Common sense and the common people: a queer typology of radical right populist discourse in the UK

Populist discourses and politics, especially from the radical right, are becoming increasingly prominent in numerous national contexts across the world. This article examines the UK as a particularly relevant case for scholars of this wider trend, focusing on the 2023 Conservative Party Conference as a pivotal moment in the mainstreaming of radical right populist rhetoric. At this conference, key actors portrayed multiple groups – including trans people, migrants, and striking health workers – as threats to the nation, displacing blame for neoliberalism’s unequal distributive effects onto those already marginalised. Engaging queer, feminist, postcolonial, and other critical scholarship on radical right populism, this article offers an original framework for analysing the role of “common sense” in constructing the “common people”. Specifically, we develop and operationalise a queer typology of common-sense populist discourses as anti-elitism, moralism, economism, anti-collectivism, and futurism. In so doing, we shed new light on the gendered, racialised, sexualised, and classed logics at work in radical right populism, and illuminate the discursive mechanisms by which consent for neoliberal governance is secured through the targeting of the very groups most impacted by it.

Citation

Vernon, P. and Smith, N. (2026) Common sense and the common people: a queer typology of radical right populist discourse in the UK. British Politics, 21, 11. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41293-026-00300-4

Type

Journal article

Language

en

Description

© 2026 The authors. Published by Springer. This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence. The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41293-026-00300-4

ISSN

1746-918X

EISSN

1746-9198

Collections

Faculty of Arts, Business and Social Sciences