This week, president of the European Commission Jean Claude Juncker called the idea of Boris Johnson becoming Britain’s Prime Minister a “horror scenario.” Juncker's chief of staff, Martin Selmayr, then tweeted a comment lumping Johnson in with Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen and added “it is worth fighting populism.”
While Boris' "populism" is open to question, the populism of another leading pro-Brexit politician, Nigel Farage, is less so. And increasingly, the "Leave" campaign as a whole is being accused of a populist turn away from the realities of the 21st century. However, the word is not just applied to those on the right; Jeremy Corbyn’s hard-left Labour Party has faced the same accusation.
Populism certainly seems to be on the rise abroad. Along with Trump—who is shown leading Hillary Clinton in recent polls—we have witnessed the rise of self-declared socialist Bernie Sanders in the US presidential race. In Austria’s presidential election this week, hard-right Norbert Hofer just missed out on the presidency.
Is populism taking over in Britain, too? A panel of contributors including Labour MP Stephen Kinnock and philosopher Julian Baggini offer their views.
The Brexiteers are pushing a post-truth politics
Stephen Kinnock, Labour MP for AberavonPopulism is fuelled by our need for simplicity and our desire to blame others. The fact that simple answers to complex questions will never work in practice has never bothered the populist.
Be it over the curvature of bananas or the costs of EU membership, throughout this referendum campaign the Brexiteers have rubbished reality and dismissed the facts. Their arguments are a toxic combination of isolationism and post-truth politics.
On 23rd June the choice will be clear: economic security and global influence, or the false promises of the populists.
Election-winners fit the traditional mould
Julian Baggini is a philosopher and author of several books, including The Ego Trick (Granta)In many ways the populist mode of politics has become the default, for major as well as minor parties. And yet the winner of the last election was a Conservative party with a leadership stuffed full of private school elites. What's more, that same party is now the second largest in Scotland, doing better than a Labour party whose switch to a more populist leader in Jeremy Corbyn has not done them any electoral favours. So although there is huge anger with the "establishment" it seems the electorate would still prefer a leader in the more traditional mould. The message for both Labour and the Liberal Democrats is that they need somehow to speak to people's discontent without making unrealistic promises. In other words, mainstream politics needs to recover some authenticity while remaining mainstream.
A reassertion of democracy
Rob Lyons works at the Institute of Ideas think tankIf Britain has fallen prey to anything, it is the exhaustion of the established political parties. Our politicians are now a class apart from the people they are supposed to represent, treating the rest of us as objects to be controlled rather than as fellow citizens. The turn towards populism represents a reassertion of democracy. There is plenty to disagree with in the platforms of UKIP, the Front National in France, Syriza in Greece or Podemos in Spain. But they do appear to represent a break from the conformist “no we can't” politics of the mainstream—or, at least, until they actually win power, like Syriza, then fall into line.
The rise of populism represents a demand for better politics and politicians. Rather than bemoan the stupidity of the masses, the proper response is to take voters' concerns about the state of society seriously and come up with better ideas about how to solve them.
The Brexit campaign is a vehicle for populism
Anthony Painter is author of "Left without a future? Social justice in anxious times"Populism is the ever present shadow of democracy. It is there to channel needs, interests, fears and frustrations that mainstream politics has become blinkered to. It can be a useful means of giving those who feel excluded a voice—whether a populism of the right, left or, indeed centre. In a variety of forms, populism is becoming more prevalent in modern democracies—the UK included. So there is an underlying sense of economic and cultural anxiety. There are also political entrepreneurs who have spotted an opportunity in discord. Don't underestimate these underlying anxieties. Equally, don't ignore those who exploit them.
In the UK, the Brexit campaign is now the main vehicle for British populism. Once the referendum is out of the way, the nagging doubt that political elites have any answers to big questions of transformations in economy and society in a shifting global power system amidst a technological transformation will return. Whether that engenders a Sanders or Trump-esque response in the UK remains to be seen. But there will be a populist response for sure—for good or ill.
Corbyn is a populist—but Cameron is worse
Jamie Reed, Labour MP for CopelandAn arc of populism is sweeping the western world. It stetches from Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in the United States to Marine Le Pen, Beppe Grillo and Gert Wilders on the continent to Johnson, Farage and Corbyn over here. Populism reaches for easy solutions to increasingly complex problems. Mix the easy solutions with old-time religion, prepare the soundbites for the turbo propulsion of social media and there’s your political movement.
It doesn’t obey the laws of real politics. Its answers don’t reflect the complexities of modern life or the challenges facing nation states. Populists rarely deal in fact. But this does not mean that they cannot be elected.
Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership is not the cause of episodic flares of left-wing populism from the Labour Party, but a symptom of a broader cultural shift and a membership base transformed beyond recognition. Corbyn cannot be blamed for that, Ed Miliband can. But the most naive populist on the western axis is David Cameron. Succumbing to calls for an EU referendum he never wanted to have, placing the populist interests of his party above the national interest, destroying his own reputation and weakening Britain’s international standing in the process. Resisting populism is difficult, acquiescing is easy and, as David Cameron is discovering, implementing it is utterly toxic.
Populism is not the same as anti-establishment sentiment
Paul Taggart, Professor of Politics and Director of the Sussex European Institute, University of SussexBritain has not fallen prey to populism. There are populist elements in British politics but populism is not singular and not particularly rampant in the UK. True we have a populist right wing party in UKIP and we are in the midst of a referendum which, like populism, tends to make politics appear as binary divide. But though history and today populism has less of a presence here than in many other states. Populism is not the same as antiestablishment sentiment. It is more than a hostility to elites. It has those elements, but it also has at its heart a dislike of the very activity and practice of politics combined with a hankering for a lost "heartland," and this is the key. That particular combination is rare. We may have petulance and polarisation in contemporary Britain but we have less populism than a casual glance might suggest. This week’s “Big question” was put together by Alex Dean and Alice Grahns
