Left Populism in Europe: Lessons from Jeremy Corbyn to Podemos

While the right is harnessing populist rhetoric to great effect, the left's attempts have been much less successful. The Syriza government in Greece and Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party in Britain have both failed to change the neoliberal status quo and introduce democratic socialism in their countries. Other movements however, like the Spanish party Podemos, have seen greater gains and are now in government in Spain. In this book, Marina Prentoulis evaluates the transformational process of left populism across grassroots, national and European levels and asks what we can do to better harness the power of broad-based, popular left politics. Bringing a wealth of experience in political organizing, she argues that left populism is a political logic that brings together isolated demands against a common enemy with an egalitarian pluralism that could transform economic and political institutions in a radical democratic direction. But each party does this differently, and the key to understanding where to go from here lies in a serious analysis of the roots of each movement's base, the forms of party organization, and the particular national contexts. Avoiding reductive terms like 'pasokification', this is a clear and holistic approach to left populism that will inform anyone wanting to understand and move forward positively in a bleak time for the Left in Europe.

Marina Prentoulis is Senior Lecturer in Media and Politics at the University of East Anglia. She has been the UK spokesperson of Syriza and has given numerous interviews on British and international media including BBC’s Newsnight, the Andrew Marr Show as well as CNN and Sky News.