Johnson may be over but populism isn’t

If it is to be defeated, the centre must finally deliver the goods

A purr of satisfaction rustles from the pages of the liberal press this morning. Boris Johnson, the great charlatan, who wrecked our every hope, has gone from Parliament, probably for good. And with him the personality cult and the insane promises that exploited mass credulity and destroyed our belief that the UK was a sane and decent country.

“The humiliation of the populists,” announces the headline above Andrew Marr’s piece in the New Statesman on the resignation of Boris Johnson and the arrest of Nicola Sturgeon. “They have been undone by democracy.”  The Independent is bolder, declaring that “the world has moved on from the likes of Boris Johnson,” and this only weeks after the re-election of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The arguments you should treat with the greatest suspicion are the arguments you want to be true.  And when my elated mood passed, I could not see how “populism” – by which I mean the righteous mobilisation of “the people” against a detested “other” – can be “undone” until mainstream politics starts delivering a better alternative.

Until then, it’s not over. That’s not all volks. And here’s why