opt for Austerity as a response. In other words, our present circumstances were not inevitable but are the result of intentional political choices. They have, however, resulted in developments which were almost certainly not expected.
What underlies the rage? Which trends have caused this earthquake?
Populist rage has genuine cause
Ultimately, there is one major underlying driver for the rise of populism in the UK and the West more generally.
We have embarked on an adventure since the 1980s called ‘globalisation’ and it has had many unanticipated consequences.
Since the 1980s, governments have been deregulating their market economies, giving banks, investors and businesses much more room for movement and, at the same time, bringing down barriers to migration to enable the greater movement of people between countries. This was ‘globalisation’ - bringing us all together economically as one world market, with less financial and economic barriers and greater ease of movement.
It has, in fact, encouraged economic growth and wealth creation, although this has not been fairly or evenly distributed. But it has also led to immigration on a scale not anticipated and delivered consequences for workers that were also not properly recognised at the time, uprooting jobs in one country and moving them to another.
Globalisation has gone hand in hand with its kid brother ‘financialisation’ as banks and businesses have found it easier to invest in ever more innovative ways. One of the important results of this is that we have built a rentier economy (read my blog on this) – where those who own assets get richer and those who don’t own assets continue to lose out. Financialisation also led to large financial institutions taking ever greater and more reckless risks in the search for profit. The subsequent implosion of the global banking sector in 2008 is a key milestone on the road to where we are today.
Globalisation’s other kid brother is the deregulation of many markets, which has led to a growth in the size of businesses through mergers and acquisitions and the creation of monopolies and quasi-monopolies in various sectors. With the emphasis on ‘letting markets be markets’ this has allowed the development of sizeable and powerful business interests – the most famous being the American ‘Tech Bros’ who own and control Meta, Amazon, Google and others. The irony of deregulation is that it was meant to give more power to consumers in the market-place, but it has generally given greater power to an ever smaller number of global corporations.
Finally, these powerful economic trends have been compounded with some unhelpful political choices in the UK. The choice of the Coalition Government in 2010 to respond to the Financial Crash with an Age of Austerity, led to big cuts in public spending and investment. The Coalition Government decided that whilst the international banks had to be bailed out, the rest of us could live without libraries or youth centres. These choices sucked the life out of the UK economy and left us with growing social problems and creaking infrastructure. The UK economy has largely flatlined since 2008.
You may be wondering what globalisation has to do with the sudden surge in rage and the popularity for Nigel Farage and Reform. They are actually fundamental to explaining why so many people feel that they are losing, not winning.
The global economy is felt locally
Unfortunately, these economic processes are complex and are not well understood by many – so easier answers are being offered instead; it’s much easier to blame immigrants for all of our problems than attempt to understand international economics.
The experience of a growing number of people in the UK over the last decade or more has been this:
Wages have been falling in real terms; since the 2008 Financial Crash, the average UK worker’s pay has stagnated in real terms. In fact, median weekly pay in the UK is still 2% lower in 2025 than it was in 2008.[3] That’s 18 years without a pay rise. Not for everyone of course, but for a lot of people. That is a huge difference to our postwar experience of 1945 – 2008.
Work has become more insecure, with more temporary working, more part-time working, more zero-hours contracts
Public services are failing, as public spending is cut in real terms, with NHS waiting lists hitting record highs in 2023
Large businesses seem to be beyond our control – whether private Water utilities or global Tech companies
Migration seems to be beyond our control too, with historically high levels of immigration in the UK, bringing rapid social and cultural change
The experience is a confusing mix of economic, social and cultural insecurity which has left people financially worse off and with worse public services.
They also have a clear sense that our political leaders are not successfully fixing these problems. Successive governments by our mainstream parties have not gripped these problems – either because they didn’t know what to do, or didn’t particularly want to. This has – quite rightly – fuelled a sense that ‘politicians are not listening to us’.
It is not surprising that the 2016 Brexit vote was won with a slogan of ‘Take Back Control’ – control is the very thing we have been missing in a world that feels very ‘out of control’.
So, what do we want?
So, what do the populist voters want? What are they asking for?
I think it boils down to three things:
Greater economic security – we want to have more secure jobs and higher wages. We want to go back to the post-war trend where every generation was better off than the one before it.
Greater social security – we want better public services; better schools, decent social housing and shorter NHS waiting lists. We want decent pensions when we retire.
Greater cultural security – the majority want lower immigration to the UK, particularly when compared to the historically high levels seen under New Labour and under Boris Johnson’s Government (ironically). Two in three (67%) Britons believe “the total number of people entering the UK is too high, with 43% stating it is ‘much too high.’"[4] This does not mean most people want to see ‘no immigration’ or that we cannot live in a happy, diverse society, it is a plea for moderation.
These all strike me as perfectly reasonable desires, motivated by an experience of genuine causes. They should not be dismissed.
At the heart of these grievances, the core issue is that our economy is no longer working for many people – it is not making most of us richer, and the tax revenue to government is not enough to support public services.
As always, at times of economic stress, immigration also comes under the spotlight; this also needs addressing more successfully, but the economic stress sharpens the perception of this as a problem.
The reason that I am writing this blog, however, is not just to ponder ‘how we got here’ but to highlight that these genuine issues have been hijacked by a very particular political interest group which has a very different agenda to most voters. There is now a very strange paradox at the heart of UK populism and I don’t think it gets nearly enough attention.
The true story of how our economy is not working for most of us has been carefully reframed to identify the wrong villains.
Populist rage has been captured by a vested interest
A great con has been perpetrated on those expressing populist rage in the UK, and it is still in full swing.
The genuine issues and concerns of many people have been hijacked by a very particular interest group which claims to have the interests of the people at heart, but which is actually leading them in the opposite direction.
The fundamental economic issues which are the root of the populist grievance are simply not being addressed by Nigel Farage and his Reform Party and, if they were elected, these issues would not be addressed in the way that voters seem to imagine.
Reform, it turns out, has a very different agenda to the majority of its voters and appears to be using the populist rage to seek power to further the interests of a minority. The UK’s populist rage has been captured by a small political group, for their own ends. Reform are not serving the voters of Clacton or Skegness, but using them.
If we could harness populist sentiment to actually address the core economic issues they are railing against, we would actually end up with a much fairer country and a happier society. Instead, we’re being led in the opposite direction.
Nigel Farage will not make you better off
Firstly, let us deal with the strange contrast between what the populist voters have clearly said that they want and what Reform are actually offering.
Yes, they are absolutely addressing immigration. It is their main focus. They get the ‘cultural insecurity’ agenda and would no doubt make significant changes to this. I think it is possible to address immigration without being racist or nasty, and so it is telling that they feel the need to approach this genuine issue with such negative language and policies. It is quite clear that the Reform Party has a problem with ‘foreigners’ and ‘race’ and even ‘culture’, but this plays well to a minority of people in the UK who feel similarly.
However, when we consider the core issues of economic security and social security, it is quite clear that Reform are actually offering something completely at odds with what the majority say they want.
Instead of fixing public services, they want to cut taxes and shrink the size of the State – a smaller government, delivering less public services. Back to the Age of Austerity in other words. Few people are saying they want this, but it’s what Reform are offering. It is dressed up as a ‘less red tape’ and ‘cutting bureaucracy’ but it’s the same agenda that George Osborne pursued in 2010, but more aggressively.
Instead of promoting economic growth and security, they want to continue the deregulation of the marketplace, to have less rules, not more. The consumer (you and I) will have even less control than we do today. Big Business will have less rules to guide its behaviour.
Reform loves the global Tech Bros; Nigel can’t get enough of them. He wants to make Britain a ‘CryptoHub’ – the global centre for cryptocurrencies (never mind their role in global money laundering). At the heart of Reform’s railing against ‘Net Zero’ is a desire to see rules on businesses dismantled.
All of Reform’s economic policies (the few they have) are about cutting tax and deleting rules – an old-fashioned right-wing ‘free market’ agenda.
It is quite clear that this economic agenda is not what the majority of British people are asking for. We have had 18 years of flatlining wages because markets were too free; the 2008 Crash was because of too much deregulation – i.e. not enough rules, rather than too many rules. Continuing down the same path of deregulation will make this situation worse, not better.
Reform’s economic policies will not ‘take on the wealthy elite’ but rather give them even more power and wealth.
Populist sentiment is wanting economic and social security. But Reform are offering an old fashioned, extreme right-wing agenda of a smaller state, less public services and a free, deregulated market where global businesses can do what they like.
This will not give you and I the control we want, nor will it make us better off. The winners will be big business and the rich (who get the tax cuts). The losers will be workers who have to earn a living and anyone using public services.
It’s a con.
This is not far-fetched. We only have to see how it is playing out in America to see what a populist government would actually look like.
No, Donald Trump is not making American Workers better off
Trump was elected to ‘Make America Great Again’ and to put ‘American Workers First’.
So, does he?
Let’s take a look at what he is actually doing, rather than what he is saying. From Trump’s first year in office, in his second term (2025):
With the help of billionaire Elon Musk, he has sought to shrink the size of government and reduce public service provision and cut welfare payments. He’s fired over 300,000 federal workers. So, hardly strengthening social security.
He has undermined and deleted a whole raft of workers’ rights, and lowered the wages of hundreds of thousands of Federal Workers
The US economy has seen the biggest slowdown in job creation for 20 years and growing unemployment
Average household incomes have stalled
Trump’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ cuts taxes for the richest Americans (the top 10% mostly) and reduces the income for the government, fuelling the push for a smaller state and less public services. To illustrate the nature of the Bill; it cuts $1 trillion of taxes for the richest 1% and pays for this with a $1 trillion reduction in spending for Medicaid, which is how the poorest Americans pay for essential health care.
In office, this ‘populist’ politician (much admired by Mr Farage) is pursuing an agenda of lower taxes for the wealthy, smaller government, less public services and doing nothing for the average American worker, except pushing up inflation and cutting their public services.
So, no, the average American worker is not better off, they are worse off.
The reality may be dawning on American voters, as Trump’s approval ratings are now, after one year, approaching historic lows.
If you are a UK voter, seething with rage at not having had a pay rise for nearly 20 years and dismayed at the state of public services, then it is quite clear that voting for Mr Farage and the Reform Party is not going to help you. Look across the Pond and see what is happening there.
You need to find political leaders who will address the core problem – that our UK economy is not working well for the majority of people and delivers too much to the wealthy international elite. We need some fundamental economic reforms that will see wage rises return, that will fund public services properly and that will make our country a better and fairer place to live in.
Redirect your rage
A recent symbol of how detached our economy has become from the lives of ordinary people is the FTSE 100.
The FTSE 100 closed at 10,686 points on Wednesday 19 February 2026, marking a record and historic high (at the time of writing). The index has never had it so good – the best result in history. This follows a pretty strong 2025, when it rose 21.51% in value. Amazing.
Meanwhile, the UK’s real economy continues to stagnate, having largely flatlined for 15 years, along with most of our wages and household incomes.
Related to this, we see that from 1990 – 2025, over 35 years, whilst globalisation and its related trends were in full swing, the billionaire class in the UK grew rapidly. We now have 156 billionaires in the UK who own £620 billion between them, a 900% increase in 35 years. In fact, they own more than all of the bottom half of the UK population; yes, the wealth of 156 people is greater than that of 35 million people[5]. This is new. They have not ‘earned’ this money from hard work and sweat by the way, but mainly from owning things. They do not create wealth, they extract it. This is an important difference. (My blog on the rentier economy explains this process).
This kind of thing is at the root cause of why a lot of work doesn’t pay any more; we are supporting all of these uber-wealthy people instead. Something is seriously wrong with the way that we manage our economy and organise our taxes in the UK. If we are to respond to populist grievances, then we need to deliver some fundamental economic changes. We need an economy that works for ordinary workers, not just a wealthy elite.
But we need to identify the right villains if we are going to make any real progress.
If we want our economy to work for ordinary people again, this means:
Breaking up big business monopolies, so that business becomes more competitive and responsive to consumers again
Tackling our rentier economy with stronger taxation of unearned incomes from rent; a building should not earn more money for its owners than the people working inside it can earn. This includes fuller taxation of digital platforms like Amazon which continue to evade British tax at scale.
Robust regulation of the market so that it serves the needs of the people, not the other way round. The lackadaisical approach to how our private water utilities have been regulated over the last 30 years is a classic example of this – as water services have deteriorated, private owners have extracted billions of pounds in dividends. In this case, nationalisation may probably be the best answer, but for most sectors, stronger regulation is the most effective solution, to ensure that the market delivers for consumers and communities. It’s been done before, we need to do it again.
For some, this may read like a ‘word salad’; what are you going on about?
Put simply, this is an agenda for a democratic economy where the interests of citizens and communities come before the interests of asset owners. Ordinary workers should get a fair deal out of our economy, not just the owners of assets.
This is not socialism or communism or some other ism, it is a version of our current market economy with the rules tightened up.
I am a big fan of the marketplace, to be clear, I know that enterprise can deliver huge benefits to the world, but it needs to be well managed and must, collectively, serve a social purpose. This agenda is for an economy that serves society.
This would deliver greater benefits to workers, including higher wages, and the corresponding rise in tax incomes would support stronger public services. Together with better managed immigration, this would give us the kind of country that I think most people want to see.
New leadership required
The missing bit of our national conversation is the drive for a more democratic economy, which delivers better and fairer lives for individual workers and communities and reduces the power of wealthy elites.
We need an economy that serves the needs of ordinary workers, not billionaires. We need jobs that pay. We need banks that actually support local businesses. We need businesses that pay taxes and are accountable to us. This is what will squarely address the populist rage. Give us back control of our economy from the uber rich.
There is no shortage of ideas on this agenda. My own blogs for the last three years all point in this direction – a democratic, decentralised economy that prioritises its citizens. There are many other thinkers, trusts and foundations out there banging similar drums. What we seem to be missing is national political leadership willing to think beyond conventional policies. But these conventional policies have failed.
I’m not sure any of the main political parties have really grasped this agenda properly, I am sorry to say.
I’m even more sure that Reform don’t even want to.
The big con that Reform are getting away with is to talk so loudly about immigration that no-one notices their Liz-Truss-style free market and small state agenda. Reform is not the answer to populism; it will ruin you, unless you are a billionaire.
By the way, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Reform’s biggest donors are, of course, billionaires, running global tech companies.
Reform’s biggest donor so far is Mr Christopher Harborne, who has given them £20m. He is a public school educated owner of a cryptocurrency company, and seller of fossil fuels, living in Thailand. It’s a bit of a stretch to imagine that Mr Harborne is motivated to support Reform because he cares deeply for the lot of the average British worker? You make your own mind up.
So, where is the political vision and leadership for a fairer democratic economy? It requires boldness, vision and a heart for fairness.
Maybe we await a new generation of leaders?
I hope they arrive soon though, because I don’t fancy Mr Farage in No. 10 – he will lead us down a dismal road whilst he and his pals enrich themselves. I’ve seen that movie before, in America, and it did not have a happy ending for the rest of us.
This blog was written by Tim Thorlby. Please sign up if you’d like to know about future blogs, usually published once a month. It’s always free.
Notes
[1] National Centre for Social Research, British Social Attitudes Survey 2024 | Access here: https://natcen.ac.uk/news/trust-and-confidence-britains-system-government-record-low
[2] Quotes drawn from an article on Politico, July 5th 2024 | Access here: https://www.politico.eu/article/britain-uk-election-keir-starmer-labour-party-conservative-party-british-politics-voter-disillusionment/
[3] Data is from ONS, Nov 2025 | Access a summary here: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8456/
[4] Opinion Poll conducted by Ipsos Mori, May 2026 | Access here: https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/two-thirds-britons-say-total-number-people-entering-uk-too-high
[5] Statistics are from the Equality Trust’s report ‘Billionaire Britain 2025’ | Access here: https://equalitytrust.org.uk/evidence-base/billionaire-britain-2025/