But @OneNationAus @realdonaldtrump @UKIP are not extreme right wingers

The fatal error of the Left is to smear populists such as Hansen, Trump and UKIP as extreme right.

Hanson won the safest Labour seat in Queensland when first elected in 1996. Her 23% swing was mainly made up of Labour voters. Few in the media or commentariat like to remind of that.

Donald Trump defeated opposition on his right from Ted Cruz to win the Republican nomination. If moderate candidate Kasich had dropped out earlier, many of his voters would have gone to Trump, not to Cruz. Trump has appeal to working class Democrat party voters. The only group he seems to win is white men

UKIP is no longer a party out of the Tory shires, when it won 3% of the vote in 2010 in the UK. UKIP is slightly to the left of the LDP and came 2nd in 40 Labour seats in the last UK election. UKIP is a real threat to win seats from Labour or divide the working class work to allow the Tories to come through the centre.

All of these populists combine nationalism, an anti-immigration sentiment, a dislike of globalism and free trade because it involves dealing with foreigners, a preference for lower taxes but no particular opposition to extensive economic and social regulation. In many ways they are Alf Garnett Labour voters.

The work-horses of rational irrationality – antimarket bias, pessimism bias is, anti-foreign bias and make-work bias – are strong among these populist politicians and their voting base.

So few Labour Party MPs, present and upcoming, are working class in origin now that they have simply no experience of the anti-immigration and nationalist settlements of the working class. Until labour parties they work out how to deal with that and meet those concerns, they will keep losing votes to populists.

There is a wonderful quote about how a voter explained he did not vote Labour anymore because he was a white working class Englishman not on the benefit – Labour was no longer interested in him. Identity politics is not just the preserve of the left.

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