ABSTRACT
The United Kingdom has traditionally not witnessed examples of successful populist parties in the way that they have been observed in many continental European countries. The recent success of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) at a number of elections, however, has led some to claim that there is a growing populist influence in politics. This chapter reviews the literature on populist political communication, identifying the main actors and what has been said about them. Populists constitute small opposition parties with limited chance of governing in the current electoral system, and radical right populism in ethnocentric or Euroskeptic forms dominates. There is a gap in the literature on populist actors approach to the media. Most scholars focus on subtypes of populism, such as right-wing extremism and Euroskepticism. Most empirical investigations examine the British National Party's (BNP) media strategy and its attempt to both shed its former neo-Nazi image and to openly adopt a more populist rhetoric.
