Populism, Hegemony and Agency: Left Economics after Corbynism

Labour's election defeat in December 2019 provided the opportunity for a fundamental rethinking of economic and political strategy of a kind that failed to take place during Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party. Deep tensions within the Corbyn movement and in the economic programme presented by Corbyn's Labour were managed successfully in 2017, but exploded in 2019. Corbynism's populist communications strategies became dislocated from an increasingly state-centred and bureaucratically-focussed economic programme still heavily influenced by the thinking of the late 1970s and 1980s. Populist strategies in general suffer from a weak conception of hegemony, and the failure to create policy that could win hegemony for left politics was both an expression of Corbynism's weakness and a contributor to its defeat. Future economic programmes of the left will need to reclaim the radical, decentralising elements of Corbynism, seeking new agents for change at local and regional levels.