David Cameron, Boris Johnson and the ‘populist hypothesis’ in the British Conservative Party

Brexit was often associated with a recent upsurge of populism in Western democracies, with the idea of re-engaging with the people being construed as a populist strategy to disengage from Europe. This article seeks to explore the populist hypothesis by stepping outside the dominant literature on populism to take a closer look at Peter Mair's ‘populist democracy’ as applied to two defining moments: David Cameron’s decision to hold a referendum on EU membership and Boris Johnson’s process of implementing Brexit. Mair's notion encompasses two aspects—procedural and substantive populism—which seem to apply to both moments. While Cameron's long leadership (2005–2016) reveals changes in governing practices and party management which have altered the nature of the relationship between the leader and the ‘people’, Boris Johnson’s (2019–) more contemporary leadership can be described as an illustration of a new populist rhetoric in its combination of hard Brexit, anti-immigration and anti-Parliament discourse. Although both leaderships expose ingredients of Mair’s two variants of populism, the ‘populist hypothesis’ does not hold in the light of the type of leaders that Cameron and Johnson have actually turned out to be.