Down a slippery slope . . . is Britain joining the global trends towards right-wing populism?

Citation

Moufahim M (2019) Down a slippery slope . . . is Britain joining the global trends towards right-wing populism?. In: Jackson D, Thorsen E, Lilleker D & Weidhase N (eds.) UK Election Analysis 2019: Media, Voters and the Campaign: Early reflections from leading academics. Poole, England: The Centre for Comparative Politics and Media Research, pp. 53-53. https://ecrea.eu/page-18206/8396587

Abstract
First paragraph: Reflecting on the election results, I was reminded of a conversation I had with a delegate at a marketing conference after I presented my work on the discourse of the Vlaams Belang, an extreme right wing party from Belgium, titled Marketing ‘ethically questionable’ politics: the case of a xenophobic political party. To my dismay, he was boasting about the lack of such a party in the UK, which he extrapolated as being evidence for a lack of demand for xenophobic right-wing populist parties. Admittedly, the BNP and NF were a marginal presence in the British political landscape and this conversation took place before the breakthrough of UKIP. Beyond the blind naivety of the statement, what astonished me was his self-congratulatory assurance that the country was somewhat immune to the appeal of prejudice and bigoted rhetoric. This discussion took place almost 10 years ago. Haven’t we come a long way since?

Keywords
General Election 2019; right-wing populism; Boris; Conservative party; islamophobia

Notes
A copy of the book in full can be found at: https://eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk/33165/13/UKElectionAnalysis2019_Jackson-Thorsen-Lilleker-and-Weidhase_v1.pdf