Farage also used ‘we’ to show that he identified with ‘the people’. The ideas underlying this phrase need to be understood in their historical context, since they vary depending on particular national histories, but all share a common ancestor in ancient Greek and Roman thinkers. British democracy needs to be traced back to British thinkers such as Buchanan, Hobbes and the philosophers of the Enlightenment. This is relevant because the historical discourse surrounding the phrase ‘the people’ was central to the development of democracy, and is continuous with today’s challenges to it. The various notions of ‘the people’ were connected with the ‘sovereignty of the people’ and the ‘sovereignty of parliament’, the latter being expressly challenged by populist parties like UKIP, in favour of direct democracy, and the same trend was evident in the post-referendum governments. The expression ‘the common people’ played an important role in British political discourse. Its early meaning changed radically until it was replaced by ‘ordinary people’, which in the Brexiter demagoguery was equated with ‘the people’, in opposition to ‘the elite’.

Constitutional identity, although remaining distinct from national identity, does like the latter carve out an imagined community. It must process and reprocess material to promote a vision that integrates the ethnos and the demos in a constitutionally viable manner. In this pursuit, the elaboration of constitutional identity relies on three principal interpretive devices: negation, metaphor, and metonymy. The objective is to integrate the polity as a whole, the individuals subject to the constitution, and the plurality of groups within the nation that possess a legitimate claim to constitutional recognition. The resulting construct must draw on national identity to reinforce unity and depart from the latter where necessary to maintain constitutional integrity – e.g., to deescalate ethnic strife within the polity by banning ethnic-based political parties. The turn to populism poses a challenge that calls upon reframing constitutional identity. Indeed, as populism by its very nature casts only part of the people as the people, and labels those not included as the enemy, it calls for disaggregating and recombining existing liberal constitutional identities. We illustrate the adverse effect of populism’s recourse to ethnic cleavages and to religion in reframing constitutional identity through the salient example of Viktor Orban’s Hungary.

The legacy of nineteenth-century constitutionalism hampers the effective realization of democracy in the UK. Bagehot’s eulogizing of the fusion of the executive and legislature now appears to grant far too much power to the government, given the context of parliamentary sovereignty and a ‘first past the post’ electoral system. But democracy is a far richer notion than one which requires merely that power should be exercised by a majority of elected representatives. Democracy also requires that individuals and minorities have certain fundamental protections from majoritarian interests. Democracy in Britain has also been weakened by vagueness as to the role of direct democracy (and how it relates to popular sovereignty) and referendums in the UK. The UK Cabinet Manual (which, absent a codified Constitution, is the closest Britain comes to codifying its constitutional principles) does not specify the role of referendums in British governance, nor suggest that a referendum vote might override other constitutional principles. However, the Brexit referendum, although advisory in status, was nonetheless perceived as binding and implemented. If referendums are to become a more frequent feature of British constitutional practice, there is an urgent need for clear principles regarding their use to be articulated.

Chapter 3 tackles a gendered interpretation of ‘modernisation’, which never became widespread but had a discernible influence on both the left’s intellectual scene and Labour’s development. In the 1970s, while feminism was making a mark on the labour movement, its proponents did not claim that their demands would ‘modernise’ the party. Over the 1980s and 1990s, this began to change. Prominent and closely networked feminists in the socialist media and think tank scene suggested that the ‘modern economy’ was increasingly reliant on paid female labour and that family models were pluralising in ‘modern society’. These arguments were taken up by influential Labour politicians, especially Patricia Hewitt and Harriet Harman. They used them to argue that a crucial aspect of Labour’s ‘modernisation’ must be policies for gender equality. Their arguments never became central to New Labour. However, they did shape the New Labour project as it emerged in the 1990s, and thus some of its policies. Perhaps more importantly, the ‘modernisation’ element of these arguments may have unintentionally diluted the case for a more disruptive gender politics.

The sanctuary of Artemis on the island of Korkyra, modern Corfu, is presented as a case study of the relationship between the changing environment and the monumentalization of Greek sanctuaries through Doric stone architecture. Although the sculptural decoration of the Artemis temple, which is one of the earliest Doric temples known so far, is relatively well preserved, modern scholars disagree on the interpretation of the sculptures. The question of how the representations of Medusa and other mythological figures on the pediments and metopes related to the divinity worshipped in the sanctuary and to the local context are particularly controversial. However, as the chapter argues, the builders of the temple had no interest in highlighting this relationship in the first place. The temple and its sculptural decoration were meant to express Panhellenic values and standards rather than local traditions. Thus, the local elite of Korkyra presented themselves as part of a Panhellenic elite network. At the same time, the elite showed the local population that they were taking care of the religious landscape in an unstable and radically transformative situation.

In a democracy the people are said to lead. And yet within Australia’s liberal democracy, the people elect individuals to represent them. This sets up a unique role for political leadership. Debates about leadership churn are especially relevant in Australia given the number of political leaders that were replaced in the decade following the 2007 federal election.

Understanding the friction between leadership and liberal democracy provides us with a deeper grasp of our institutional setup. In considering political leadership in Australia, this chapter begins by considering the tension that exists between leaders in liberal democracies and the democratic institutions they work within. It then outlines some of the theories about leaders and leadership. It goes on to investigate and discuss Australian political leadership by considering the different types of political leadership in Australia. Following this, debates about recent leadership failure and supposed ‘poor leaders’ in Australia will take place. This chapter also deals with questions related to structure and agency as well as the political leadership gender gap in Australia.