The political class can win back trust — and it has to, or else there will be more populist victories after Brexit. But to do so, it has to start producing a new type of politician. This new politician would blend the qualities of Jo Cox, the British Labour MP killed just before last month’s referendum on Brexit, with those of Donald Trump.
The new politician won’t merely have a message. She will embody her message, which works much better. She will therefore ideally resemble an ordinary person from outside the metropolitan elite. Hillary Clinton’s inability to do this makes her a poor presidential candidate. Cox, by contrast, embodied mainstream Britain. The daughter of a factory worker and a school secretary, she was born in Batley, the northern English constituency she ended up representing. This isn’t just a matter of image. Politicians from ordinary backgrounds will tend to have a sense of how ordinary people live and think.
The new politician will have worked outside politics. Cox came from charity and Trump from real estate. And like these two, who both entered politics in 2015, the new politician will be untainted by the twin modern debacles of the Iraq war and the global financial crisis.