ABSTRACT
A novel two-stage content and qualitative analysis is used to analyse the ‘populism’ of eight parties in UK General Elections from 2001–2015: the Conservative Party, Labour Party, Liberal Democratic Party, Green Party of England and Wales, Scottish National Party, British National Party, UKIP and Respect. This chapter makes three main substantive contributions: first, it provides empirical richness to the study of UK parties and thereby shows that a) the much-touted populist Zeitgeist in the UK barely exists and b) distinct forms of populism exist on the radical left and radical right; second, it makes the methodological point that there are advantages and disadvantages to disaggregated measures of populism: they can be misleading if the focus is on summing up numerical categories; qualitative analysis is needed to show more fully how each element interrelates; third, the chapter makes an important theoretical point: what is often called ‘thin’ or ‘mainstream’ populism’ is not populism but demoticism (closeness to the common people); therefore analysts should not label parties ‘somewhat populist’ just because their rhetoric is demotic.
