The Populist Slur: Delegitimising Popular Grievances

Bell, Emma

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-53889-7_3

The Populist Slur: Delegitimising Popular Grievances

Emma Bell³

Chapter
First Online: 05 January 2021

830 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter analyzes whether the term populism may justly be applied to UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and his policies. Following Laclau, it suggests that all politicians are populists to the extent that they seek to favor one set of social demands against another, regardless of their ideological pedigree. It argues that although Corbyn certainly shares many characteristics commonly identified with populism, he does not succumb to the demagoguery embraced by many populist leaders. Furthermore, he cannot be considered as more populist than mainstream political leaders, but he is differentiated from them by his rejection of authoritarian populism and desire to politically empower ordinary people. If populism can be found across the political spectrum, the very utility of the term is questionable. Rather than serving as a useful conceptual tool to understand current political trends, populism has instead become a form of slander which serves to delegitimize popular grievances.

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Notes

1.
See, for example, Karine Tournier-Sol, Prendre le large: Le UKIP et le choix du Brexit, Paris: Vendémiaire, 2019.
2.
See, for example, Cas Mudde, “The Populist Zeitgeist”, Government and Opposition 39:4, 2004, pp. 541–563, 551.
3.
Theresa May, “Speech to the Annual Conservative Black and White Tie Ball”, February, 2018.
4.
Bagehot, “British Politics is Being Profoundly Reshaped by Populism,” The Economist, 16 November 2017.
5.
Freddie Gray, “Corbyn Copy: Why Jeremy and Trump are (almost) the Same”, The Spectator, 17 June 2017.
6.
Julian Baggini, “Jeremy Corbyn is a Great Populist. But That’s no Good for our Democracy”, 25 July, 2016.
7.
Heather Stewart and Jessica Elgot, “Labour Plans Jeremy Corbyn Relaunch to Ride Anti-Establishment Wave”, The Guardian, 15 December, 2016.
8.
Cas Mudde, 2004, op.cit., 544.
9.
Jan-Werner Müller, What is Populism?, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016, p. 10.
10.
Ernesto Laclau, op.cit., 18.
11.
Ibid., p. 117.
12.
John B. Judis, The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European politics, New York: Columbia Global Reports, 2016, p. 13.
13.
Ernesto Laclau, “Populism: What’s in a Name?”, in Francisco Panizza (ed.), Populism and the Mirror of Democracy, London: Verso, 2005a, pp. 32–49, 45.
14.
Cas Mudde, 2004, op. cit.
15.
Cas Mudde, Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, 69.
16.
Ernesto Laclau, op. cit., 45, my emphasis.
17.
Paulo Gerbaudo, “The Populist Era,” Soundings, 65, 2017, pp. 46–58, 48.
18.
Jeremy Corbyn, “Speech to the Labour Party Conference”, Brighton, 27 September 2017a.
19.
Jeremy Corbyn, “Speech at the Glastonbury Festival”, 24 June 2017b.
20.
Jeremy Corbyn, op. cit., 2017a.
21.
For example, Francisco Panizza, “Introduction”, in Francisco Panizza (ed.), Populism and the Mirror of Democracy, London: Verso, 2005, pp. 1–31, 26.
22.
Jan-Werner Müller, op.cit., 21.
23.
Paul Taggart, Populism, Buckingham: Open University Press, 2000.
24.
Ibid., 95–96.
25.
Jeremy Corbyn, op.cit., 2017a.
26.
Ibid.
27.
Marina Prentoulis, “Lessons from Syriza”, in Mark Perryman (ed.), The Corbyn Effect, Chadwell Heath: Lawrence and Wishart, 2017, pp. 190–201, 193.
28.
Vyara Apostolova et al. “General Election 2017: Results and Analysis, Briefing Paper no. 7979, 8”, House of Commons Library, accessed 22 November, https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-7979/CBP-7979.pdf.
29.
Ibid., 44.
30.
Ibid., 12.
31.
Cas Mudde and Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, “Exclusionary vs. Inclusionary Populism: Comparing Contemporary Europe and Latin America,” Government and Opposition, 48:2, 2013, pp. 147–174.
32.
Ibid., 160.
33.
Labour Party, “For the Many, Not the Few: Labour Party Manifesto”, 2017, accessed 22 November 2019, https://labour.org.uk/manifesto/.
34.
For example, Jeremy Corbyn, op. cit., 2017a.
35.
Labour Party, 2017, op. cit., 28.
36.
Scott Blinder and Lindsay Richards, “UK Public Opinion toward Immigration: Overall Attitudes and Levels of Concern”, Migration Observatory Briefing, University of Oxford, 2019, accessed 22 November 2019, https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/2019-Briefing-Public_Opinion_Immigration_Attitudes_Concern.pdf.
37.
Margret Canovan, “Taking Politics to the People: Populism as the Ideology of democracy,” in Yves Mény, Yves Surel (eds.), Democracies and the Populist Challenge, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002, pp. 25–44, 33.
38.
Yves Mény, Yves Surel, “The Constitutive Ambiguity of Populism”, in Yves Mény, Yves Surel (eds.), Democracies and the Populist Challenge, Basingstoke: Palgrave: 2002, pp. 1–24, 13.
39.
Jan-Werner Müller, op. cit., 29.
40.
Ibidem.
41.
Jeremy Corbyn, “Speech to the Labour Party Conference,” Brighton, 29 September 2015.
42.
Emma Bell, “The 2017 Labour General Election Campaign: Ushering in a ‘New Politics’?” Revue française de la civilisation britannique 23:2, 2018, accessed 22 November 2019, https://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/2029.
43.
Jan-Werner Müller, op.cit., 36.
44.
Alex Nunns, The Candidate: Jeremy Corbyn’s improbable path to power, London and New York: OR Books, 2016, p. 124.
45.
Ernesto Laclau, op. cit., 39.
46.
Jeremy Corbyn, Jeremy, “Speech on Launch of the Labour Party manifesto,” Reported by the BBC, 20 April 2017, accessed 22 November 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-39649119.
47.
Jeremy Corbyn, op. cit., 2017a.
48.
Paul Taggart, 2000, op. cit., 110.
49.
Jan-Werner Müller, op. cit., 19–20.
50.
Jeremy Corbyn, op. cit., 2017a.
51.
Eliane Glaser, “The Authenticity of Hope”, in Mark Perryman (ed.), The Corbyn Effect, Chadwell Heath: Lawrence and Wishart, 2017, pp. 125–137, 128–129.
52.
Ibid., 132.
53.
Labour Party, 2017, op. cit.
54.
Ernesto Laclau, op. cit.
55.
Peter Mair, “Populist Democracy vs Party Democracy”, in Yves Mény, Yves Surel (eds.), Democracies and the Populist Challenge, Basingstoke: Palgrave: 2002, pp. 81–100, 96.
56.
Emma Bell, Criminal Justice and Neoliberalism, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
57.
Stuart Hall, The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the crisis of the Left, London and New York: Verso, 1988.
58.
Emma Bell, Soft Power and Freedom under the Coalition, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
59.
Agnès Alexandre-Collier, “How Populist was David Cameron?”, Juncture 23:2, 2016, pp. 116–125.
60.
Theresa May, “Speech to the Conservative Party Conference”, Manchester, 6 October 2015.
61.
Theresa May, “Speech to the Conservative Party Conference”, Birmingham, 5 October 2016.
62.
Theresa May, “Speech to the Conservative Party Conference”, Manchester, 4 October 2017.
63.
Jeremy Corbyn, op. cit., 2017a.
64.
May, 2016.
65.
Ibid.
66.
May, 2017.
67.
Ibid.
68.
Paul Taggart, 2000, op. cit., 116.
69.
Colin Crouch, Post-Democracy, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012, p. 19.
70.
Muller, op. cit., p. 93.
71.
Wolfgang Schäuble (2015), quoted by Yanis Varoufakis, “Why We Must Save the EU”, The Guardian, 5 April 2016.
72.
Gerbaudo, op. cit.
73.
Mouffe, 2005, op. cit.
74.
Meny, Surel, 2002, op. cit., 15.

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Contemporary British Politics, LLSETI Université Savoie Mont-Blanc, Chambery, France
Emma Bell

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University of Toulon, La Garde, France
Karine Tournier-Sol
University of Toulon, La Garde, France
Marie Gayte

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Bell, E. (2021). The Populist Slur: Delegitimising Popular Grievances. In: Tournier-Sol, K., Gayte, M. (eds) The Faces of Contemporary Populism in Western Europe and the US. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53889-7_3

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53889-7_3
Published: 05 January 2021
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-53888-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-53889-7
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