Why Policy Exchange invented the bogeyman of 'Islamopopulism'
Fifteen years ago, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi famously declared that Islamophobia had passed the “dinner-table test”.
For Policy Exchange, a right-wing think-tank that is notoriously opaque about its funders, contempt for Muslims has been on the menu for considerably longer than that.
Last month, Policy Exchange released two reports on a new phenomenon that it is calling “Islamopopulism”, and whose supposed rise can be seen in the recent local election results.
I could spend considerable time dissecting the more than 100 pages of repetitive, meandering, and largely vacuous material contained in these reports. I will not, because that would be a waste of everyone’s time, including my own.
What I will say is this: I made the mistake of searching those pages for an actual definition of “Islamopopulism”.
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Surely, a foundational requirement for any serious piece of political analysis is a definition of the supposed phenomenon being analysed. In hindsight, I should have known better than to expect analytical rigour from a group of ideologically motivated lobbyists who have disingenuously dressed themselves in the language of academia, while abandoning its most basic standards.
Since Policy Exchange failed to define its own term, allow me to offer one definition: an Islamopopulist is a Muslim who is not afraid to challenge a political establishment welded to a decaying status quo that has abandoned millions of people across this country, and who does so with unapologetic pride in their faith and their identity.
End of an era
For years, British voters have been trapped, forced in many instances to choose between two main political parties that differed in style, but shared the same fundamental indifference towards the people they claimed to represent.
Both Labour and the Conservatives have shown a blatant disregard for justice and fairness, both at home and abroad. They see the working class, and those who are the least well-off in society, as people to be manipulated, discriminated against and exploited for personal, political and financial gain.
No volume of slander, false labels, or attempts to launder hatred through the language of think-tank respectability will change what this movement is
That era has ended, and its ending creates genuine space on both sides of the political spectrum for a radical politics that promises something more than managed disappointment.
I say this with open eyes: the far right - in the guise of Reform, Restore, and increasingly the Conservatives - is already moving to fill part of that vacuum. That must concern every person in this country who believes in civil liberties, who stands against genocide, and who is fighting for a future that serves the masses rather than the billionaires.
The battle for what comes next has already begun.
In the last few years, there has been a determined and organised effort by Muslims across Britain to engage with politics in a more meaningful and more demanding way. One of its most proximate causes is not difficult to identify: our government chose to align itself, openly and proudly, with an Israeli government committing unspeakable atrocities, and then looked its voters in the eye and refused to respond with meaningful action.
Right side of history
The position of millions of people in this country on Gaza was unambiguous. The politicians who were supposed to represent them offered only meaningless rhetoric that called for “peace”, while actively aiding and abetting an ongoing genocide.
So those millions responded in kind. What emerged was an independent movement that stretched the length of the country - a movement that was diverse in background, faith and identity, and united in a refusal to accept a politics that treats voters as an inconvenience to be controlled rather than a people to be served.
I understand that this may be difficult for the careerists of Policy Exchange to comprehend. They operate in a world of self-interest and institutional access; one where public service as a genuine vocation is, at best, naive - and, at worst, outright suspicious.
That is why independent MPs must appear so alien to them. We did not arrive in parliament to build careers. We arrived because the people who sent us there had been ignored for too long and had decided, finally, to force politicians and their parties to listen.
The foundational principle underpinning public service of justice for all, everywhere, has been eroded by think-tanks such as Policy Exchange and their followers among the ruling class.
No volume of slander, false labels, or attempts to launder hatred through the language of think-tank respectability will change what this movement is or what it stands for. We will continue to stand on the right side of history.
And we will continue to fight for a Britain that is fairer, more honest, and more just than the one Policy Exchange and its allies are so determined to preserve.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
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