Rory Stewart

So there are different ways to think about populism.

One of them is about the underlying drivers of people voting for the far right and the far left, which is anger about immigration, anger about cost of living, anger

anger about what's happening to local communities.

But another way to think about it is in terms of the structures of social media, electoral systems, and campaign finance.

So if you were a man that we both admire a lot, Premier of South Australia, Peter Malinowskis, you would say, look, if you're bold and serious about this, let's take two of these things.

Let's take social media.

And let's take campaign financing.

And let's say we're going to fix the structure.

And actually, if you're going to be Australian, you go further.

You'd go for an Australian electoral system.

You'd go for compulsory voting.

All of this makes it less likely for extreme parties to come out of nowhere, take donations from people who are living overseas, exploit the social media landscape.

And so let's have a level playing field.

And I think the safest level playing field is to stop all these bloody parties taking money.

That's what I like about Malinowskis' approach, right?

Stop Labour taking it from the unions, stop the Tories taking it from business, and stop reform taking 5 million or 15 million or whatever the whole thing.

And if you're a Labour MP, you'll be getting very, very angry texts and messages from very loyal party members who've been campaigning for you for years out on the doorsteps and all weather with the leaflets.

You've been going to the Labour Party events with them and they've all lost their council seats.

Yeah.

And they will be blaming Keir Starmer, probably.