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Across Europe and America national-populism is on the march. From Hungary via Italy to France the far-right are either in power or knocking on the door.
In America, Donald Trump still has a strong chance to retake the presidency. Even in Britain, which bucked the rightward trend with its July general election victory, national populism is waiting in the wings for Labour to fail.
The Reform Party’s success in out-performing its predecessors and splitting the Conservative vote has inspired those dispossessed leaders of the Conservative right who see Reform not as a threat, but as a model.
But Reform’s success also gave succour to the bootboy Right. Their growing confidence was shown in its largest demonstration for decades in London on 27 July.
Now they are exploiting the horrific murder of three young girls in Southport on 29 July to mobilise hundreds to take to the streets in towns across England to show their hatred of Muslims, refugees and ethnic minorities. This campaign of violence and intimidation is intended – and has to some extent succeeded – in spreading fear among Britain’s ethnic minorities.
The actions of this explicitly white supremacist right have created unease in some parts of the Conservative media. But these far-right agitators and demagogues have benefitted hugely from the concerted campaign by the right-wing press and populist pundits over the last two decades both to demonise migrants and to challenge liberal values more generally.
Speedy police and court action against those stoking hatred and perpetrating violence is vital. Counter-demonstrations in support of the rights of ethnic minority communities may have already begun to turn the tide.
Just as crucial will be a concerted political and ideological campaign to challenge the key arguments of the populist Right.
In The Little Black Book of the Populist Right, Jon Bloomfield and David Edgar chart the rise of national populism and expose the flaws and fallacies of its ideology.
In the edited extract below, Bloomfield and Edgar outline the threat increasingly posed by national populism to the postwar progressive consensus.
The rise of national populism across the world over the last two decades has been moulded by powerful and wealthy forces on the right of politics. They have reached out to the self-employed, the working classes and poorer sections of society, left exposed and vulnerable by the economic and social effects of the tech revolution and broader global change.
These new cross-class coalitions led from the right, often with a charismatic figurehead – think Trump, Bolsonaro, Johnson, Orban, Meloni – have received vocal backing from much of the billionaire press, plus privately funded TV channels like GB News and new social media which largely skew to the populist right.
The impact of national populists and their media supporters has been immense: they have not only encouraged voting for national populist parties and policies but have tried to pull the political centre of gravity rightwards.
Broken promises: disappointing the converts
National populism’s key strategy is to appeal to its target constituencies on both culture and economics.
In the US, Trump promised to end deindustrialisation. In Hungary, Viktor Orban’s Fidesz implemented economically interventionist policies like raising the minimum wage, and abolishing university tuition fees. In 2019, Boris Johnson’s Conservatives promised 40 new hospitals by 2030, and a “levelling-up” programme to tackle the relative deprivation of the Midlands and North.
These promises proved to be empty rhetoric. In terms of infrastructure, all Trump managed was building some of his border wall; his major economic legacy was a spectacular tax cut for the rich. In Hungary, Orban imposed a flat-rate tax of 16%, amended the Labour Code to weaken employee and trade union rights and r