Jeremy Corbyn rally, York - image, Jeremy Corbyn
Last week, the Economist journalist Natasha Loder shared a train carriage with Jeremy Corbyn. She eavesdropped as Corbyn and his staffers stressed over his leadership campaign slogans. The choice came down to two: ‘Putting people first’, or ‘people powered politics’. The latter won. But the common theme? ‘People’. The same ‘people’ that pops up, inexplicably, in the moniker of Peoples Momentum, the organisation otherwise known as Jeremy for Labour Ltd. Corbynism may lay claim to a politics of the real, the immediate, the concrete. But the people to which Corbynism addresses itself is totally abstract, a mere fugazi.
The idea of the people is now as pervasive on the left as the idea of class once was. Its pervasiveness owes to a surge in left populism. With Corbynism, the UK caught what swept Europe post-crisis. But continental populism’s successes highlight the divergence. Syriza carefully constructed a popular platform through practical solidarity work. Podemos harnessed media messaging to articulate a popular project around points of popular grievance. Insofar as people power is possible within capitalism at all, these interventions worked.
