A researcher in political and mystical theology, and active trade unionist, argues that only grass-roots democracy can defeat the insurgent populism sweeping the free world
Old political loyalties are fractured, and in the second week of the election campaign the strain is telling within both the Conservative and the Labour parties. The story of the 2019 election will be how far a fragmenting political system leads to a realignment of voting patterns that remakes the identity and appeal of our major political parties, and whether a resurgent English nationalism leads to the break up of the United Kingdom.
The 2016 referendum result was neither the beginning nor the source of the alienation of an increasing number of voters from “politics as usual”. The global financial crisis of 2008 exposed a crisis of political legitimacy and in its aftermath a space opened up for opportunists and mavericks of every kind. Prominent among them is the familiar figure of the would-be leader claiming to embody the popular will, who “gets things done” by confronting the “establishment” or the “elites” on behalf of “the people”.
Insurgent populism has turned established political norms on their head across the world in recent years, as the electoral success – with a few bumps in the road – of the likes of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Matteo Salvini in Italy and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, as well as Donald Trump in the US, has illustrated. All share a nostalgic inward-looking nationalism and “nativism”; all peddle the politics of grievance, blaming a corrupt elite for economic injustice and social fragmentation; all appeal to the anger and alienation of many voters by scapegoating immigrants and other groups that are socially marginalised; all appeal to socially conservative values to define and deride liberal cosmopolitan elites.