Hong Kong News

Nonpartisan, Noncommercial, unconstrained.
Tuesday, Oct 15, 2024

New book explains why the mainstream right is doomed

New book explains why the mainstream right is doomed

‘Riding the Populist Wave’ shows how the far right is dictating the counter-argument to progressives in areas such as immigration and EU integration – with the result that the mainstream right is now facing an existential crisis.
The European Union’s former Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, is a big beast in politics, but his withdrawal last week from the race to represent Les Républicains (LR) in next year’s French presidential battle is tacit acknowledgement of a new reality: the mainstream right across Europe is in a death spiral.

Changing an LR candidate is as futile as rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. With President Emmanuel Macron occupying the centre-liberal position with La République En Marche! and Marine Le Pen with the Rassemblement National on the far right, the mainstream right has struggled for some time to find policies, votes and power. Barnier clearly decided it was better to cut and run than go down the gurgler with this whole sorry mess.

The mainstream right – including conservative, Christian democrat and liberal parties – is facing an existential crisis, explored with fascinating insight in the recently published ‘Riding the Populist Wave: Europe’s Mainstream Right in Crisis’, edited by Tim Bale and Christobal Rovira Kaltwasser.

Running the rule over eight European nations – Austria, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the UK – the team of authors all reach the same conclusion. And that is the far right is dragging the mainstream into assuming much tougher positions in four key areas: immigration, EU integration, moral issues and welfare. Maybe for good.

If further proof were needed of the mainstream right’s demise, look to Germany, where, after spending 57 of the last 72 years in power, the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union government has capitulated to a coalition of progressives featuring formerly unlikely bedfellows in the form of the Social Democrats, Greens and business-friendly Free Democrats.

How, after 16 years of Angela Merkel, could the right lose its grip on power to such a hotch-potch alliance of progressives?

The answer lies in revolution. The ‘silent revolution’ and ‘silent counter-revolution’ are ideas that first took hold in the early 1990s. The silent revolution describes the situation in Western democracies where affluence has reached such a point that society looks for post-material concerns to occupy itself in the political arena. These are the matters that now occupy the minds of the left and of progressives, not workers’ rights or the ills of capitalism. And the silent counter-revolution is the response to that, which has emerged not from the mainstream right – it finds itself conflicted over such things – but from the new populist radical right (PRR).

The problem that the mainstream right has in addressing these issues is that it risks alienating its core voters by taking a tougher line. For instance, with its support for business, the mainstream right needs immigration to help grow the economy. Affluent, middle-class mainstream voters want immigration because it provides cheap plumbers and nannies for their children. The concerns of the PRR – that cheap labour causes wage compression and drives down salaries – fly in the face of those, so they’ve been left alone by the mainstream right, and their support has haemorrhaged as a result.

Look south to Italy, where the mainstream right imploded nearly 30 years ago and never resurfaced – Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right Forza Italia was more of a vanity project than a serious ideological programme. Now the Italian right is totally dominated by two PRR players, La Lega Nord and Fratelli d’Italia.

Or consider Austria, where the currently beleaguered Austrian Peoples’ Party – nominally a Christian Democrat party – shifted hard to the right under Sebastian Kurz in a bid to nudge the far-right Freedom Party of Austria off the ball. In the Netherlands, the liberals of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy have made the same move in a bid to nullify the gains made by Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom and Therry Baudet’s Forum for Democracy.

Even in Sweden, where liberal values have been trumpeted for longer than most can remember, the far-right Swedish Democrats have put immigration and cultural integration high up on the political agenda, no longer to be brushed aside by moderate conservatives seeking to exclude them from the top table for daring to suggest the country has a migrant problem.

In European democracies, where alliances and coalition are the currency of government, any electoral gains, no matter how small, can be leveraged into power and this has meant that political positions once considered beyond the pale – outside the ‘cordon sanitaire’ – are no longer so.

In the UK, meanwhile, the liberal conservatism espoused by former PM David Cameron is rarely discussed by a Boris Johnson government that has adopted hardline positions on those very subjects so central to the ‘silent counter-revolution’ – immigration, EU integration, moral issues and welfare.

In ‘Riding the Populist Wave’, Richard Hayton, the author of the UK viewpoint, suggests that this “neo-conservative cultural mood” was actually a Thatcherite by-product, although traditional conservatives were too engaged in infighting over issues such as the EU and same-sex marriage to track the shift in public feeling. That left the field open to parties such as the UK Independence Party and then the Brexit Party, and we all know what happened there.

Events in Germany and France this year show that this drift to the far right and the ‘silent counter-revolution’ are not going away. Despite the fact that almost 50% of those questioned in a 2019 Bertelsmann Foundation survey for the European Parliament found the far right an unpalatable idea, its ranks and reach continue to grow.

This gives Bale and Kaltwasser some cause for concern, and they reach the conclusion that, “If mainstream-right and far-right parties become increasingly similar and eager to join forces, we may very well see the formation of a strong right-wing bloc bent on bold reform that could shift the post-war West European consensus on what democracy actually means.”

That’s a stark warning about an increasing polarisation in European politics, but, as the pair declare, “a necessary one all the same”.
Newsletter

Related Articles

Hong Kong News
0:00
0:00
Close
It's always the people with the dirty hands pointing their fingers
Paper straws found to contain long-lasting and potentially toxic chemicals - study
FTX's Bankman-Fried headed for jail after judge revokes bail
Blackrock gets half a trillion dollar deal to rebuild Ukraine
Steve Jobs' Son Launches Venture Capital Firm With $200 Million For Cancer Treatments
Google reshuffles Assistant unit, lays off some staffers, to 'supercharge' products with A.I.
End of Viagra? FDA approved a gel against erectile dysfunction
UK sanctions Russians judges over dual British national Kara-Murza's trial
US restricts visa-free travel for Hungarian passport holders because of security concerns
America's First New Nuclear Reactor in Nearly Seven Years Begins Operations
Southeast Asia moves closer to economic unity with new regional payments system
Political leader from South Africa, Julius Malema, led violent racist chants at a massive rally on Saturday
Today Hunter Biden’s best friend and business associate, Devon Archer, testified that Joe Biden met in Georgetown with Russian Moscow Mayor's Wife Yelena Baturina who later paid Hunter Biden $3.5 million in so called “consulting fees”
'I am not your servant': IndiGo crew member, passenger get into row over airline meal
Singapore Carries Out First Execution of a Woman in Two Decades Amid Capital Punishment Debate
Spanish Citizenship Granted to Iranian chess player who removed hijab
US Senate Republican Mitch McConnell freezes up, leaves press conference
Speaker McCarthy says the United States House of Representatives is getting ready to impeach Joe Biden.
San Francisco car crash
This camera man is a genius
3D ad in front of Burj Khalifa
Next level gaming
BMW driver…
Google testing journalism AI. We are doing it already 2 years, and without Google biased propoganda and manipulated censorship
Unlike illegal imigrants coming by boats - US Citizens Will Need Visa To Travel To Europe in 2024
Musk announces Twitter name and logo change to X.com
The politician and the journalist lost control and started fighting on live broadcast.
The future of sports
Unveiling the Black Hole: The Mysterious Fate of EU's Aid to Ukraine
Farewell to a Music Titan: Tony Bennett, Renowned Jazz and Pop Vocalist, Passes Away at 96
Alarming Behavior Among Florida's Sharks Raises Concerns Over Possible Cocaine Exposure
Transgender Exclusion in Miss Italy Stirs Controversy Amidst Changing Global Beauty Pageant Landscape
Joe Biden admitted, in his own words, that he delivered what he promised in exchange for the $10 million bribe he received from the Ukraine Oil Company.
TikTok Takes On Spotify And Apple, Launches Own Music Service
Global Trend: Using Anti-Fake News Laws as Censorship Tools - A Deep Dive into Tunisia's Scenario
Arresting Putin During South African Visit Would Equate to War Declaration, Asserts President Ramaphosa
Hacktivist Collective Anonymous Launches 'Project Disclosure' to Unearth Information on UFOs and ETIs
Typo sends millions of US military emails to Russian ally Mali
Server Arrested For Theft After Refusing To Pay A Table's $100 Restaurant Bill When They Dined & Dashed
The Changing Face of Europe: How Mass Migration is Reshaping the Political Landscape
China Urges EU to Clarify Strategic Partnership Amid Trade Tensions
The Last Pour: Anchor Brewing, America's Pioneer Craft Brewer, Closes After 127 Years
Democracy not: EU's Digital Commissioner Considers Shutting Down Social Media Platforms Amid Social Unrest
Sarah Silverman and Renowned Authors Lodge Copyright Infringement Case Against OpenAI and Meta
Why Do Tech Executives Support Kennedy Jr.?
The New York Times Announces Closure of its Sports Section in Favor of The Athletic
BBC Anchor Huw Edwards Hospitalized Amid Child Sex Abuse Allegations, Family Confirms
Florida Attorney General requests Meta CEO's testimony on company's platforms' alleged facilitation of illicit activities
The Distorted Mirror of actual approval ratings: Examining the True Threat to Democracy Beyond the Persona of Putin
40,000 child slaves in Congo are forced to work in cobalt mines so we can drive electric cars.
×