Peter Franklin is an Associate Editor of UnHerd.
Populism has never been more popular. 2016 was the year of the Brexit vote and Donald Trump becoming President, but what has happened since is of greater significance.
For instance, Trump’s first election victory was delivered by a quirk of the electoral college, but his second victory was the real deal. As for the British vote to leave the EU that was part-fuelled by populist sentiment, but mostly it was a function of a demos being asked whether they wanted to rule themselves. That’s the very definition of democracy, not populism.
2024 was proclaimed the “year of democracy” because of the coincidence of so many national elections, including our own. There were elections for the European Parliament too.
In a brilliant chart for the Financial Times, John Burn-Murdoch summarises the overall outcome of the various votes (plus some polls for forthcoming elections). He arranges the main parties from the different countries on a left-to-right scale and then plots each against the change in their level of support. As you can see here, the biggest gainers are almost all on the Right end of the political spectrum: parties like the National Rally in France, the AfD in Germany, the Austrian Freedom Party and, of course, Reform UK.
But it’s not just raw percentages that describe what’s going on. We also have to look at other trends to see that the impact of populism on 21st century democratic politics has reached a new and qualitatively different stage.
Firstly, populism is now predominantly right-wing in character. That wasn’t always the case. In the wake of the Global Financial Crisis (and the sovereign debt crisis in the Eurozone), anti-establishment parties of the Left had their moment – for instance La France Insoumise, Podemos in Spain, and Sinn Fein in Ireland. (One might also add the Bernie Sanders movement in America and the Corbynite takeover of the British Labour Party.)
But in recent years all of these insurgents have lost momentum. The most dramatic rise and fall was that of Syriza in Greece, which did so well that it took power in 2015 only to be crushed by the Eurozone authorities while the rest of the European Left looked the other way.
The fact that the Right is the main beneficiary of anti-establishment anger matters because that discontent is growing. As Burns-Murdoch points out, the governing parties in all the developed nations that held an election last year lost vote share. This has never happened before.
The fragility of the establishment parties contrasts to the resilience of their right-wing challengers. Even when the forces of populism suffer setbacks, the tendency is for them to bounce back stronger than ever. The most spectacular embodiment of this phenomenon is, of course, Trump, who recovered from the disgrace of the Capitol riot four years ago to win back the White House and remake the Republican Party in his image.
One might also mention the AfD in Germany, whose support has now recovered after allegations of extremism (and a damaging dispute with Marine Le Pen). Then there’s the Austrian Freedom Party, which has come through numerous splits, scandals and controversies to take a commanding lead in the polls.
Even when populist parties don’t recover from a fall-off in support, they’re often replaced by a new and improved alternative. Just look at Italy, where Lega was superseded by Fratelli d’Italia; or Britain, where UKIP was eclipsed by Reform UK.
The radical Right is protean, rapidly evolving new forms as the circumstances require. But that’s not its only viral quality. Populism is also contagious. Back in the 1980s and 90s, the hard Right was a significant force in only a few counties and regions, most notably France, Austria and northern Italy.
Now, the places where the radical Right is insignificant are the exceptions. Even Spain and Portugal, once considered immune because of their relatively recent experience of right-wing dictatorship, have major populist parties.
The most important development of the last few years is that, in many countries, organised populism is moving beyond mere protest party status and into positions of real influence and power.
There was a time when hard-right participation in coalition governments was taboo in the European Union, but it’s now commonplace. Indeed, in some countries, populists are not only propping-up governments, but leading them, as Giorgia Meloni does in Italy. Even in the liberal Netherlands, Geert Wilders’ PVV is the biggest party in the governing coalition (albeit with a technocrat as prime minister).
Perhaps the most surprising populist advance of them all is in Norway. The country’s abundant oil revenues and consensus-based society should have kept discontent at a minimum – but, nevertheless, the confusingly-named Progress Party has surged into first place.
Elsewhere, the establishment parties strain every sinew to exclude the hard Right. But political systems are buckling under the effort.
In Austria, an attempt to freeze out the Freedom Party (which came first in last year’s general election) has backfired horribly, forcing the resignation of the Chancellor, Karl Nehammer. In France, Emmanuel Macron cooperated with the left-wing parties to limit gains by Marine Le Pen’s National Rally; nevertheless, her strength in the National Assembly is sufficient to make or break his prime ministers (most recently, Michel Barnier of Brexit-fame, whom she broke).
The German establishment takes the hardest line, excluding the AfD from any share of power at the national and regional levels. However, this has a distorting effect on democracy – effectively disenfranchising millions of voters, especially those in the old East Germany where the AfD is the largest party.
It also means that Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats, who are about to be trounced in next month’s federal election, are condemned to return to government as a junior partner to the centre-right Christian Democrats. Given that the latter are now led by the right-leaning Friedrich Merz and not the centrist Angela Merkel, this will be a supremely uncomfortable partnership, but such is the level of AfD support that no other anti-AfD coalition is possible.
So almost everywhere you look, right-wing populism is reshaping politics. That’s something for Kemi Badenoch to bear in mind as she wonders what to do about Reform UK. The situation she’s facing is not some aberration, but Britain coming into line with the rest of the western world.
As Conservatives we can’t close our eyes and hope it all goes away. In one form or another, British populism is here to stay. So what do we do about it?
Looking at the conservative experience in other counties there are many ways in which we could deal (or not deal) with the challenge. We could, for instance, simply allow ourselves to be taken over, as in America. Or we could become a junior partner to the main populist force (as in Italy) or shrink away into irrelevance (as in France). We could even link up with our centre-left opponents to keep the populists out of the citadel (as in Germany).
By far the most successful model is that provided by the Conservative Party of Canada. Under the leadership of Pierre Poilievre, they have got serious about the issues driving populism and have adopted elements of the populist style, but without abandoning the essentials of their own conservatism.
It’s not an easy formula to get right, but Poilievre nails it again and again. For instance, watch him dismantle the liberal media without losing his temper, or his heartfelt speech on the struggles of ordinary, hard-working Canadians. The country does have a party of populist Right (Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party) but in recent polls it barely makes it into single digits.
Can you imagine the British Conservative Party speaking with Poilievre’s combination of authority and authenticity? No, me neither. But it’s time we learned from his example. Ultimately, the only way beat populism is to render it redundant.