Can Jeremy Corbyn reinvent himself as a Trot Trump?

‘Populism’ is a useless word. By definition, anyone who wins an election is more popular than his or her opponents are. According to this logic, John Major and Barack Obama must have once been ‘populists’, which does not sound right at all.

When we use ‘populist’ today, we should mean something more than popular. The label covers movements of the nationalist right, which claim to speak on behalf of ‘the people’ against immigrants, cosmopolitans, and multinational institutions. Their most distinctive feature is their contempt for the checks and balances of complicated democracies. From Law and Justice’s Poland to Trump’s America, they attack judges, journalists, opposition politicians and parties as ‘enemies of the people’ – a ‘people,’ of course, only they represent. If you think it can’t happen here, listen to the snarls of the right-wing press and Tory politicians in the Iain Duncan Smith mould against the judiciary, civil service, diplomatic corps and any public figure who challenges them.