The Challenge of National Populism

With Matthew Goodwin. Across the west, there is a rising tide of people who feel excluded, alienated from mainstream politics, and increasingly hostile towards minorities, immigrants and neo-liberal economics. Elections in America and across Europe have shown that many of these people have turned to national populist movements in a revolt against liberal democracy and the rationalism of the enlightenment. Their ideas can be seen as anti-democratic and in some cases fascist, but support for this right wing populism has grown inexorably over the last five years. How should we engage with and respond to a set of ideas and values which appear so alien to mainstream political thinking in the west in the post war decades? Matthew Goodwin is Professor of Politics at Rutherford College, University of Kent and a Senior Visiting Fellow at Chatham House. He is the leading authority on nationalist and far right politics and in 2015 he won the Paddy Power Political book of the year for ‘Revolt on the Right’. Signed copies of his most recent book, National Populism: The Revolt against Liberal Democracy, will be available for purchase at reception. He will look at the background and ideas of national populism, and the challenge it presents to western democratic systems, and will suggest ways in which we should respond.
Nearest tube station Farringdon. 6.45pm (doors open 6.30).