The Economist wraps up the election victory of Geert Wilders nicely:
A generation ago, merely including the hard right in a ruling coalition was enough to result in ostracism, as Austria discovered when its centre-right allied with the xenophobic Freedom Party of Austria (fpö) in 2000. No longer. The idea of a “cordon sanitaire”—centrist parties essentially pretending populist foes don’t exist when it comes to forming coalitions—is breached routinely. In the Netherlands it may prove all but impossible to cobble together a coalition without the 37 seats (out of 150) of the Party for Freedom, the party Mr Wilders leads.
Whether the bouffant-haired veteran mp will nab the premiership is still very much an open question. But if he does, it will not be the first time a populist has sat at the table of the European Council, the eu’s top decision-making body. Hungary, Italy and Poland (the last probably not for much longer, given the results of October’s election) are all run by the hard right, and were joined recently by a lefty populist in Slovakia. Such electoral outcomes were once a prompt for pan-continental pearl-clutching and recrimination. Now they have become just about commonplace.
The chances are of further success for the hard right in forthcoming polls. The fpö is backed by 30% of Austrian voters, comfortably beating its rivals of the left and right ahead of elections next year. The Alternative for Germany is in second place at 21%, far ahead of any of the parties in the country’s existing three-way coalition, with important state elections due next year. Polls in Belgium show that one populist party is leading the pack and the other is joint second. Having narrowly come top in France’s election to the European Parliament in 2019, Ms Le Pen’s National Rally party now looks as though it will trounce Emmanuel Macron’s allies come the next such ballot in June. Ms Le Pen (pictured with Mr Wilders in 2019), is all but assured another slot in the French presidential run-off in 2027.
Would a Wilders administration tip the eu scale in favour of populist policies? In one important way, it already has. Restricting migration is the hard right’s clarion call. But centrist parties on both right and left have already shifted towards tougher policies in many countries, including the Netherlands. Germany took in over 1m migrants in 2015-16; these days its approach is much less welcoming. The contrast between the centre and the populists has eroded: in Denmark, it is a centre-left government that has pushed through tough migration measures (like Britain, it wants to process asylum-seekers in Rwanda), not some post-fascist outfit.
…politicians with populist promises on the campaign trail have a tendency to moderate once in office, especially if they have to share power. Dutch coalition programmes are crafted over many months, leaving plenty of opportunities for centrists to force compromise. Ms Meloni was herself a firebrand who railed against the eu as a candidate; plenty were panicked when this once-avowed fan of Mussolini became prime minister a year ago. In fact she has surprised her European partners by hewing to the political centre on most issues (though not on social matters such as gay rights). Mr Wilders himself toned down his Islam-bashing as the vote neared, though critics argue that this was only cosmetic.
The message is simple. Those designated “right wing populist” are not all the same. A coalition of greedy corporations and useful idiot progressive media usually applies the label.
In reality, these political disrupters are sometimes populist and sometimes not.
Donald Trump was a classic populist. He pretended to be of the people but was not for the people with his corporate tax cut policies.
Boris Johnson was not a populist. His Brexit did nothing for elites. And it did elevate the UK worker pricing power.
Other so-called “populists” adhere to different arrangements that can go either way.
However, the one thing all of these disrupters offer – that the fake left and fake right never will – is to give voters their country back.
Note that this is all the vast majority of people want. They don’t hate anybody and are not xenophobic. They simply want their elected representatives to represent them.
Moreover, throughout the twentieth century, protecting borders was the preserve of the left as liberal parties sought to tear them down for freer trade and people movements.
Now, thanks to liberal success and the emergence of a useful idiot left obsessed with the notion that everybody is a secret racist, the “right-wing populist” label applies to anybody getting in the way of cheap foreign worker exploitation.
The lesson for Canberra is simple.
The first person to wake up and genuinely give Australians their country back wins.
