Britain: Imperial Legacies, Institutional Constraints and New Political Opportunities

Abstract

In contrast to many other Western European countries, no real populist movement has been able to emerge and have a lasting impact on party political competition in Great Britain. A prominent factor often identified to explain this is Britain’s majoritarian first-past-the-post electoral system (FPTP), which severely limits the opportunities for new political forces to make an impact in terms of winning parliamentary seats and altering the balance of party competition. Nevertheless, the recent success enjoyed by new political forces, such as the UK Independence Party (UKIP), under the proportional voting system introduced for European Parliament elections since 1999, indicates a degree of potential for populist parties in Britain. Moreover, the gains made by the extreme-right British National Party (BNP) in local elections (albeit in very limited pockets) also suggests that there is a market to be tapped into for a populist party of the extreme-right variety. Both UKIP and the BNP can be analysed in terms of the categorization of radical right-wing populist (RRP) parties that has emerged from the literature on the far Right and contemporary (neo) populism (Betz, 1994; Rydgren, 2005). However, while discussing this phenomenon in British politics, this chapter will move beyond this limited categorization and examine the extent to which populism, or elements of it, has found its way into the discourses, programmes and strategies of the existing mainstream parties, most notably the Conservatives and Labour.