'Populism'.

[Rum]

BBC Radio 4 (the 'serious' station) have a phone in session once a week for people to have a moan about what's been on the radio that week. Today I caught a bit of it. The caller was complaining that the tern 'populism' or populist party was being used by the BBC as code for right wing, nationalist and therefore 'unsavoury'. They had an editor on who defended the way the Beeb use the term and disagreed. She made the point that the populist parties in Greece were left wing, in France Nationalist right wing and so on.

So what does 'populist' in politics mean? To me it is any party which is reflecting what the people seem to want but the prevailing mainstream and often 'elite' politicians don't. Or are they just like any/most other politicians - after power?

[Svartalf]

populist means appealing to the populace at large, generally targeting the lowest common denominator of crass and enudeducated voters... for some reason, said populace generally goes for the 'law and order' and nationalist agenda more often than for the 'well understood own advantage' one that the left tries to defend... well, the moderate left, because the commies go for another kind of fascistic agenda that benefits the great unwashed masses very little in the end.

[devogue]

The opposite of populist is elitist...

[JimC]

It's politics as devised by an advertising bureau...

[Pappa]

I heard the same show and thought the people complaining were being pretty dumb. The definition of populism for me is the same as yours. I think it's also fair to describe some policies from mainstream parties as populist policies.

The word populist can have negative connotations, but only because "popular" does. Pop music, the popular press... they are things that are compared to their more refined alternatives.

As long as populist is being used by the media correctly, to describe a populist party or policy, I think it should always be used. I don't see an alternative that conveys the information.

[Brian Peacock]

Every government of the day is a popularist party in some sense. But I think 'popularist' has become a term applied to a certain kind of simplistic politics, where complex problems are reduced down to a single straightforward cause and an easily implemented solution.

[pErvinalia]

I think popularism represents shallowness or superficiality. It's about emotional triggers and base responses.

[L'Emmerdeur]

So what does 'populist' in politics mean? To me it is any party which is reflecting what the people seem to want but the prevailing mainstream and often 'elite' politicians don't. Or are they just like any/most other politicians - after power?

I agree that the term 'populism' in itself cannot properly be used to carry a connotation of either right or left wing. In the recent presidential campaign in the US for instance, both Sanders and Trump were populist candidates. I've seen some claim that Trump was a 'false populist' and to me this is also incorrect. A candidate or politician doesn't necessarily have to be sincere or honest to be a populist. All that is necessary is to present oneself as a champion of the common people.

[JimC]

Typically it's a triumph of style over substance. Most party politics is at least partly of this kind - parties or politicians described as populist just take the cynical presentation of "policies" purely as vote-gathering a little further...

[rainbow]

Appeal to the lumpen both right and left.

[Scot Dutchy]

Populists are the non-thinkers who believe everything their filthy rags write about.

[mistermack]

There will always be splitters :

[Rum]

To present the other side of the coin, the likes of UKIP here and Trump in the USA do tap into issues that 'ordinary people' feel are being ignored. There is no doubt that immigration was an issue for the UK that was not being addressed. The Blair government basically had an unofficial open door policy and believed it would benefit the country economically - which arguably it did. There were regions of the country though where people felt their innate Brutishness was under threat from large numbers of immigrants. The mainstream parties really only paid lip service to the issue until they realised there were votes in it - votes that UKIP were about to steal. In some circles the issue became one of racism, which I guess technically it was. But it was more than that too and it was not being addressed except by people who wanted to exploit potential divisions.

[Scot Dutchy]

To present the other side of the coin, the likes of UKIP here and Trump in the USA do tap into issues that 'ordinary people' feel are being ignored. There is no doubt that immigration was an issue for the UK that was not being addressed. The Blair government basically had an unofficial open door policy and believed it would benefit the country economically - which arguably it did. There were regions of the country though where people felt their innate Brutishness was under threat from large numbers of immigrants. The mainstream parties really only paid lip service to the issue until they realised there were votes in it - votes that UKIP were about to steal. In some circles the issue became one of racism, which I guess technically it was. But it was more than that too and it was not being addressed except by people who wanted to exploit potential divisions.

The areas which voted leave were the areas with the least number of immigrants as they just believed what their rags were printing. There was not any criticism of the government for not implementing the EU rules on EU immigration. The tories also did not want to restrict EU immigration as they were providing cheap labour which influenced wages.

[Rum]

To present the other side of the coin, the likes of UKIP here and Trump in the USA do tap into issues that 'ordinary people' feel are being ignored. There is no doubt that immigration was an issue for the UK that was not being addressed. The Blair government basically had an unofficial open door policy and believed it would benefit the country economically - which arguably it did. There were regions of the country though where people felt their innate Brutishness was under threat from large numbers of immigrants. The mainstream parties really only paid lip service to the issue until they realised there were votes in it - votes that UKIP were about to steal. In some circles the issue became one of racism, which I guess technically it was. But it was more than that too and it was not being addressed except by people who wanted to exploit potential divisions.

The areas which voted leave were the areas with the least number of immigrants as they just believed what their rags were printing. There was not any criticism of the government for not implementing the EU rules on EU immigration. The tories also did not want to restrict EU immigration as they were providing cheap labour which influenced wages.

You may well be right but the net result was (sticking with the OP) that the issue was being ignored by the 'political elite' and the ordinary people - many of them anyway - wanted something done and started to turn towards the far right.