Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party is in power in Hungary. Giorgia Meloni‘s Brothers of Italy runs Italy. In the Netherlands, the Party for Freedom is sharing power. In Finland, the Finns Party is in coalition.
And then at the extreme end of populism is Vladimir Putin who provides its most virile manifestation in the war in Ukraine, and works to advance the cause through his disinformation campaigns overseas.
Sometimes, this feels almost like destiny. Journalists cover right-wing populists with a sense of excitement and inevitability that they never grant to mainstream parties. But there is nothing inevitable about history. It has no direction.
People often talk about Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s to explain how fascism rises. That’s fine – it’s a perfectly useful example. It reminds us how it happened last time. It involved a sense of mainstream political paralysis, leaving voters with the feeling that normal political parties could not help them amid worsening economic conditions. It teaches us the warning signs to look out for.
On 6 February, 1934, far-right groups rioted in Paris’s Place de la Concorde and managed to bring down prime minister Édouard Daladier. At the time, France had the ideal conditions for fascism. The mainstream parties were shattered and failing. The country had gone through 12 prime ministers in a little over four years, including four in the previous five months.
This is the basic principle that can halt the far-right advance: you refuse to cooperate with it. No matter our political differences – socialists, centrist or conservative – we agree to work together and defeat it. We maintain absolute organisational resistance.
In Austria, the far-right Freedom Party secured the highest percentage of the vote this year, ahead of the center right and centre left. It had already been part of coalition governments on three separate occasions, providing a growing sense of normalisation. But the other parties held firm. They refused to work with it, preventing the populists from being able to form a coalition. The parties will continue to negotiate a government into the new year, but the gates stand firm. The barbarians are being held back.
It was a selfish and short-sighted way to behave. The Barnier experiment soon fell apart, with the far-left voting with the far-right to bring him down. It was a grim sight: total failure, across the spectrum.
I can't stand teetotallers - and I am one
Read MoreBut things now appear marginally more hopeful. François Bayrou, a veteran centrist, has been picked by Macron as the new prime minister. He is still not to the left’s liking, but he is a more generous and conciliatory figure than Barnier. He has spoken of a “glass ceiling” that cuts off the elites from ordinary voters. He will probably include old centre-left and centre-right figures in his government and scrap at least some of Macron’s spending cuts.
In Germany, the mainstream has been in the same worrying state of paralysis as in France. Olaf Scholz’s centre-left Social Democrats governed in a coalition with the pro-business Free Democrats, but it had been reduced to a state of comatosed ineptitude by the government’s internal debate over loosening spending limits. Scholz detonated the arrangement in November, kicking off an election campaign which will culminate with a vote in February.
But the party is still well behind Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats on the centre right. Barring some calamity, Merz will be the next chancellor. That is a reassuring proposition. Merz is right wing on any number of issues – including migration and economics – but he is a staunch supporter of Ukraine and an implacable opponent of Alternative for Germany. He will not work with them under any circumstances. The far right in Germany is trapped, without anyone willing to work with it.
In 2024, the battle for liberal democracy took place in the US. It was lost. In 2025, the battle will take place in France and Germany. We better hope they’re more successful. For all the doom and gloom, they’re showing signs that they might well be.
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