Populism’s next chapter is being written in continental Europe

Trump is merely the latest manifestation of a much bigger movement that arguably started in Europe

• By Adrian Wooldridge / Bloomberg Opinion

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Since 2016, the story of populism in the rich world has been dominated by the UK and the US — by the UK’s vote for Brexit and the US’ election of Donald Trump, not once, which might have been put down to naivete, but twice — but things are about to change: Over the next year populism is likely to fade in those countries, but burn ever brighter in continental Europe.

In the US, the Democrats are increasingly optimistic that they will take the Senate as well as the US House of Representatives, forcing Trump to spend the rest of his term dodging subpoenas. Democrats lead Republicans by 9 percentage points in the generic congressional ballot. Only 31 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s job performance. Looking ahead to 2028, no party has ever secured victory in a presidential race when the incumbent president has such a dismal number.

In the UK, Trump’s brother-in-arms, Nigel Farage, is sinking. His party’s approval ratings have been falling for months, thanks to Farage’s taste for pocketing gifts and his foot soldiers’ taste for bad-mouthing minorities. The great theme of British politics today is the recovery of the two-party system.

Illustration: Mountain People

If you like your politics hot, mainland Europe is the place to be. The continent is about to enter a year-long electoral super-cycle, starting with Spain’s general election on Nov. 29 and peaking with the French presidential election in April. Although Germany does not have a federal election, three state elections in April could topple an already doddering German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, if, indeed, he survives that long. Smaller countries that will go to the polls include Finland, Poland and Slovenia.

Even before France erupted in fire and fury on Oct. 17, the populist right was well-positioned to do well out of this super-cycle, thanks to rising living costs, a never-ending refugee crisis and general “grobulation.” Spain might be about to take a sharp turn to the right after eight years of Socialist Workers’ Party rule, with polls suggesting a clear majority for the center-right People’s Party and its putative partner, the radical right Vox.

In France, Marine Le Pen has been ahead in the polls before only to lose decisively in the second round, but this time her poll lead is bigger, and her potential opposition is weaker: So far, the center has been unable to produce a charismatic figure, and the left has united behind someone who is even more divisive than Le Pen, Jean-Luc Melenchon.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who has led the country’s longest serving post-World War II government, is favored to continue her winning streak, while in Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is the most popular party in Germany with 28 percent of the vote (and in next-door Austria, the equally right-wing Freedom Party is even more popular, at 39 percent).

The riots in France would surely bolster the right’s position. French President Emmanuel Macron, languishing at 15 percent in the polls, contributed to the sense of centrist fatigue by delivering an address to the nation that one of his former ministers described as “rubbish.” Melenchon appeared to condone the rioting.

Right-wingers across the continent say that civilization is under threat from barbaric hordes. The leaders of Poland and Hungary declared that the riots proved the wisdom of their countries’ hardline policies on immigration. Meloni sent troops to Milan where riots had also broken out.

The populist right is also showing signs that it can harden as well as strengthen. Many centrists have comforted themselves with the idea that the right might be civilized by success: Meloni has governed Italy largely as a traditional conservative and Le Pen has rejected her father’s more revolting policies while adopting social policies that are more gay and female-friendly.

However, Meloni is moving back to the right to fend off criticisms from Roberto Vannacci, a former general who leads the National Future party. Many of Le Pen’s liberal social policies were adopted to strengthen her case against Islam. Meanwhile, the AfD has thrived on extremism.

What will this potential populist turn mean for Europe? The answer clearly depends on how far the populist turn goes — above all, on whether Le Pen wins in France. At the very least, the super-cycle would paralyze the EU machine. Focused on winning votes at home, national leaders would be tempted to play hardball in the EU, particularly on budgets, to curry favor at home. Eurocrats would be absorbed in watching national elections and calculating what to do about them.

A victory for Le Pen would be a bigger blow to Europe than the UK’s vote to leave the EU in 2016, given France’s role in both founding and steering the European project. Le Pen might have abandoned her earlier talk of “Frexit,” but she is nevertheless campaigning on a long-list of anti-Brussels measures, including an initial proposal (since moderated) to cut 11 billion euros (US$12.3 billion) from France’s contribution to the EU budget, pulling France out of the EU’s common asylum policy, giving preference to French companies in public contracts and unilaterally withdrawing from some aspects of the single market; in other words, a partial “Frexit” that would leave Le Pen with a seat on the European Council.

The most obvious winner from any rightward shift in Europe would be Russian President Vladimir Putin, the most obvious loser Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Le Pen (whose party took a 9.4 million euro loan from a Russian bank in 2014) has promised to stop aid to Kyiv for anything other than military training and to oppose Ukraine’s membership of the EU. Vannacci and Alice Weidel, the leader of the AfD, are loudly pro-Russian.

What about the wider populist project? The most important thing that a European tilt to populism would mean is survival. US commentators, being an introspective breed and fond of writing the end of things, would likely see a defeat for Trump as marking the end of populism. However, Trump is merely the latest manifestation of a much bigger movement.

The current populist wave arguably started in Europe rather than the US (or the UK). Jean-Marie Le Pen began his political career in 1956, when he was elected to the French Assembly, and made his first run for the presidency in 1974. Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s four-term prime minister in the 1990s and early 2000s, prefigured all too many Trumpian themes, including mastery of the media, dark charisma, womanizing and self-dealing.

The shift to Europe could also mean the intensification of populist themes. The EU is the last great holdout of the neoliberal project of globalization and free markets. A significant populist advance would terminate that already fading project. Europe is closer to the Muslim world than the US and has a substantially larger Muslim population. Hostility to immigration in general and Muslim immigration in particular would be even more central to European populism than to Trumpian populism, spiced with worries about declining birthrates and “civilizational erasure.”

The next phase of populism would be less dominated by grumpy old men than the US phase, featuring women such as Marine Le Pen, Meloni and Weidel and well-coiffed young men such as Jordan Bardella. The populist operation could also become more professional. Trump was so intemperate that he often shot his own side: Ask Pierre Poilievre, who was heading for an easy victory in Canada before Trump announced that he wanted to annex his northern neighbor. Le Pen and Meloni are not only more experienced at navigating domestic politics, but are also more skilled at operating across national borders.

Over the past quarter of a century, we have become accustomed to thinking of the Americans as, on average, hard and the Europeans as soft. Robert Kagan even wrote a book about how Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus. The next turn of the electoral cycle is likely to demonstrate that Europeans can be every bit as hardy as their cousins across the Atlantic.

Adrian Wooldridge is the global business columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A former writer at The Economist, he is author of The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World. This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.