Fighting fire with fire: Mainstream adoption of the populist political style in the 2014 Europe debates between Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage

Abstract

Advancing the concept of populism as a political style, this study compares the debate performances of two British party leaders, Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage, as they clashed in a pair of televised debates over Britain's EU membership ahead of the 2014 European Parliament elections. The argument tested is that under certain conditions, mainstream politicians will adopt a populist communication style while retaining a non-populist agenda. A mixed methods approach combines computational text analysis with a qualitative rhetorical analysis to demonstrate how the populist and non-populist style can be distinguished and compared systematically. The results suggest that Clegg, although maintaining a non-populist ideology, adopts features of the populist style after losing the first debate. Farage's communication style, conversely, remains stable to the point of statistical significance. This suggests that one explanatory factor of populists' success is the consistency of their message and rhetorical delivery, bolstering their perceived authenticity among voters.

Uncivil Communication and Simplistic Argumentation: Decreasing Political Trust, Increasing Persuasive Power?

“…Their use of a matching, norm-violating style might fit that purpose well. In effect, stylistic elements may be 'secondary' to substantive content in driving the populist vote, but its combination might be integral to the success of the populist message (Aslanidis, 2016, p. 98;Bossetta, 2017). Second, we also show that effects are conditional.…”

Political Authenticity: Conceptualization of a Popular Term

“…This distinction between the two types of consistency helps to explain why in some cases even performed inconsistencies by politicians can lead to perceived authenticity. Contrary to the assumption that inconsistent action necessarily weakens perceptions of authenticity (Bossetta 2017), performed inconsistency can also be interpreted as authentic if it is something the audience expects from a politician. Therefore, even changing one's standpoint on a political issue or a lie to the public can construct expectation consistency and result in perceived authenticity.…”

Shooting the fox? UKIP’s populism in the post-Brexit era

“…When immigration was mentioned, in almost 2 in 3 cases so too was the EU, reflecting a long-run strategy of connecting the two subjects (Ford and Goodwin 2014). This was also the period during the survey timeframe that saw the most frequent mention of the leader's name, with Farage appearing in over 40% of releases, leveraging his high name-recognition and brand of political authenticity (Bossetta 2017) to reach voters. Similarly, this was also the period that had the most frequent references to Labour and the Conservatives, always in negative terms, contrasting the common-sense, populist approach of UKIP to the failed 'mainstream'.…”