Adapted from my remarks at Policy Exchange in London on 9 November 2026.
If populism is giving voters what they want, how come the world’s greatest populist, President Donald Trump, has just suffered a massive rebuke? Partly, that’s because he failed to deliver what he promised. Partly, that’s because some promises—like lower taxes and higher spending—are undeliverable. But mostly, it’s because actually running a country is more than merely striking a pose and it’s getting harder than ever.
Pointing to problems, and demanding improvement, is only the start of successful government. Policy aspirations are close to worthless if they can’t be made to happen and that’s the key failure of the modern state: it’s become so unresponsive to voters because the people they elect, too often, aren’t really in charge.
It’s this feeling that “whoever you vote for, things just get worse”, largely because too many decisions are in the hands of unelected and unaccountable officials, rather than those of elected and accountable national leaders, that’s driving much of the current cynicism about politics, even about democracy itself; and is behind the rise of right-wing insurgencies: MAGA in America, Reform in Britain, and One Nation in Australia.
There are two factors at play here: the challenges that governments face have indeed got harder, with globalisation disrupting traditional industries and with mass migration eroding social trust. Further, though, especially in Britain but in Australia too, the institutional obstacles to strong government have also multiplied. Not only are the choices governments face harder, but as well, whatever choices governments do make have become much harder to implement.
In Australia, changing the government on its own is hardly enough to change the country if an election doesn’t also change a senate in which governments, especially conservative ones, rarely have the numbers. Sometimes, change also requires the consent of the states, which usually has to be bought with substantial subsidies. And sometimes it has to run the gauntlet of the courts, which, these days, have discovered rights in the constitution that the founders never intended and, in key areas such as immigration, frequently set aside the decisions of government.
In Britain, the Blair and Brown governments devolved some of government’s powers to new assemblies in Scotland and Wales; and vested other governmental powers in largely independent, supposedly expert bodies. Further, by enshrining in law certain abstract rights, effectively, they invited judges to consider the actual merits of governmental action as well as simply whether it had been lawfully carried out.
The impact of these hand brakes on effective government should not be underestimated.