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1 September 2024

The Limits of British Populism

Mitchell Foyle-York

As a member of Generation Z from Britain, my entire adult life has been marked by political upheaval. When I awoke on the morning of June 24, 2016, the day after the Brexit vote, I felt as though I had followed Alice down the rabbit hole and into a new country. Though I was happy that my side of the referendum had won, I was shocked by the palpable sense of social tension I could feel everywhere I went—from my street to the local grocery store, it felt like an eruption was about to take place. It was evident back then, even to a young eighteen-year-old like myself, that something was about to fundamentally change—if it hadn’t done so already—in British politics. Particularly on the political right, a new beast was forming in the wake of Nigel Farage’s UKIP (UK Independence Party) and Brexit successes. Right-wing populism had arrived, and it did so with a bang. Little did I expect, however, that in 2024 I would be watching riots that were fuelled by misinformation, predominately spread on social media by right-wing populist accounts and figures, unravel up and down the country. But how did this all happen?

In his latest book, Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics, Matthew Goodwin argues that the reason Britain has experienced a short flurry of populist uprisings in recent years—UKIP, Brexit, the 2019 General Election—is because there has been a political realignment across the entire country. Members of the working class are, on average, sceptical of mass immigration, supported Brexit, and lean left on many economic issues. A core political issue here, Goodwin correctly notes, is that the “elites,” politicians, and bureaucrats tend not to reflect these people’s interests or desires. If anything, they strongly oppose them. Immigration is an obvious example of this, where consecutive governments have been elected on the promise of lowering net-migration, only for net-migration to continuously climb to record-breaking highs. The result of this realignment has been bursts of populism, and it appears as though it is here to stay for the foreseeable future.

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