Corbynism, Populism and the Re-shaping of Left Politics in Contemporary Britain

Abstract

This chapter analyses the relevance of ‘populism’ for understanding the movement surrounding UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. Following a general mapping of the contours of Corbynism, we ask whether, from the point of view of a Laclau-inspired discursive approach, Corbynism can meaningfully be described as populist. We suggest that Corbynism can only accurately be described as populist if one were to stretch the meaning of populism so far as to render it virtually meaningless. Consequently, in the final part of the chapter, we offer a theoretical critique of the general trend towards ‘conceptual overstretching’ that one finds in the populism scholarship