In this post-truth world it seems whimsical to ask whether or not widely held beliefs have any grounding in facts. When governments hang “expert-free zone” signs over policy pronouncements, it is an exercise in futility to examine the claims and promises that get people elected. Thinking deeply about anything is “so over”. What is the point of staying in the fight? Attention is something sought, not paid. Getting involved merely feeds the social media beast rather than making a difference.

Many commentators conclude that there is a moral purpose to taking a stand even when failure is all but guaranteed. Maybe they have a point, but my logic is more prosaic: when I get asked “and what did you do in the war grandad?”, I will need a coherent, plausible answer that doesn’t involve hanging my head in shame. So here goes.

Politicians know that to display a command of arithmetic is a voter turn-off. With the exception of the French, no electorate ever applauds intellectuals, let alone well-informed ones. If you are a numerate, clever woman with decades of experience, you are, in the US at least, a political has-been.

Connection with reality

Just quote a randomly generated number with certainty and with repetition. That formula works, particularly when any connection with reality is absent. Hence, Brexiteers could claim an extra £350 million a week for the

NHS

when Britain left the EU: a bogus number that everybody knew was a lie. The most up-to-date guesstimate of the cost/benefit of leaving the EU to the British taxpayer is currently a negative £500 million a week (the upcoming autumn statement from the chancellor appears to have been leaked).

Running through the Trump campaign were both a number and a statistical concept. Normally, this combination is electoral suicide for anybody idiotic enough to use it, but this time proved an exception. The tortured phrase, “inflation adjusted median household incomes have been stagnant since the 1970s”, resonated with the electorate. The concept of a “median” may not be universally understood, but the basic idea is easy to get across: your incomes have been flat while the rich are getting richer.

Of course, it doesn’t matter that this is easily challenged: eyes glaze over once we get into improperly measured inflation (understating real income gains) and the fact that household sizes have been shrinking (so per capita incomes have been rising, not flatlining). Try explaining to the average Twitter user that if you were the median household a couple of decades ago you are not the median today and your real income has grown, not stagnated: demographic shifts disguise the truth that real individual incomes, properly measured, have done better than is often claimed.

Lazy and bone-headed

Many commentators have written the same column, one that takes a story about a factory or mine closure, usually witnessed by the author, that somehow led straight to Trump and Brexit. Connecting unrelated events is the stock-in-trade of charlatans; it’s surprising to see it in the

FT

. This is a lazy and bone-headed response to the rise of populism. It is also an insult to the millions of people made unemployed over multiple business cycles who didn’t subsequently vote for racist, misogynistic bullies.

But there are income distribution questions that do not have simple answers and, as a result, are rarely asked. The issue is the growth in corporate profits and sluggish wages. The former is robust, the latter is not.

The key ideas running through the Trump and Brexit campaigns were, first, the system is rigged; second, it is rigged by shadowy elites and immigrants; and third, globalisation has to be stopped. So, if you halt immigration, gum up globalisation and stick it to the elites, all will be well. The anti-trade, anti-globalisation rhetoric is really the same as anti-immigration: they are all variations on a xenophobic theme. Nobody ever mentioned the real problem: the gradual disappearance of unskilled and semi-skilled jobs.

We can point out the ironies of both the US and UK economies operating at full employment and highest per capita incomes ever, generating widespread voter anger over . . . what? Why do we not celebrate the fact that teenage boys no longer have to risk shortening their lives by digging for coal miles underground? Apparently, one of the things electorates rejected is the modern culture of political correctness. Why is it so PC to venerate “smokestack” industries and jobs? Surely it is great that fewer and fewer people have to work in factories and mines?

Embracing change

One of the great human lies is the assertion “I embrace change”. A lot of what is happening throughout the developed world is a reaction to rapid change. Globalisation is part of this, but not as significant as technological change. Jobs are disappearing thanks to robots, not immigrants. Driverless cars will destroy millions of jobs. And so on. A universal basic income will be part of the solution, but is not the whole answer: ultimately, well-paid jobs of one kind or another will have to be found. Paying people to do nothing is a recipe for social disaster and that’s a big driver of broken communities. But the biggest change of all has been socioeconomic: a loss of status of white men. Reaction to this explains a lot.

Monopolies and quasi-monopolies are being allowed to run riot with the world economy, aided and abetted by governments who have forgotten how to implement and enforce competition law (ironically, the EU is a lonely exception). Large companies obsess over their balance sheets and do anything but invest for growth. Corporate non-taxation is a global joke. All sorts of measures suggest competition, the lifeblood of capitalism, is not what it should be. And that is something governments can and should do something about.

Investors keep an eye on the tech-heavy Nasdaq index, comprising over 3,000 companies. Just five of those firms – Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon – make up nearly one-third of the index. Hopes that Trump will be a pro-competition "trust buster" will be dashed. He just seems to have a beef with Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, a generally anti-Trump newspaper. Wall Street is throwing a big party to celebrate what is about to happen next.

Trump and Brexit have nothing to say about real problems. The ultimate irony is that the policies likely to be implemented in both the UK and US will hurt the people who voted for them.

One thing above all others could help: economic growth. Contrary to what we hear, it is possible to stimulate economies. But guess what: it doesn’t involve stopping immigration or building walls or leaving the EU.