Twenty-First Century Populism: The Spectre of Western European ...

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had been established as the mainstream position in the Conservative party.
More importantly, the bulk of public opinion had also moved in this direction.
Although the Labour party has moved in the opposite direction, shedding
its earlier scepticism (which peaked with a platform of withdrawal in
1983) and adopting a Europhile position by the early 1990s, its leadership has
been forced to exercise caution on key policy questions such as the single currency,
given public hostility. Surveys of British Social Attitudes have indicated
strong public desire to reduce the EU’s influence (this has hovered between
50−60 per cent since the mid-1990s) (Evans and Butt, 2005: 198−200).
Although by the end of the 1990s the Conservative party had adopted a
highly Euro-sceptical platform, in some cases implying renegotiation of key
tenets of membership, it has found itself outflanked by a number of new
movements able to exploit the increasing public hostility to the European
integration process, fuelled by the Europhobia of large swathes of the British
press (including both populist tabloids and broadsheets). While political
pragmatism, its relationship with the business community and the persistence
of a Europhile minority within the party prevent the Conservatives
from adopting a platform of withdrawal from the EU, these new Eurosceptic
movements operate with no such constraints, combining a populist anti-EU
discourse with promises to withdraw the UK from the EU. The most prominent
of these movements is the UK Independence party (see discussion
below).
Chris Gifford has argued that ideas of ‘Britishness’ have been asserted
within the Eurosceptic movement (both within the Conservative party and
beyond) that suggest that British political development (given the legacy of
empire and ‘global power’ status) is ‘exceptional and antithetical to the continent’
(Gifford, 2006: 854). Gifford argues that ‘in a context of imperial
decline, the nation has had to be persistently regenerated and there has
been a need for an “other” against which a “new” Britain can be redefined.
Since the 1970s, “Europe”, and more specifically the project of European
integration, has played such a role’ (Gifford, 2006: 856). As Gifford shows,
much of the discourse used by the Eurosceptic movement has been of a
populist nature, alleging that the British people have been sold out and lied
to by its leaders, who can no longer be trusted on the issue. For example, the
Heath government, which took Britain into the EC in 1973 stands accused
of having misled parliament in claiming that Britain would retain its essential
sovereignty, as did the cross-party coalition that supported continued
membership in the 1975 referendum and thereafter.
Mainstream populism in Britain
Margaret Thatcher’s leadership of the Conservative party and Britain in the
1980s has often been characterized as populist, reflected in an apparent