Leave Means Leave National Populist Spring Fête : Cartoon by John Rogan.

Populism is a struggle for democracy: John Holbrook Spiked, on Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin’s National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy (2019).

It’s time for a radical populism. Brendan O’Neill.

Labour does not speak for ordinary people. Others must.

It should be clear to everyone that Labour does not speak for working people, and nor does it aspire to. This party is now the property of an emerging new establishment; of a political set defined by ‘wokeness’ rather than class, by PC rather than populism, and by a belief that clever, ‘aware’ people who become members of Labour deserve a greater democratic say, but those people out there do not.

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We need a new radical populism. A populism that takes both people and ideas seriously. A new politics that is open and also intellectual. A new approach to public life which breathes life back into the radical idea that ordinary people are if anything better than cut-off elites at making wise decisions for the benefit of communities and the country. This new politics will not come from Labour or the Tories. So others will have to tease it out, develop it, and give it some kind of shape. That’s what spiked plans to do. Join us for this debate in the months ahead in our new-look magazine.

September 2018.

Frank Furedi. Former leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party, now Spiked Guru.

What next for the populist revolt? December 2018

In the West in 2018, we witnessed the intensification of a new conflict – that between anti-populist political elites and a growing grassroots movement that is hostile to these elites.

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Whether the positive, democratic potential in the new populism can be developed further remains an open question. As the protests in France show, people are searching for a language through which they might express their very 21st-century form of solidarity. But they seem to lack the intellectual resources and leadership necessary to give their aspirations clarity. In the UK, millions feel empowered by the vote for Brexit. But none of the political parties represents their interests; the pro-Brexit majority is bereft of an institution that might enforce its ideals.

Democracy’s shadow. Matthew Goodwin. Spiked.August 2018.

Brexit in particular was not just a formal request for Britain to leave the EU. It was the politics of faith rubbing up against the politics of scepticism; an attempt to correct an imbalance in a nation that had become more interested in big business, cities, social liberals and middle-class graduates at the expense of workers, conservatives, rural communities and towns.

This should not prevent us from calling out instances of racism or xenophobia that often come with the politics of faith. But it is also true that many of those who flock to populism do not hold such views and are instead pursuing radical political change in the hope of nudging the dial away from the politics of scepticism and back toward the politics of faith and salvation, however they might define it. By obsessing over what happened during the campaign, we are losing sight of a deeper tension that is at work and losing an opportunity to reflect seriously on where politics as scepticism has gone wrong.

Verso author, New Left Review and Jacobin contributor,  Wolfgang Streeck, supporter of the German ‘left’ populists Aufstehen, joins the National Populists.

wolfgang streeck's case for borders: "Would you want Nelson Mandela to be a refugee in Germany? No! He’d be a mail carrier bringing Amazon parcels to your house… he was needed somewhere else." where to begin? https://t.co/YjAjT1Th0C

— c (@cszabla) March 21, 2019

The EU is an empire

Spiked 29th of March 2019.

Wolfgang Streeck on why the EU is a deplorable institution that we must leave.

..the left-liberal ideal of internationalism has been hijacked by neoliberal anti-statism, and international solidarity is identified with free markets. This is purely ideological, and it doesn’t speak well for the political acuity of the left middle-class that it bought the ‘Third Way’ version of international peace and friendship.

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To me, there is no left in Europe and the United States that is more demoralised and defeatist than the pro-EU left in the UK.

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The British pro-EU left has, for fear of Thatcher and her current and future acolytes, sold its anti-capitalist birthright for the thin gruel of a European minimum entitlement to a few days of parental leave.

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With the European anaesthetics withdrawn, workers and voters might remember the British tradition of powerful trade unions and a universal welfare state, get together again, strike for better employment conditions, and elect a Labour government worthy of that name. If this could be the result of Brexit, would it not be worth at least trying to ‘take back control’?

(Wolfgang Streeck was talking to Fraser Myers.)

And to commemorate all those who marched with or backed #MarchToLeave with Loyalist Flute Bands, I’ve done a cartoon. pic.twitter.com/Zj60GEPBwW

— John Rogan (@JRogan3000) March 30, 2019

#MarchToLeave featured two Loyalist Flute Bands from Scotland today. #LivingstoneTrueBlues and #MusselburghTrueDefenders. LTB's emblem is a combination of a Confederate flag and the Red Hand of Ulster. A "Tim" is a Catholic, btw. LTB also marched in Newcastle with MTL. 1/6 pic.twitter.com/nypHLcJIig

— John Rogan (@JRogan3000) March 29, 2019

Here