The vilest slur in Brussels, the insult to end all insults, is “populist.” Eurocrats spit it out, rather in the manner of a teenager at a party who mistakenly takes a swig from a beer can that was being used as an ashtray. Yet, monstrous as the word is in a Eurocrat’s vocabulary, he is surprisingly vague about its meaning.
The one thing that he unequivocally understands populism to signify is “something that other people like, but I don’t.” Thus, calling for a referendum is populist. Accepting the result of a referendum is populist. Free speech for Eurosceptics is populist. Tax cuts are populist. Cutting waste is populist.
My neighbor in the European Parliament chamber when I was first elected was a hefty Belgian Christian Democrat. He used the word frequently and ferociously, applying it with particular venom to supporters of Flemish independence. I once asked him whether the Flemish separatists weren’t simply representing their voters, just as he represented his. “As politicians we have a duty to lead, not just to do what people want!” he replied. Got it, I said. What you mean by “populism” is “having a legislature that broadly reflects public opinion.” In my country, we call that “democracy.”
The vilest slur in Brussels, the insult to end all insults, is “populist.”
Looking back, I shouldn’t have been quite so snippy with him. After all, my Belgian colleague had a point that, in a representative democracy, legislators should follow
