At the same time that Britain has decided to give the centre-left Labour Party a parliamentary majority, according to exit polls, Europe is caught up in what some are calling a broader right-wing populist rise.
Last month European elections A historic number of members from far-right and far-right parties were elected to the European Parliament, a result so confusing that French President Emmanuel Macron called early parliamentary elections in his country, with the far-right National Rally winning in the first round. I won last week.
This week, the Netherlands swore in a government made up of far-right figures. Italy is led by its most right-wing leader since the rule of fascist wartime leader Benito Mussolini. These electoral victories, and the prospect of the populist right taking power, are no longer a surprise in European countries.
There are many reasons for the rise of populism, often specific to each country, but broadly speaking, many European countries are struggling with stagnant economies, rising immigration and high energy prices, partly due to the drive to achieve net-zero carbon emissions. Populist politicians often pin the blame for their nations’ woes on the European Union, energizing the debate in increasingly eurosceptic nations.
So why is the UK, the only country where euroscepticism has led to a referendum on EU membership, expected to buck the trend?
Despite the projected numbers, the British right is far from gone: the Conservative Party, while certainly disappointing on the night, is set to outperform the predictions of numerous opinion polls conducted during the election campaign, some of which predicted its vote share in Parliament would fall to double digits.
Another party expected to outperform the polls is Reform UK, a right-wing populist party led by Nigel Farage, a longtime Conservative nemesis best known these days for his friendship with former US President Donald Trump, and previously credited with getting Brexit done after decades of campaigning against Britain’s membership of the EU.
Farage’s political success so far has come without a seat: Now he not only has a seat himself, but also 12 of his colleagues who are expected to hurl grenades at Labour leader Keir Starmer. That may seem insignificant compared to the triple-digit majority Starmer expects, but Farage will undoubtedly influence the debate about the future direction of the Conservative party, pushing it further to the right.
Mr Farage’s fragmentation of the right may actually have helped Mr Starmer expand his parliamentary majority. The quirk of British politics is that a party’s vote share doesn’t necessarily translate into its number of seats. And with the Reform Party doing well in many of the seats Labour will ultimately win, the far right is not only a force to be reckoned with in Parliament, but it may well grow in influence.
Britain has many of the same problems as the rest of Europe, and if Starmer fails as prime minister it is entirely possible that the right will continue to hold sway over the public, just as it has in other European countries.
