Left-wing Populism in the UK: National and Regional Variants

This paper develops the author’s existing textual analysis methodology to analyse key UK left-wing parties in order to parse the nature of and degree of their populist appeal, and to compare it with that of the radical right. One core understanding is that populism is a ‘thin’ ideology that cleaves to more developed ‘host’ ideologies, and therefore transforms its content according to the nature of the host ideology. A second core understanding is that all parties will have at least some elements of populism within their electoral appeal. The paper compares ‘mainstream’ left parties with those with more niche appeal and divergent ideological approaches (the Labour Party, the Green Party, Plaid Cymru, the Scottish National Party and the Respect Party). The aim is providing taxonomical detail and conceptual clarity to help understanding of contemporary left-wing populism and provide insights to be extended to a broader range of case studies.