Populism

Isn’t it high time for more nuanced picture of the populist voters who have been decisive in reshaping politics across the West?

On November 22nd, the Netherlands found itself at the centre of worldwide press coverage as a political earthquake struck its parliament. The Party for Freedom, led by populist ‘radical-right’ politician Geert Wilders (whom many caricature as the ‘Dutch Trump’), won 37 seats in the 150-seat Second Chamber. Hundreds of left-wing voters immediately gripped banners firmly in their fists and took to the streets of Utrecht and Amsterdam to protest his dramatic victory.

As the face of the party he helped found in 2006, Wilders has slowly established himself in the Dutch political scene. For two decades, he has seduced the electorate with his incendiary rhetoric, desperately seeking to curb immigration (mostly of Muslim Moroccans), leave the European Union, and “put the Dutch first.” It seems all too familiar. In this election victory, as in many other moments that punctuated European political history in the last decade, the populist radical-right vote and abstention rate have reached historic highs. This has profound implications for the political balance at the upcoming European elections in June 2024.

If events continue to take their current course, the world in 2070 will be as different from today as that of 1970 was from 1920

Fifteen years ago, populist politicians and parties were seen as a reactionary blip which would soon fade. They are instead not only still present but rapidly gaining strength and power across the developed world.

It’s well past time to wonder if populist sentiments will fade. It’s rather time to consider the heretofore unthinkable: perhaps populism will be to the twenty-first century what labor union-backed social democracy was to the twentieth.

Despite a polling surge, the group has major ideological differences

According to a Politico report, “Right-wing and Eurosceptic parties are set to surge in the next European election at the expense of centrist parties.”

Politico‘s polling analysis predicts that parties belonging to the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group could come third in next year’s European Parliamentary elections — they’re currently neck-and-neck with the liberal Renew Europe (RE) group, which is predicted to lose seats.

European voters are once again fighting back against a distant, globalist establishment.

I’m sitting in a bar at the Place du Luxembourg, near the European Parliament in Brussels. My two drinking companions are policy advisers who work with members of the mainstream conservative European People’s Party (EPP). They really don’t like what I have to say.

The insurgent Right ebbs and flows, but keeps coming back

At the start of the year, I posted a reminder that European populism hadn’t gone away — despite the “safety first” impact of the Covid pandemic. Now, at the end of 2022 it’s worth taking another look at the state of politics in Europe.

Economic growth since the crash matches patterns across the continent

Populism has expressed itself in many different forms across Europe, but there is one factor that comes close to explaining it at a macro-scale.  

The above map, tweeted out by the economist Daniel Lacalle, shows the change in GDP per head in each country since the pre-2008 recession peak — i.e. before the chaos caused by Global Financial Crisis.

Leftist professionals in politics, government, and private enterprise debased themselves for short-term political gain, or in furor at their bogeyman Trump, or in anger at the unwashed.

The left-wing professional and political classes bequeathed a number of new protocols during the Trump derangement years. And it will be interesting to watch whether the Republicans abide by them in November should they take back the House and perhaps the Senate—and the presidency in 2024 as well.

Will they follow the New Testament’s turn-the-other-cheek forbearance, or go for Old Testament style eye-for-an-eye retribution?

From France to Finland, Right-wingers are surging

So that’s Eurovision done for another year. We can stop caring about songs we’ll never hear again sung by people we’ll never see again.

Instead, let’s turn our attention to the votes that actually matter i.e. those that elect the governments of our closest neighbours.