The UK Parliament and instrumental populism

Jonathan Hearn

In Jan-Werner Müller’s recent short study What is Populism? (2017, Penguin) he defines it as a form of politics characterised by anti-elitism, the imagined oneness of ‘the people’ and their representatives (regardless of the mechanisms of representation), and the categorisation of political opponents as ‘enemies’ outside the body of ‘the people’.  Müller calls populism ‘the permanent shadow of representative politics’, in which the necessary pluralism and compromise of modern democratic politics is rejected.  It offers a dream of untainted ‘rule by the people’, attempting to bypass the frustrating process of real democracy.

Continue reading