Populism as an intra-party phenomenon: The British Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn

Abstract

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.

Who and what is their ‘people’? How British political leaders appealed to the people during the 2019 election

“…The key factor in this established party is the role of its leadership in recent years. Several scholars argue that Corbynism, as an extremely personalistic political leadership, instigated the party's leftward change, above all the view that Labour's members had to be considered as 'the people' (Watts and Bale 2019). Although other important research suggests that Labour's populist transformation by Corbyn has different doubtful aspects, including the Bennite traditionalism that seems more determinant (March 2017), the analysis shown in this paper seems to confirm Watts and Bale's findings.…”

“…Although in the past analyses claimed that the programmes of mainstream parties had not become more populist (Rooduijn et al 2014), in recent years even established parties have experimented with populism. In the case of Labour, with Corbyn the claim was made that the party moved more to the left and followed political approaches that can be classified as close to populism (Watts and Bale 2019).…”

Conceptualising party-driven movements

“…On the other hand, if we switch attention to the specific intra-party appeal, this may yield slightly different answers. Watts and Bale (2019) have argued that Corbyn’s appeal amounted to a kind of ‘intra-party populism’ serving as a ‘corrective’ to a party democracy that had stopped serving its members, and appealing to their wisdom against a corrupt and misguided elite. One of Corbyn’s objectives was to reform internal party democracy to make Labour more of a member-led organisation.…”

Angry tweets

“…The sample includes all tweets available on 26 December 2018 from the accounts of: Nigel Farage (UKIP/Brexit Party); Theresa May and Boris Johnson (Conservative); and Jeremy Corbyn and Keir Starmer (Labour). Johnson and Corbyn have both sometimes been described as populists (Martell 2018;Krapp 2019;Watts and Bale 2019), while May and Starmer are reputed to have a serious, mainstream political style. Table 1 shows the politicians, their affiliation, the number of tweets collected, and the dates.…”