A statist Labour Party let the radical Right claim the people’s side

Evidence

Thus, in any polarization along the fissure between state and people, it is Labour which can be represented as undividedly part of the power bloc, enmeshed in the state apparatus, riddled with bureaucracy, in short, as “with” the state; and Mrs. Thatcher, grasping the torch of freedom with one hand, as someone who is undividedly out there, “with the people.” It is the Labour Party which is committed to things as they are—and Mrs. Thatcher who means to tear society up by the roots and radically reconstruct it! This is the process by which—as they say—the radical Right has “become popular.” — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1121

Categorization

• XREF: Precisely instantiates the Frankfurt School finding that revolutionary transformation can be claimed by authoritarian/wing actors when the establishment party becomes identified with the status quo state. — connects to: New Labour conceded the impossibility of leftist hegemony rather than attempting it — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1485
• SEED: The inversion — establishment party as status quo, radical party as revolutionary — is exactly the dynamic by which any ‘radical’ flank can be popularized; frame around how incumbency always hands disruptive framing to the challenger.