Your Party and the Perils of Left Populism
Already just a few months into its founding, Britain’s new left party has been dominated by factionalism and infighting. These are problems that have always plagued left populist movements. Your Party could learn from their history.
Britain’s working class deserve better than the factionalism and infighting that have characterized Your Party since its launch. They need a party that can represent the voters Labour has abandoned and fight for an end to neoliberalism. (Jacob King / PA Images via Getty Images)
The case against left populism is that it is too leader-centric. When Podemos launched in Spain it wasn’t long before it was accused of betraying the protest movement that helped set the scene for anti-establishment politics. In 2015, the party’s leader Pablo Iglesias made a bet on overtaking PSOE, the centrist socialist party. When he failed to do so, Podemos appeared, for a moment, to be too top-heavy to endure.
La France Insoumise is another example. In this case its leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, has built an organization centered around his idiosyncratic persona. Critics, both left and right, have pointed out the hollowness of LFI’s internal democracy.
The case in favor of left populism is that few things other than a decisive leader who is capable of deploying a friend-enemy distinction have had the capacity to unite a deeply fragmented society of the kind now common in a postindustrial age.
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