Can "everyday politics" breathe new life into the Left, in an age of populism & popularisation? Really interesting discussion on the @MileEndInst podcast, featuring @colm_m, @mds49 & @ea_robinson, inspired by Marc Stears' recent book: "Out of the Ordinary" anchor.fm/mile-end-insti…
As I argued here last month, "If there is one lesson that Labour desperately needs to relearn, it is its faith in ordinary people". gladstonediaries.blogspot.com/2021/05/starme… 
As @mds49 noted, one challenge for the Left is that it rightly wants to talk about big ideas & heroic changes; but as soon as it does that, it risks becoming detached from the experience & language of normal life. I wondered whether there's a longer-term reason for that?[cont...]
Until the mid-C20th, even the most radical reformers had a language that was grand, heroic & inspiring, but also part of the rhythm of everyday life: the language of the Prayer Book & the King James Bible. Campaigns to abolish slavery, win votes for women &build welfare states...
... could promise the New Jerusalem, the coming of the kingdom & the gift of "our daily bread". They could lead their people out of slavery, lay the axe to the root of the tree & speak to the better angels of our nature, in familiar words & phrases rooted in collective activity.
In that respect, secularisation may have been a problem for the left: so much of its thinking & speaking is drawn from a religious age, but the words no longer "land" in the same way with a wider public. Perhaps another reason why the "ordinary" & the "awesome" have moved apart?
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