Nationalism is always an unfinished project. It might promise to restore a nation’s sovereignty, or to win a people’s independence, or to preserve cherished traditions – but these are cast as goals to come. And rightwing populists, who define themselves against an anti-national elite, are constantly in need of enemies whom they can accuse of standing in the way of that project being fulfilled.
You can see these populist overtones in the way the government is spinning last week’s failed deportation flight to Rwanda. Over the weekend, Downing Street insiders briefed journalists that the row over the flight was a “dividing line par excellence” that would revive Boris Johnson’s flagging support. Rather than a sign of government incompetence, the flight – which was cancelled after court challenges – was part of a successful “wedge week”. In this telling, disputes over refugees, rail strikes and the Northern Ireland protocol would divert attention from such trivialities as spiralling poverty and government corruption, and remind voters who the real enemy was.
