But It Might Work For Us

‘And did it work for those people?’ ‘No it never does… But it might work for us!’

As the Farage supporters of the 2020s start to speak like the Corbynistas of the 2010s, and left populist styles are tried all over again on the left and centre left across the west… James A. Smith returns to the lessons of the Corbyn era for politics today. Why do libido and antagonism matter to politics, and how do ‘illibidinal’ forces try to shut them down? How can the left speak to people’s bad desires as well as their altruistic ones? What is the relationship between art and literature and radical politics? Why can’t true change happen online? And why is ‘the party’, rather than ‘the movement’ still the correct form of political organisation?

Hopeful and scathing by turns, But it Might Work for Us is an alternative theory, history, and future of left populism, drawn from the 2016-2026 writings of one of the Corbyn era’s most original commentators.