A generation of lazy politicians have deservedly been swept aside. The ones who take their place must do better in 2017.

So this is it. 2016 is coming to an end and for some people it can’t happen soon enough. Those who would consider themselves to have been among the losers this year decry one phenomenon as responsible for all their woes – populism.

In other words, politicians who tell people they can have their cake and eat it while, in theory, having no idea how they will provide the cake.

But there must have been something that preceded the populist uprising of 2016. The politicians who ruled the roost before this year – the Camerons, Osbornes and Hillarys of this world – would call it normality, to cover up their total lack of ideas. But it was anything but, and it wasn’t pretty.

I’d call it ‘Unpopulism’. These people made their career in politics on the back of a recession, saying that the government is unable to provide a cake due to outside circumstances, but if you behave yourselves, make sacrifices and vote the way you are told to then one day you will get a small slice. Of course the date of the cake’s arrival is always being pushed back.

Even if all these ideas were true and grounded in the real world, it’s not good enough. We expect politicians to come up with solutions not problems.

In 2015, people voted for David Cameron with confidence, because they thought his policies on the economy, immigration and Britain’s relationship with the European Union were temporary solutions and would put the country on the road to something better. There was even some pride in making a short-term sacrifice for the common good, which meant the unpopulists kept any left wing populism at bay.

But things changed with the EU referendum. Cameron’s botched renegotiation and his reliance on experts to tell the public how much worse things would get if they didn’t do as they were told proved that the current state of affairs was not meant to be temporary, but permanent.

For the unpopulists, the mediocrity of Britain between 2008 and 2016 was bliss. They really believed they could sit at a desk with their feet up, come up with no radical new ideas to change people’s lives and still have the public vote for them because they were too scared of the alternative.

Given the shock defeat of the unpopulist Remain campaign in Britain, it was astounding to see Hillary Clinton follow it pretty much to the letter in the United States.

The unpopulist message from the Clinton campaign was along the lines of: “Oh, Brexit was just caused by a bunch of unenlightened white old men who don’t know what they want. We’ll easily be able to scare enough female and minority voters half to death to ensure that doesn’t happen here.”

Well thanks for your 24 years of political service Hillary, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

With the United States and Britain both having succumbed to populism, the next domino to potentially fall is France. Marine Le Pen of the Front National is almost certain to make it to the run-off against conservative candidate Francois Fillon. But while I was convinced Donald Trump would win, I’m not so sure about Le Pen.

As France’s first ever Thatcherite candidate, Fillon is not short of new ideas. In the run-up to the French election, there is an urge to bang his head against a wall and tell him to remember why he entered politics and vow to banish any murmurs of unpopulism, and any talk of what the French people will lose if they vote for Le Pen, from his campaign trail.

If you want to be a Thatcherite, be a Thatcherite. Avoid the path of least resistance and don’t be afraid to pick a fight. Even a fake fight with the EU probably would have won Cameron the referendum.

People don’t mind politicians who fail, but they’re sick of politicians who don’t try.

Populism didn’t triumph because the public believed lies over a sensible set of ideas that would lead to a brighter and more prosperous future. Populism triumphed because the public preferred to take a gamble over voting for a lazy political establishment with no ideas at all.