majority of modern political theories that view tradition with suspicion and as a hindrance to an emancipatory politics, not the basis of it. By contrast, “anti-political Populism” seeks to simplify political space. It advocates direct forms of democracy with the leader ruling by direct consent without the hindrance of democratic checks and balances or the rep- resentation of different interests. In anti-political Populism, the throwing off of established authority structures is the prelude to the giving over of authority to the one and the giving up of responsibility for the many. The goal of anti-political Populism is personal withdrawal from public life so as to be free to pursue private self-interests rather than public mutual interests (this seems a particular characteristic of the contemporary Tea Party movement). Personal responsibility is con- cerned with improvement of the self, one’s immediate family or community disconnected from the care of public institutions, liberties, rule of law, physical infrastructure and natural resources that make up the commonwealth on which all depend. In short, while political Populism seeks to generate a politics of the common good, anti-political Populism pursues a politics dominated by the interests of the one, the few or the many.


Populist. Chesterton developed an account of political economy that was neither socialist nor capitalist and was highly critical of both statism and what we now call neo-liberalism. In the contemporary context, one could plausibly interpret Phillip Blond’s “Red Tory” and Maurice Glasman’s “Blue Labour” visions as attempts to construct different versions of a distinctly English political Populism. Within Conservatism, the Big Society vision, with its emphasis on localism, democratisation and civil society, creates a space for both Blond’s political Populism but also for the more Tea Party-like anti-political populism of the Tax Payers’ Alliance. On the left, Ed Miliband has appointed Glasman to the House of Lords to develop the Labour response to the Big Society, while his brother David is committed to devel- oping the Movement for Change, which builds on community organising, as a way to renew Labour as a social movement. While it is unlikely that anything like the Tea Party will develop in the UK, the irony is that Populist themes could point the way for the electoral renewal of Labour: for Americanism insert Englishness; for producerism, insert labour; for small government, insert a critique of the dominance of privileged elites; and for the sense of a moral crusade, insert the need to protect the common life, common land, com- mon institutions and the customary practices of ordinary working people.


B


■Luke Bretherton is senior lecturer in theology and politics at King’s College, University of London, and the author of Christianity and Contemporary Politics (Wiley-Blackwells, 2010).


ritain has had its own form of polit- ical Populism. One of the foremost scholars of Populism, Margaret Canovan, sees G.K. Chesterton as a


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