POPULIST LEADERS THAT
HAVE BEEN ELECTED OR AT
LEAST SIGNIFICANTLY RISEN
IN POWER, OVER THE PAST
COUPLE OF YEARS, WILL
HAVE ON THE REFUGEE CRISIS
AND
THE
EFFORTS
TO
CRISIS
AND
THE EFFORTS
TO
RESOLVE THIS?
It is a very challenging
moment in time. In the
months after the Brexit vote,
hate crimes went up by
40%; a lot of people with
xenophobic attitudes felt
emboldened by Brexit and as
a result the government has
clamped down on
immigration and felt it has a
democratic mandate to
HOW CAN YOU CHALLENGE
reduce immigration to the
THOSE ASSUMPTIONS IF SUCH UK. We see similar dynamics
SUCH
WIDELY
CIRCULATED
WIDELY
CIRCULATED
across Europe and also in the
PUBLICATIONS ARE
United States. Donald
PROMOTING THEM AND IN
Trump’s policies of trying to
SOME CASES ARE THE CAUSE
build a wall with Mexico and
OF THEM?
the executive order trying to
It is very difficult because
limit immigration from
publications, like The Daily
Muslim countries into the US
Mail, have a wide circulation and cut refugee resettlement
and they disproportionately
to the US, are all examples of
influence government
how the rise of populist
decision making. The only
nationalism is having an
way around that is to demand impact on many government
high quality evidence and to policies.
use that evidence to
challenge misinformation.
DO YOU ANTICIPATE A
We also need to promote
REACTION AGAINST
responsible journalism.
GLOBALISATION AT ANY
There is a lot of good
POINT IN THE FUTURE, WITH
journalism in our country, for SOCIETY MOVING TOWARDS
example the BBC and certain AN EMPHASIS ON SELF-
newspapers, and we need to SUFFICIENCY, AS WAS
ensure that we safeguard
WITNESSED IN THE
that responsible kind of
INTERWAR YEARS?
journalism and use it to
I think that there is already a
challenge fear-mongering
backlash against
ideas that promote hate.
globalisation. If we look at
Brexit, the two biggest issues
WHAT IMPACT DO YOU
for Leave voters were
BELIEVE THE INCREASING
immigration and
NUMBER OF FAR-RIGHT,
sovereignty. People fear
were in the 1970s. So, the
idea that refugees are
terrorists is deeply flawed, in
most cases refugees are
fleeing the same kind of
danger and violence that
stems from terrorism, and so
they are fleeing terrorism
rather than being terrorists
themselves. However, I think
that it is important that we
have evidence and facts to
challenge those distortions
and the myth that makes
people believe that refugees
are a security threat when,
for the most part, they are
not.
immigration, trade, terrorism,
and they want to take back
control. So politics today
involves a division between
those who embrace
globalisation and those who
fear it. David Goodhart has
written about this in The
Financial Times, saying:
"Society divides between
those who see themselves as
potentially living anywhere
and those who see
themselves as living
somewhere." In other words,
a division between people
rooted in a particular country
or society and those who feel
rooted as part of the global
community. I think the lesson
that comes from that is all of
those, like me, who believe in
a global society, need to
ensure that the benefits of
globalisation are much more
widely shared, that
communities that feel
marginalised, that feel a
resentment towards
government and the
Establishment, actually
experience the benefits of
globalisation; that we get
greater equity, more
opportunities to redistribute
the wealth that at the
moment is often
concentrated in the hands of
too few. I think it is no
coincidence that a lot of the
Brexit voters, who supported
Leave, were from areas of the
country that are quite poor,
that have had many of their
manufacturing jobs moved to
the other parts of the world
and have been victims of the
government’s austerity
measures. If globalisation is
to be sustained, the
government needs to take
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