Not sure about other context but U.K. groups tended to see the term “popular” in the context of popular front coalition politics, which was only justified in Marxist politics in relation to short term anti-fascism. So they didn’t really use it for their own core groups.

Waiting for the Great Leap Forward, as I believe Billy Bragg put it

That’s good 😂

No I never put it out anywhere. Maybe I should pull it out of the drawer!

It genuinely was for some of them. The belief was, following Lenin, that the priority was to form an ideologically correct group that would assume leadership in the eventual “revolutionary situation”. So the name, structure, and ideological position mattered way more than numbers.

It was around too. It’s been a while since I re-read that thesis, but as I recall it was less common than you’d think.

Interesting. I only focused on Britain in my thesis, but the Moscow-aligned parties with official recognition across the world had their names regulated by the Comintern. Led to disputes like if the British party was for the whole empire or if the Vietnamese party should use “Indochina” instead.

It was all a very well ordered set of naming conventions, part of a dead world of common Marxist language on the left that went out with the USSR and the idea of scientific socialism in general. Genuinely one of the reasons Corbyn et. al. are struggling with this today.

Despite looking like random word salad it was all a very precise language. “Workers”, “revolutionary” or “international” usually denoted the Trotskyist groups, “communist” was used mainly by the pro-USSR groups, and the same but with the “(Marxist-Leninist)” suffix for the anti-revisionist fringe.

MPs weren’t barred from top party positions but they were understood as separate structures, in contrast to the historic Tory system of the party as a pretty disaggregated appendage to parliamentary leadership.

Kind of a funny 'win' for the left though, pointing to Starmer losing and being bad at strategy, when the obvious response is "The guy who beat you? Yeah he's not very good at politics."

I stuck with it but was pretty much out was out with the reveal that Frank was orchestrating his own impeachment in the dumbest possible way for no reason.

Homeland got better again though in the Russia arc. Not as good as season 1 but they did turn the ship around in the end.

Games of Thrones will always be the epic example. House of Cards (US) also springs to mind. And you could also make an argument for The Simpsons going from near perfection to the zombie show of today.