"Populist" is the only political insult that admits its target is popular. That isn't a flaw in the word. It's the whole job it now does.
Crossbencher · 23 July 2026
"Populist" is the only insult in British politics that concedes the argument while it makes it. Every other term of abuse claims a position is wrong. This one claims it's popular, and asks you to hear no difference between the two.
The word does have a proper meaning. The political scientist Cas Mudde defines populism with some precision: a thin politics that splits society into two moral camps, a pure people and a corrupt elite, and demands that government simply enact the people's will. That describes a real thing with real faults. A politics of the pure many against the corrupt few has no patience for the machinery that stops majorities doing whatever they please - the courts, the procedures, the side that lost the vote and keeps its rights anyway. Used for that, "populist" names a genuine danger, and a careful writer should hold the word in reserve for it.
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