Luke Bretherton, Senior Lecturer in Theology and Politics at King’s College London, offers a brief history of American populism and compares it to political developments in England. Here is a taste:
So what has all this to do with the Big Society? England had its own form of political populism. One of the foremost scholars of populism, Margaret Canovan sees G. K. Chesterton as a populist. Chesterton developed an account of political economy that was neither socialist nor capitalist and highly critical of both statism and what we now call neo-liberalism. In the contemporary context one could plausibly interpret Philip Blond’s ‘Red Tory’ and Maurice Glasman’s ‘Blue Labour’ visions as attempts to construct different versions of a distinctly English political populism. Within Conservatism the Big Society vision, with its emphasis on localism, democratization and civil society creates a space for both Blond’s political populism but also for the more Tea Party-like anti-political populism of the Tax Payers Alliance. On the left, Ed Miliband has appointed Glasman to the House of Lords to develop the Labour response to the Big Society, while his brother David is committed to developing the Movement for Change, which builds on community organizing, as a way to renew Labour as a social movement. While it is unlikely that anything like the Tea Party will develop in the UK, the irony is that populist themes could point the way for the electoral renewal of Labour: for Americanism insert Englishness; for producerism, insert labour; for small government, insert a critique of the dominance of privileged elites; and for the sense of a moral crusade insert the need to protect the common life, common land, common institutions and the customary practices of ordinary working people.
Oh, I love these absurdities you find, John. Where you see “right” insert “left.” Where you see “liberty” and “federalism,” insert “socialism” and “statism.” Same thing, if you squint hard enough.
While it is unlikely that anything like the Tea Party will develop in the UK, the irony is that populist themes could point the way for the electoral renewal of Labour: for Americanism insert Englishness; for producerism, insert labour; for small government, insert a critique of the dominance of privileged elites; and for the sense of a moral crusade insert the need to protect the common life, common land, common institutions and the customary practices of ordinary working people.