By Henry Bushell
Illustration by Keo Morakod Ung
It is no surprise to anyone that the hard-right has been on the march across Europe, for some time now. While placing parties on the political spectrum isn’t an easy task (hard-right parties and their followers often strongly deny links to extremism), it shouldn’t be controversial to say that parties, classified as populist-right, hard-right, or far-right, have gained significant power in the continent. Italy, Czechia, Hungary, Finland, the Netherlands, and more recently Poland, each have a significant hard-right presence in government, with similar parties polling significantly in France, Germany and Austria, among others. Many of the populist-right and far-right parties comprise large European umbrella parties, the two most notable being the European Conservatives and Reformists Party, and the further-right Identity and Democracy Party.
Britain is no exception to the above. Reform UK, a populist-right party led by Brexit-backing Nigel Farage, has gained staggering popularity and media coverage since its creation in late-2018. Most betting sites place Labour and Reform at equal or near-equal odds of winning the UK’s next General Election. Notably, both are far ahead of the ailing Conservatives. For a country that voted to leave the EU almost 10 years ago and has since suffered (widely considered) ineffectual governance from both Conservative and Labour, it seems to some an eventuality that Farage’s party will enter government at some point over the next decade.
However, this may not be the case. Prominent members of the Anglosphere, regarded to have similar political institutions to the UK, have recently rejected the populist-right with the surprising election of Mark Carney in Canada and re-election of Anthony Albanese in Australia. These results were viewed as a reaction to political events in the US, with UK residents generally sharing these concerns. Through this framework, the next General Election appears to be somewhat a fork in the road for Britain; will it fully embrace the populist right by electing Reform, a historic break in Conservative and Labour dominance? Or, will it follow Australia and Canada and re-elect an unpopular centrist Labour government?
Tracing why support for the hard-right has surged in Europe is beside the scope of this piece, however, it seems clear that the economic successes of right-wing governments are not causal factors. Hungary’s leading party, Fidesz, led by Victor Orbán, has been in power since 2010. Their government has failed to modernise the country’s economy, with Hungarians recently experiencing staggering falls in real wages. Turkey’s populist-right AK Party, led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, which has been in power since 2003, has steered the country into a perpetual economic crisis. This culminated in authoritarian crackdowns on political rivals.
Conversely, a distinct a group of countries consistently ranks among the happiest and most developed in the world: the Nordic countries of Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Iceland. Many argue they are successful due to transparent, fair, democratic institutions, high state involvement in welfare systems, and extensive freedom for citizens. This provision allows citizens economic security, compounded by redistributive policies which lead to low levels of income inequality, contributing to happiness. Union membership in these countries is strong, but active labour market policy by respective governments (such as Solidaristic Wage Policy and Denmark’s ‘Flexicurity’ model) ensure private sector firms can remain competitive and continue innovating.
I may be falsely equating here. Reform UK supporters could reasonably argue that comparisons to Orbán’s Fidesz Party or Erdoğan’s AK Party are unfair – we haven’t yet seen how they would act in government. Perhaps, upon gaining power, Farage would soften his populist anti-immigration and anti-‘elite’ rhetoric, and would drift more centre-right, fostering respectability, similar to Giorgia Meloni in Italy. He has already carefully distanced himself with more extreme aspects of the right-wing. However, this is by no means guaranteed, and the Party has demonstrated various hard-right tendencies, including undermining democracy, attacking human rights, and the use of xenophobic rhetoric.
More importantly, the current Labour government isn’t comparable to the social democratic governments comprising the ‘Nordic model’ outlined above. Far from having a cohesive vision for reformed Britain, the government has arguably behaved as a centre-right continuation of the previous Conservative government – more so than anything recognisably left-wing: winter fuel payment, foreign aid budget and planned disability benefit cuts are directly in opposition to the progressive politics yearned for by lifelong Labour supporters. Sir Keir Starmer is faced with two options to defeat the hard-right in 2029. Either, he can lean right to continue thieving votes from Reform, or he can create a new, economically progressive, more democratic Britain, by leaning left. Based on the success (or lack of) in Europe from centrist parties over the last decade, I think the latter is worth a try.
UCL Rethinking Economics 