The Atlantic and the English Channel are narrower than you might think. The fashionable theory these past few years was that former US president Donald Trump and former British prime minister Boris Johnson were deviant political departures from the liberal democratic mainstream.
However, it was not true in 2016, the year of Brexit and Trump’s election, and as a wave of right-wing populists storm to power across Europe, it is demonstrably not true today.
The real difference between the Anglo-Saxons and the rest largely derives from their voting systems, not political culture. In continental Europe and Israel, votes are weighted proportionately, allowing new political parties to challenge the established order, sometimes overnight.
In the US and the UK, a first-past-the-post/winner-takes-all system prevails, which makes it almost impossible to stop the alternation of Democrats with Republicans, Conservatives with Labour.
So radical change in the US and UK must come from within the big two parties, not without. A defeatist Labour establishment allowed Jeremy Corbyn, a far-left isolationist, to win the leadership in 2015 after the party was swamped with new hardline socialist members who would have been excluded in former times.
Johnson, a Tory, though always a maverick, had pretty conventional Conservative views until Brexit — liberal on markets and immigration, with a fondness for tradition. He got the top job because of his predecessors’ failure to implement the results of the EU referendum.
Across the West, high rates of immigration, cost-of-living crises and sluggish rates of growth that impact the working poor and lower middle class have provoked a uniform reaction against globalization and transnational institutions. That is as true in continental Europe as it is in the US and the UK. A large bloc of voters would like an active state to protect them from the icy winds of global capitalism and maintain community by upholding lower case “c” conservative values.
The traditional parties of the center-left and the center-right find it hard to satisfy both demands simultaneously. Supporters of the welfare state tend to hold progressive social views; conservative parties are invariably pro market. New entrants are happy to fill the vacuum.
To observe real populism on the march, look no further than the EU. In recent elections in the liberal Netherlands, the libertarian and anti-immigrant Geert Wilders, leader of the Party for Freedom, won more seats than any other party. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia, a lineal descendant of Benito Mussolini’s fascist party, has taken the reins in Rome and won respectability in Brussels and London by echoing NATO’s line on Russia — and has even achieved a hearing around EU capitals on her immigration troubles.
In France, opinion polls indicate that the National Rally, led by Marine Le Pen, is favorite to win the next presidential election. In Germany, the far-right Alternative for Germany has overtaken the ruling Social Democratic Party in popularity and looks set to win two sizeable states in the east of the country next year.
Sweden has admitted a far-right party into the ruling coalition. The Freedom Party has been a fixture of right-wing coalitions in Austria and looks set to return to power soon. Next door, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has championed an ugly form of “illiberal democracy” and enthusiastically takes Moscow’s line on the war in Ukraine.
Proportional voting has allowed new entrants to challenge old regimes. It can also lead to extended deadlock as new coalitions are formed by prolonged negotiations between the parties. Belgium had no government for 589 days in 2011, while Poland and the Netherlands have moved at snail’s pace to create new administrations.
Four elections were needed before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu scrambled together a coalition in which ultra-orthodox religious parties are a fixture. It also allowed far-right parties to gain control of the sensitive defense and internal security portfolios.
Westminster has more stability even if minority interests are sometimes ignored.
The US’ instability arises because an outsider, Trump, has been allowed to swallow up the Republican Party.
It does not always pay for the center-right to adopt nativist policies. The Dutch Liberals belatedly fought an election campaign around immigration, but their abrupt change of stance did not convince the voters, whereas Wilders looked like the real deal.
French President Emmanuel Macron is also overseeing a crackdown on immigration, to the jubilation of Le Pen and the dismay of prominent members of his centrist party.
Tories have prospered by playing the anti-immigrant card down the decades, but their recent failure to limit numbers to the target of “tens of thousands” and establish an orderly points system to fill job vacancies from abroad has revived a challenge from the radical right. Reform UK is unlikely to win many parliamentary seats, but could peel away core Conservative voters in marginal seats, leaving them vulnerable to the Labour Party.
In 2016, there were majorities in many European countries hostile to or at least unconvinced by the EU.
However, the British were unique in holding an in or out referendum on membership at a time when there was no majority among Conservative and Labour members of parliament for departure.
Then-British prime minister David Cameron, now recently returned to office as foreign secretary, held the referendum against the advice of his best brains: then-British chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne, a “remainer,” and then-British secretary of state for justice Michael Gove, a “leaver.” Cameron called for a vote because he thought he would win it and permanently silence the euro-skeptic wing of his party.
Nor have the views of European voters changed much over the decades. The Irish have twice voted against European treaties, the Danes rejected the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 despite the pleas of every traditional political party and major newspaper group, and the Swedes decided they did not want to join the single currency either.
France, one of the founding six members of the original European Community, only accepted Maastricht by a whisker after a narrow result.
That is why fellow European leaders thought Cameron was so unwise to take the risk of consulting the people — although they were grateful for the political chaos that ensued at Westminster, because it served as an awful warning to their own voters about where euro-skepticism could lead.
On the brink of power, the UK’s Labour Party leads in the polls by about 18 points months before an expected general election. Some senior opposition figures are even optimistic about achieving a permanent majority of the center-left; working with the centrist Liberal Democrats, they calculate that a change to the UK’s voting system could exclude the Tories from power for decades.
If this sounds fanciful, consider that no small number of Conservatives are so spooked by their fortunes that they are considering bringing a former radical right leader, Nigel Farage, back into the fold, akin to admitting a British Trump into the party.
Who knows what unforeseen forces a more proportional voting system could unleash in Britain?
The evidence from Europe suggests it is probably wise to be careful what you wish for.
Martin Ivens is the editor of the Times Literary Supplement. Previously, he was editor of the Sunday Times of London and its chief political commentator.
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