Left and right populism compared: The British case
| Author | Luke March |
| Date | 01 May 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1369148117701753 |
| Published date | 01 May 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148117701753
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2017, Vol. 19(2) 282 –303
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1369148117701753
journals.sagepub.com/home/bpi
Left and right populism
compared: The British case
Luke March
Abstract
This article represents one of the few systematic comparisons of left-wing populism with other
populisms. Focussing on the manifestos of six British parties in 1999–2015, the findings confirm
that left-wing populists are more socio-economically focussed, more inclusionary but less populist
than right-wing populists. The article makes four main substantive contributions. First, empirically,
it shows that the much-touted populist Zeitgeist in the United Kingdom barely exists. Second,
methodologically, it provides a nuanced disaggregated populism scale that has advantages over
existing methods because it can effectively distinguish populist from non-populist parties and
analyse degrees of populism. Third, theoretically, it shows that host ideology is more important
than populism per se in explaining differences between left and right populisms. Fourth is a
broader theoretical point: what is often called ‘thin’ or ‘mainstream’ populism’ is not populism but
demoticism (closeness to ordinary people). Therefore, analysts should not label parties ‘populist’
just because their rhetoric is demotic.
Keywords
Britain, political parties, populism, radical left, radical right, socialism
‘We are seemingly living in populist times’ (Moffitt, 2016: 1). The influential theory of
the populist Zeitgeist long argued not just that populist parties are ascendant, but that the
European mainstream is regularly prone to ‘mainstream’ or ‘soft’ populism (Mudde,
2004, 2013). Manifestly successful ‘populists’ of the right (Le Pen, Trump) and left
(Sanders, Tsipras) appear to indicate that this Zeitgeist has gone global (Judis, 2016;
Moffitt, 2016: 159)
This ubiquity poses problems. Is ‘Everyone a Populist’ now? Or do we need to apply
more discerning theoretical and methodological lenses (Muller, 2016: 7)? The emergent
‘measuring populism’ literature has sought to do exactly that, but still argues that the
mainstream is ‘rather populist’ (Rooduijn and Pauwels, 2011: 1277). Such approaches
have been criticised for ‘degreeism’, that is, apparent inability to distinguish between
populist and non-populist parties (Pappas, 2016).
Politics and IR, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
Corresponding author:
Luke March, Politics and IR, The University of Edinburgh, Chrystal Macmillan Building, 15a George Square,
Edinburgh EH8 9LD, UK.
Email: l.march@ed.ac.uk
701753BPI0010.1177/1369148117701753The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsMarch
research-article2017
Article
March 283
This article addresses this conundrum by developing a discriminatory measurement
for populism to distinguish between populist and non-populist parties and types of popu-
list parties. In particular, the focus is on the distinctiveness of left-wing populism relative
to right-wing populism within the United Kingdom. Comparing European right- and left-
wing populism, which is much less studied (March, 2011), usefully tests populism’s omni-
presence. Some argue that left and right are essentially similar qua populist parties (e.g.
Clark et al., 2008; Judis, 2016). For others, underlying ideological distinctions make them
substantively distinct. Most notably, Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser (2011, 2013) argue
that left populism is more inclusionary, more socio-economically inclined and overall
more populist than the right. However, their left-wing cases are all Latin American: no-
one has performed similar analysis on European left populism.
This article’s central claim is that populism’s ubiquity is much overstated: left and right
populisms are not basically the same, nor are populism’s core attributes equally shared by
the mainstream and genuinely populist parties. Populism is an unusual ideology in that its
core principles (people-centrism, anti-elitism and popular sovereignty) are not unique to it
(Freeden, 2016). However, in order to class as populism, all three elements need to be
present in combination. Many observed instances of populism, such as the aforementioned
‘mainstream’/‘soft’ populism and especially ‘thin populism’ (‘closeness to the people’-
see Jagers and Walgrave, 2007) do not fulfil this full ideological definition.
In focus here are two populist radical left parties (the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP)
and Respect), two populist radical right parties (the British National Party (BNP) and
UK Independence Party (UKIP)) and two mainstream parties of the left and right (the
Labour Party and Conservative Party). There are several good reasons for the British
focus. First, although the Zeitgeist theory is contested on a pan-European level (Rooduijn
et al., 2014), the United Kingdom is arguably archetypal, with a high propensity to ‘main-
stream populism’ being noted for Labour (Mair, 2002; Mudde, 2004), as well as
Conservative and Liberal Democrat politicians (Bale, 2013; Rooduijn et al., 2014).
Second and relatedly, although British populist parties are electorally weak per se, pop-
ulism is supposedly omnipresent in British political discourse (Bale et al., 2011). Third,
British left populism is allegedly resurgent, as exemplified by the former and current
Labour Party leaders, Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn (Freedland, 2013; Varoufakis
et al., 2016). The ensuing analysis can show whether this alleged Zeitgeist (left-populist
or otherwise) finds any corroboration in British party ideologies.
Accordingly, the main questions of this article are the following:
What are the key similarities and differences between left and right populism?
Do mainstream left and right parties also exhibit features of populism? Does this
confirm a populist Zeitgeist in the United Kingdom?
To what degree do the measurement techniques utilised here adequately explain
the principal differences among UK populist parties?
This article makes four main substantive contributions. First, it provides empirical
richness to the study of British parties. It demonstrates that (a) genuine populism is con-
fined to parties of the radical left and radical right, especially the latter and (b) main-
stream parties’ ‘populism’ is rarely genuine populism and therefore the much-touted
populist Zeitgeist in the United Kingdom barely exists. Second, methodologically, it pro-
poses a novel two-stage measurement technique with advantages over existing methods
because it can effectively distinguish populist from non-populist parties and analyse
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