The Strange Dearth of Populist Britain?

While populism has become a staple (if not stable) feature of politics in Europe (and beyond), it is remarkable that populism has not found a dominant incarnation in British politics. The paper takes a long historical sweep to suggest that populist themes have been both recurrent and resonant through British politics in last hundred years but shows that there has not, until now, been a single crystallisation of these themes into a dominant political movement or actor. The paper begins by examining Mosley’s New Party in the interwar years, before moving through Common Wealth in the 1940s, Powellism in the 1970s and Thatcher's alleged 'authoritarian-populism', to conclude with the rise of UKIP. It takes the key themes of populism in opposition to technocracy: hostility to political processes, a more diffuse distrust of elites, and a fetishisation of the people and their virtues, and asks how and when they have appeared in British politics. The paper then examines why this type of politics has failed to take hold in Britain. It suggests that Conservative (and to a lesser extent Labour) politics have so far been able to gesture towards these themes in a way that has neutralised incipient populist moments. This may no longer be the case.