Blast from the past as C Mouffe analyses populism

I thought she was dead, but although she must be close with a job as a professor of political theory at Westminster Uni., C Mouffe pops up in the Graun today with her thoughts:

What most people seem to find shocking about Johnson’s strategy is that it involves an “us v them” confrontation – as if democratic politics could avoid conflict between irreconcilable political projects.
... politics involves conflict and antagonism and that it has, by definition, a partisan character. In politics, therefore, we are always dealing with an opposition between “us” and “them” – which means it will always be necessary to draw a political frontier between the two sides....Since [liberals] refuse to draw it in an adversarial way, they create a moral divide, which does not permit a true agonistic debate.

Since the economic crisis of 2008, however, there has been growing resistance to an economic order that has produced a new class of oligarchs and a growing precariat. After decades of “post-politics”, during which citizens were deprived of a voice in the way they were governed – under the pretence there was no alternative – we are now living through a populist moment....The great success of the leave campaign was to link the grievances of a number of disparate groups by articulating anti-austerity and anti-establishment sentiments with a nationalistic flavour. The slogan “Take back control” provided a rallying cry for these various demands. By blaming the EU for the deterioration of social and political conditions in the UK, Brexit became a hegemonic signifier[lovely to hear the old terms!]

We must not be tempted to counter Johnson’s populism with a return to centrist politics. It is precisely such a centrist politics that is at the origin of the current democratic crisis in western Europe. Similarly, we should not demonise all Brexiters as deplorables, or dismiss them for being unable to recognise the intellectual and moral superiority of the European project. The campaign to leave succeeded in part because there was a democratic kernel at the core of these demands  ...the way to answer the rightwing populist offensive is the construction of another “people” – through the articulation of a project that can link together various demands against the status quo. A project in which both leavers and remainers could feel that they have a voice and that their concerns are taken into account. One signifier for such a project could be a Green New Deal

The trouble is I think we can only do cultural and identity politics now and they have contaminated everything, even greenery [see my blog piece for Briefings for Brexit]. A partisan piece from S Moore in the same edition shows the problems:

The extraordinary reactions of certain men to Greta Thunberg, which have nothing to do with her urgent and necessary message on the climate emergency, tells you exactly what happens when a young woman simply refuses to be sexualised. It makes them deeply uncomfortable...Old, male intellectuals in France have been farting on because she is not “sexy” enough....Who knew you could shake the patriarchy simply by refusing to smile for it, dress for it or demur to it? A refusal to acquiesce to the male gaze has these dinosaurs squirming..Greta, you teach us about more than one kind of climate. Thank you.