Leaders of the EU have always boasted that their project is about creating an “ever-closer union” across Europe. Now it seems as if European politics is indeed coming closer together. But not in a way that the centralising Brussels elites would like.
Instead, from England across Germany to Romania, recent election results show that millions of European voters are now united in their determination to get rid of the old pro-EU political establishment by voting for national populist parties.
Last Thursday brought an extraordinary breakthrough for Nigel Farage’s insurgent Reform UK in parliamentary, local, and mayoral elections across England. Then on Sunday, nationalist candidate George Simion easily won the first round of the Romanian presidential election.
These results demonstrate the widening reality gap between the official Europe imagined by the EU elites, and the real Europe where millions live, work, and vote.
The EU elites have been happily drawing the UK Labour government closer into Brussels’ orbit on everything from trade to defence policy, assuring everybody that Europe is leaving the ‘trauma’ of Brexit in the past. Yet, last week, millions of English voters rejected Labour, as well as the collapsing Tories, and made clear that they see ‘Mr Brexit,’ Nigel Farage, as the future.
In Romania, EU elites and their media allies did all in their power to demonise Simion as a “far-right Trump ally.” Yet the AUR leader’s support only increased, to the point where he won around 40% of the vote on Sunday. These setbacks for the Brussels oligarchs come after similar results across Europe, notably the surge of support for the right-wing Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) in February’s German general election.
It is now clear that the populist revolt, despite repeatedly being declared dead, is alive and kicking across Europe. Meanwhile, it is the old mainstream parties that are teetering on the edge of the political grave, desperately clinging together for survival.
After Germany was reunified, 35 years ago, the Christian Democrat-Social Democrat ‘duopoly’ split more than 80% of the votes between them. Now they can barely muster half that number between them. In last week’s elections in England, the Labour and Conservative parties combined mustered about a third of all votes between them—an historic low.
There is a greater distance between these parties and the people—especially working class and young people—than at any time in modern history. Worse, as I wrote about the UK at the weekend, they are losing their traditional bases of strongest support: “There are no more red or blue ‘walls’, no more heartlands, no safe seats or core votes that the old parties can rely on.” [Link]
How are the establishment parties responding to this existential crisis and trying to hold back the populist revolt? First, they have sought to placate angry voters by claiming that they have listened to public concerns about mass migration or Net Zero and made concessions.
Do they really think European voters are stupid enough to believe that? These after all are the parties that imposed those very policies, and which continue to pursue them in alliance with the left and Greens in Brussels and Berlin. We will judge politicians by what they do, not by what they say about themselves.
When all else fails to turn back the populist tide, the European establishment’s mask slips and the true face of their ugly elitism is revealed. They are showing that they will undermine and disrupt democracy itself in order to stop voters electing the ‘wrong’ people.
In Romania last year, the courts—with the connivance of the European Commission—cancelled the presidential election after nationalist upstart Cǎlin Georgescu won the first round of voting—and then barred him from standing again in May. What might they try to thwart Simion this time around, now that the nationalist vote has doubled?
In another outrageous case of the elites wielding the war as a political weapon against national conservatives, French courts have banned National Rally leader Marine Le Pen from standing for election as president—an election she seemed well-placed to win.
In Germany, the state spy agency has just officially labelled the AfD a right-wing extremist group, a move that could even lay the groundwork for a potential party ban. The party they want to silence, let us recall, is not a fringe sect but the representative of millions of German voices, which finished second in the February general elections and now tops the polls.
In Britain, in response to the rise of Reform UK, the Labour and Tory parties simply colluded to cancel local elections in areas where Farage’s party was expected to win big last week. Britain—cancel elections. The future?
And in countries where people still vote ‘wrong’—that is, Right—Eurocrats can always resort to using the power of the purse. This was their modus operandi to undermine Poland’s conservative Law and Justice government. And it’s the same method they continue using to blackmail Hungary’s conservative government—to the tune of €1 million per day and counting—into falling in line with the progressive left-liberal migration dictates of the Brussels elite. Throw in the constant threats to strip Hungary of its voting rights if it dares block Ukraine’s EU accession, and you’ve got to ask: are we still talking about a union of sovereign states—or has this morphed into a full-blown European Empire?
It no longer seems crazy to suggest that Europe’s elites might be prepared to ‘save democracy’—from the people—by destroying it. The worse their position becomes, the more desperate the measures they take. Who knows where this war on democracy will end?
What we do surely know is that none of this is succeeding in stopping the people’s revolt. Indeed it is only further boosting support for the populists.
The stakes could hardly be higher. That is why we need to stand with the populist revolt as our best chance to challenge the old dead establishment across Europe and change politics for good.
Of course, despite the common pattern of political insurgency, these parties are not all the same. There is a big difference between, say, Reform UK, which I worked with in last year’s general election campaign, and the Romanian ethno-nationalists of AUR. But this is about something more than the individual parties. It is about getting behind the people’s revolt in all its myriad forms, from the farmers to the anti-migration protests, to put the demos back at the heart of democracy.
This is not a ‘protest vote’ or a practice run. It is an historic opportunity to bring down the old order and kick open the doors to a different political future—whatever that might turn out to be. As Mr. Farage himself is fond of saying, “Something is happening out there”. They cannot stop it—and we cannot afford to waste it.
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