February 14, 2024 - 10:30am
Populist parties traditionally do very well at European parliamentary elections. Some of the 400 million people registered to vote across the continent use them as a chance to let off steam, knowing that the representatives they return to Brussels and Strasbourg are far less important than their domestic politicians.
This always produces some of the most startlingly ironic results in global democracy, such as France’s once deeply Eurosceptic Rassemblement National (RN) gaining far more seats in the European Parliament than the National Assembly in Paris. It was the same with the British Brexit Party, which took up seats abroad but not in the House of Commons.
Such oddities did not provide a route to significant power, but instead confirmed the status of some parties as loud protest groups, ready to express their cynicism and anger at every opportunity.
Now, however, new polling data suggests that groupings such as the RN and their allies are well on their way to recording their highest ever result in June’s European Parliamentary elections, and the implications are far-reaching. This is because pan-European problems, such as immigration and Net Zero, are dominating the political agenda, and national governments are struggling to cope.
The botched handling of the coronavirus pandemic, the Ukraine war, and the escalating farming crisis are all examples of floundering by incompetent administrations. In France, President Emmanuel Macron can no longer rely on a majority in parliament as, like everywhere else, the cost-of-living situation spirals out of control. Macron will have served two terms by 2027, and is thus constitutionally bound to step down, but many feel his brand of liberalism is long past its sell-by date anyway.
Instead, the RN is tipped to win 33% of the French vote for the European Parliament this summer, while the Reconquête party headed by media polemicist Éric Zemmour is on 6%, according to a Portland Communications poll. Such a result — approaching 40% of the vote — would put the hard-Right well ahead of the centrist Ensemble! group. The latter includes Macron’s Renaissance party and is polling at just 14%.
Similar results were recorded in Germany, Italy, Holland and Poland, using the January poll that quizzed 1,034 in representative national samples. In the case of Germany – a country where the resurgence of extreme nationalism naturally causes particular alarm – Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is projected to win 17% of the vote, which would be a 6% rise on 2019.
Pessimism about the future naturally plays into the hands of hard-Right parties, which appeal to people who feel alienated and ignored within a rapidly changing world. European elections are still seen as a chance for voters to vent their frustration, but the latest polling points to far more significant developments. If the result for Jordan Bardella’s RN was replicated at national level, for example, then Marine Le Pen, the party’s likely presidential candidate, would easily defeat Macron’s successor in 2027.
A coalition with potential allies, such as Zemmour and members of the increasingly radical Républicains — a party once made up of far more restrained Gaullist conservatives — and Le Pen entering the Élysée Palace as head of state at her fourth attempt looks like even more of a possibility. The shock of Donald Trump’s victory in the US in 2016, and potentially 2024, is being spoken about as an example of what might happen in France.
One of the great weaknesses of hard-Right parties in the past has been their inability to cooperate with each other but, as the world faces up to ever more unifying problems, this could be about to change.
Nabila Ramdani is a French journalist and academic of Algerian descent, and author of Fixing France: How to Repair a Broken Republic.
NabilaRamdani
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SubscribeGood article, but I take exception to the characterisation of people who vote for right of centre parties as “ignored within a rapidly changing world.” The rapid changes, e.g. net zero and mass immigration, are being inflicted on voters by the elected politicians. Remove those politicians and the world of these voters will stop changing so rapidly.
That’s simply incorrect. Climate change will happen though no doubt immigrants will be to blame for all of that too. India will rise, China will keep rising, Russia will keep fighting, Europe will still be paying more than it wants for energy. It will still struggle to support the post-war welfare state with an ageing population and anaemic growth.
Rather than right wing voters being ignored, they’re more like Canute trying to shout the tide back – that’s if they can get their heads out of the sand for long enough!
The hard-right populists are just more willing to indulge them than realists like Macron – note that when they actually get into power they either trend back to the rational centre (Meloni) or totally fail (Boris, Truss, Sunak).
China and Russia have their own set of issues to deal with. European decline is not inevitable. Change is more difficult in Europe because there are two levels of govt to contend with, but not impossible.
If Johnson, Truss and Sunak are considered hard right, the term has lost all meaning.
King Cnut – once for all this time, i hope – did NOT “shout the tide back”!
He wished to demonstrate to his subjects precisely the opposite – that he DIDN’T have the power to do so, since they were expecting too much of him in other areas of ‘governance’.
which is exactly my point… Right-wing voters being duped my opportunist populists when many of the forces that ail them are out of our hands.
Ok if it was your point, but it was not what you wrote.
That only works as an explanation if things are all out of our hands and no mitigation or any change is possible.
The factors driving mass migrations are pretty obvious, but the idea that all we can possibly do is sit around inertly until we become an Islamic state under sharia law and then lump it, is itself just an assumption you have made.
Indeed, and thanks for this. Why do people always get that wrong – if he/she ever knew the correct version.
You believe the climate change nonsense. The science is NOT settled. Only political nincompoops can argue that. As a rule of thumb, try this: politics starts as soon as the scientific method is ditched. ie as soon as a young PhD receives their degree, and go out into the big BAD world, where politics reigns. Not science.
To me it seems it is people on the left that have their heads in the sand. For example, the utter refusal to debate the immigration aspect of being in the EU (which suppressed wages for many people on lower incomes) preferring to instead to simply denounce it as racist (even though the immigration in question was white!).
This refusal to engage was in large part responsible for Brexit, and yet that is still not understood, preferring instead to add stupid to the insults.
Many of the ‘populist’ issues are getting harder and harder to ignore though. If the left continues to refuse to engage then we really will get a hard right / far right Govt (though IMO Brexit has reduced that possibility).
It’s a weird thing, but Brexit Britain seems (almost) the only country in Europe where politics is converging on some version of the vague centre rather than diverging increasingly away from the centre.
This despite the continuing lazy demonisation of Conservatives as far right, or even fascists, by the ‘progressive’ left, something that started in the 1980s.
Some amazingly simplistic points here-Climate change will happen–wtf?????
, China will keep rising,,,have you been following China at all-its drowning in debt, a bust property market ,deflation in factory goods due to overcapacity delivering into a global slowdown and a demographic projection bad enough to scare the most optimistic of investors.
Yeah and the West had the 2008 financial crisis. It resumed its trend (partly with thanks to China!)
Totally agree. It’s a very peculiar notion that climate change and immigration are being ‘inflicted’ on voters by politicians, after all these are global issues and not unique to any country or set of government policies.
A prime of example of how people’s engrained biases allow their views and grievances to be steered.
This isn’t true at all. Australia has gone fully hysterical on net zero, but there is not a single immigrant who steps into that country without being properly vetted. Illegal immigrants are detained locally or sent to a nearby island nation, I forget which one.
Canute actually tried to show his ministers that he was powerless to hold back the tide, not that he could stop it. It’s a metaphor for people who think government can solve every problem.
Your comment expresses the despair and hopelessness that has infected many in the West. I suggest you read or watch J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace to get an idea of what I am talking about.
The subject of the article, and of my post, is what motivates people vote for so-called “populist” parties. Whether or not the attitudes of such people are correct is not relevant. Your post is about your attitude to climate change, etc. and your attitude to those who vote populist.
My post argues that the author has not correctly characterised the motivation: populist voters tend not to see themselves as hapless victims of circumstance. Rather, populist voters perceive a ruling political elite that is obsessed with an agenda which is not aligned with the interests of the people.
Calling everyone you disagree with hard right is ultimately self-defeating as like the boy who cried wolf, nobody pays attention now to terms like nazi and fascist.
It also allows people who are genuinely extremist to smuggle themselves in without being noticed.
So if we do ever end up with genuinely far right parties, the lefties would bear a great part of the blame
Populist, hard right……..can journalists please get away from using these hackneyed, largely irrelevant descriptions of political opinions.
Everywhere in Europe voters are desperate for competent administrations, that can not only resolve the basic dysfunction in their daily lives (health services, cost of living, planning consent, potholes etc) but also ignore the woke agenda and focus on the big issues that really matter to people: “The botched handling of the coronavirus pandemic, the Ukraine war, and the escalating farming crisis” and the elephant in the room – out of control immigration.
That is not populism, it is common sense.
‘Common sense’ to these people means ‘in agreement with them’
Populist hard right’ means any group which doesn’t agree with them.
Marine Le Pen’s party (RN) in France has more socialist policies than the UK’s Labour and LibDem parties, but because writers such as this one have been told RN is far right, they have to keep repeating it.
I have never thought of myself as a far right type. But I have decided I’d rather be thought of as far right than stick with the far wrong.
Your rulers see you as far right. Learn to live with it.
Is it wrong to elect politicians that share you concerns and to reject politicians who only have contempt for them?
The question is rather whether it’s wrong to elect politicians who share your concerns and have contempt for all democracy’s institutions.
You mean like Annalena Baerbock declaring she’s going to do as she pleases and does not care what voters think?
What democratic institutions.
What passes for democratic institutions in this country have all been corrupted by supposed supposed champions of democracy and have become tools of oppression
To say “that’s not populism, it is common sense” is like saying “that’s not water, it’s rain”.
Populism is the politics of “common sense” the problem with it is that it has no realistic means to achieve its “common sense” solutions and, if it does, it involves sidelining the institutions that make a liberal democracy.
It is obvious that “everywhere in Europe voters are desperate for competent administrations, that can not only resolve the basic dysfunction in their daily lives …etc etc.” but if it were that easy don’t you think one of the existing governments would have already done it?
We see it with immigration in the UK. Sure, limit the numbers. Well okay but who’s going to provide your health and social care? Who’s going to serve your takeaways, staff your restaurants, pick your vegetables, butcher your meat? Oh you’d like a brit to do it. Well okay that’s going to cost >20% more which feeds directly through to the price. I hope you don’t mind paying more for much less! Oh actually there aren’t enough people available to work at a price you’re willing to pay.. so uh… what do?
Populism is precisely the right term because they just go for whatever is popular and whatever seems to be “common sense” to win power but do not have any particular ideology. They just hope to first get into power and then deal with implementation and planning afterwards.
For this to be true assumes that traditional political parties have some coherent vision and policy platform. This is simply not the case. Populism is a response to incompetent political leadership. No one in power has seriously analyzed the cost of net zero or open borders immigration. If they had, they would not be policies.
and the response to incompetent political leadership? Incompetent political leadership!
Let’s say a country elects a populist leader, who has no policies other than stopping open borders, ending net zero and dismantling DEI/CRT. If the populist leader is successful with any or all of these, the country is much better off. Can a populist leader do any or all of these? Maybe not, but it’s still better than electing people who actually support these policies.
True, but not without risks, namely the risk of voter disappointment with fake populist leaders like Giorgia Meloni or voter disappointment with corrupt populist leaders like some of the (former) leaders of the Austrian FPÖ.
That’s the thing. If a ship is sinking the passengers will look for an alternative source of buoyancy and they will do that whether there is an obvious candidate or not. UnHeard’s hidden conclusion seems to be that, yes, the ship is sinking but the rabble has no coherent plan what to do about it therefore we may as well just have a last cigar on the sloping deck. Saying that populism is a ‘response’ is surely true, but does no work.
You cite the tired old cliché of cheap, hardworking foreign migrants making up for incompetent, lazy indigenous Brits. If Brits are lazy it’s because previous governments have incentivized chronic unemployment and babies born out of wedlock. We can change this very quickly.
And it doesn’t account for the impact on housing costs and social programs.
Your response suggests that ideology is the answer to all our ills. Which one do you prefer, because none of them have been particularly successful at dealing with any of the relatively mundane issues I cited?
You have disingenuously ignored the key part of my comment on immigration – out of control. Most people accept that some net immigration is necessary to fill the demographic deficit and keep the economy functioning. But it should be the government of the day that decides who can be admitted and on what criteria. Not the people smugglers, not those who play the woefully slow asylum system, and not the ECHR. Legal migration routes should be established for those who qualify and those who don’t should be prevented from entering or deported immediately once their asylum claims have been rejected.
It’s not rocket science but none of the ‘ideologies’ have managed to achieve it, so maybe liberal democracy is not all it’s cracked up to be?
Every single immigrant should be vetted. That’s the stating point. Then we can talk about appropriate levels of immigration.
By what guidelines would they be vetted and where would you recruit persons of the necessary competence to do the vetting?
That would be denounced by the left as racism.
They just hope to first get into power and then deal with implementation and planning afterwards.
What’s wrong with that?
This makes an assumption that traditional political parties have a coherent ideology from which springs forth coherent, interlocking policies and implementation. As you would know on reflection, that describes no party within any liberal democracy at all. All parties have factions, and governments are reacting to real time events that are really too complex for humans to objectively comprehend. There’s no evidence that political cartels of educated elites have any edge over the wisdom of crowds (“populism”). Every western country is now a trainwreck, and in every case it’s the DEI “I know best” elitists in charge. They are obviously failing. You might still be in their thrall, but the point of the article is, more and more people are not.
I don’t understand why people have a problem with the terms populist and hard-right. They are accurate after all and I have no problem saying I support populist, hard-right stances. Whether they will be “competent administrators that resolve dysfunction” remains to be seen, but I have my fingers crossed. Unfortunately, I’m not very impressed with Meloni and the Fratelli’s track record yet.
Let me give you an example of why I have a problem with these terms. The Conservative government in the UK imposed draconian lockdowns, vaccine mandates and media censorship on the population for over two years. It continues to collude with Big Tech in suppressing ‘misinformation’, which is basically any opinion which runs counter to its own narrative on issues like the pandemic, net zero and immigration. It is passing a law to give its agencies powers to access UK citizens’ bank accounts in cases of suspected benefit fraud without any due legal process.
Is that kind of behaviour hard-right, far-left or somewhere else on the scale? It certainly has nothing to do with the traditional values of the Conservative party.
Covid showed everyone who wished to see, the absolute irrelevance of the EU club as a way of managing the countries of Europe. Any significant crisis, and Europe will fall back on the Nation State as being the lever to attempt to deal with it.
The EU was like some panic-stricken fat lad dancing around and blocking the way for the people trying to get everyone to safety during Covid.
And it as much good as a chocolate fireguard over migration. The countries are doing anything they feel like (hats off to Poland and the Baltics etc.,) before the EU rocks up a long time after with a 3 hour ‘explainer’ of why everything done is completely OK and within EU rules.
“the coronavirus pandemic, the Ukraine war, and the escalating farming crisis are all examples of floundering by incompetent administrations.”
I’m sorry, these administrations are not incompetent; they are and have working steadily and effectively to bring Europe more and more under the control of the Left’s soft despotism involving speech control, harsh bureaucratic environmental standards that threaten economies, and largely unlimited migration. If they’re “floundering” it’s only because people are waking up to what they’re doing and are putting on the brakes.
Spot on. One or two bad outcomes might be incompetence. An ongoing series of them is intentional.
Good point… well put.
Pessimism about the future naturally plays into the hands of hard-Right parties, which appeal to people who feel alienated and ignored within a rapidly changing world. — the other way of reading this is that left and hard left parties create a sense of pessimism and alienation.
I’ve had a comment taken down for some reason.
Is it because I used the word ‘Nazi ‘ to make a valid point?
The ‘Right’ are taking over in Europe … from Germany to Holland to Sweden.
It won’t be long now before political World turns on it’s head and they will be diminishing the size of Govt, reducing welfarism and lowering taxes.
The ‘Right’ is on the march !!
Which European “Right” party actually advocates that kind of “Right”? I’ve got bad news for your if you think they’re going to shrink the state and cut welfare. That would not be popular.
I have bad news for you, there is no alternative, the public and private debt are unsustainable, when they are unsustainable you either reduce your spending of the markets do it for you.
Almost all of these parties are rather left leaning financially so I think your Thatcherite dreams won’t be coming to fruition. Right wing culturally and left wing economically would also be the sweet spot in Britain but nobody seems to grasp it
“Right”, “far right”, “hard right”, no longer has any meaning. They are only used in the pejorative sense as a dog whistle.
There is very little about the actual policies of the RN, AfD, or the former Brexit Party for that matter, that are “right”, in any meaningful sense.
Agreed. They’re better off being described more as national socialist.
You are desperately trying to clutch onto the Overton window as it slides to the Right, but we are onto your scheme. You can’t get away with calling traditional conservatives “Hard Right” or “National Socialist”. Your fearmongering is a staple at the Guardian, but on unherd you actually need to have an argument rather than grandstanding. I wonder, are you a real person, or an AI bot put in to keep the conversation lively? After all it would be rather boring if everyone on here agreed that the aging Liberal-Left ruling class has finally met its Waterloo in Europe. But go ahead! Please keep us interested!
Less of the “hard” right nonsense please
‘Hard Right’; lazy journalism yet again… even in UnHerd.
The worst that could happen to globalists and far left climate hysterics is an alliance between ‘far right’ forces and muslim citizens. It will be a natural alliance, sure the details will have to worked out, but in the end, that’s the only way to remove the sociopaths from power.
Poor effort.
Before attempting an article of this nature, which is weak and missing significant context, the author should describe what is meant by ” hard right”, or “populist”.
The two terms appear to be widely used to describe people whom the user either does not agree with, or does not understand. A schoolyard insult
Let’s hope they can all get it together before Europe disappears under the weight of mass third world immigration.
Once again the journalistic “far-right” dog-whistle alerts the reader that the article is by a left winger and to make the necessary discount. People are telling their governments — a polite way to characterize out-of-touch political hierarchies and their bureaucracies — that they don’t like their blind spots or their decision making. Why is this a bad thing?