Abstract
The article shows how the main regionalist parties in Scotland and Wales—the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru—have engaged with a populist discourse in the wake of the Great Recession. Based on a qualitative analysis of party manifestos and party-elite interviews, the article shows that the two parties have adopted a left-wing populist discourse, based on a critique of austerity policies. In this way, albeit from distinctively regionalist perspective, they performed roles very similar to that of other contemporary left-wing populist parties, particularly in Southern Europe. The Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru were able to frame their anti-austerity stances within a populist discourse because all three traditional British parties shared a preference for pro-austerity economic policies. Therefore, in Laclau’s terms, the two ‘Celtic’ parties’ attack on austerity constituted an open challenge to the hegemonic discourse of the British ‘power bloc’. Analogous to the expansion of a right-wing anti-establishment protest in British politics (monopolized by the UKIP), the two parties (particularly the Scottish one) capitalized on the expansion of a left-wing populist area. This strategy has lately become less viable because Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party broke with the pro-austerity consensus among British elites.
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Notes
See also Mazzoleni and Ruzza (2018) in this special issue.
Plaid Cymru did try to increase its visibility by playing the card of a possible post-election anti-Tory coalition, also in virtue of its long relationship with the SNP: “It is likely that there will be another hung parliament after the election. In that scenario, Plaid Cymru could hold the balance of power alongside our colleagues in the SNP. Should that happen, Plaid Cymru will seek a rebalancing of power and wealth in the UK. If the people of Wales return a strong team of Plaid Cymru MPs in May, then Wales will be best placed to secure an outcome to improve the prospects of our people and communities” (Plaid Cymru 2015: p. 3). However, in contrast to the SNP, Plaid Cymru remained largely ignored in the UK-wide election debate.
The Five Stars Movement in Italy and Syriza in Greece are two classic examples of populist parties who engage in this kind of strategies (Segatti and Capuzzi 2016).
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Massetti, E. Left-wing regionalist populism in the ‘Celtic’ peripheries: Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party’s anti-austerity challenge against the British elites. Comp Eur Polit 16, 937–953 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41295-018-0136-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41295-018-0136-z