This article seeks to demonstrate that the concept of populism can help us to understand the dynamics of intra-party politics. This argument is made via a case study of the British Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn, who was elected as its leader in late 2015. Corbynism as a (highly personalistic) political phenomenon has relied, in its resistance to opposition from more moderate MPs to Labour’s leftward turn, upon the idea that the party’s members are ‘the people’. This idea links to notions of the ‘heartland’ members occupy, the elite conspiracy against them and the democratic resolution made possible by the leader. Analysing how the rise of populist politics affects politics within parties, as well as between them, may, the article argues, help account for the populist transformation of established parties. This transformation, in turn, is one way in which populist discourse may infuse a country’s politics, permanently or otherwise.
The 2016 European Union referendum campaign has been depicted as a battle between ‘heads’ and ‘hearts’, reason and emotion. Voters’ propensity to trust their feelings over expert knowledge has sparked debate about the future of democratic politics in what is increasingly believed to be an ‘age of emotion’. In this article, we argue that we can learn from the ways that historians have approached the study of emotions and everyday politics to help us make sense of this present moment. Drawing on William Reddy’s concept of ‘emotional regimes’, we analyse the position of emotion in qualitative, ‘everyday narratives’ about the 2016 European Union referendum. Using new evidence from the Mass Observation Archive, we argue that while reason and emotion are inextricable facets of political decision-making, citizens themselves understand the two processes as distinct and competing.
The 2015–17 Parliament was the first time in history that the Conservatives were in government with no easily assembled majority in the House of Lords. This has fundamentally altered the role that Labour is able to play in the Lords and, conversely, that peers are able to play in the Labour party. Yet the political significance of this situation has not yet been fully appreciated by a party which remains culturally antagonistic and constitutionally wary of the Lords. In this paper, we draw on interviews with Labour peers, particularly the late Baroness Hollis of Heigham, who have been able to use the essentially conservative powers of the Lords for social democratic ends. We suggest that the Labour party needs to incorporate the second chamber into both its practical and symbolic politics, and to find ways to use this new source of constitutional power without accommodating to it.
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