European mix of hope and despair transcends populism

Far-right leader and French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen.

The populist moment in Europe was a long time a-coming. By the early years of this century it was clear that a significant section of the electorate was fed up with the parties that dominated political life in the post-World War II era. They were particularly wary of the leadership of the EU.

The first sign of revolt against the old order was the rejection of the proposed EU constitution by the French and Dutch electorates in June 2005. Since then the authority of the EU has further diminished and many western ­European parties of government are fighting for their survival.

Since the triumph of the leave campaign in Britain, Brexit has become a symbol of defiance throughout the continent. It enjoys a significant degree of moral legitimacy and has galvanised the debate surrounding the impending presidential election in France and the vote for a new parliament in The Netherlands. However, the so-called populist revolt did not begin with Brexit.

One of the most unremarked but remarkable events in Euro­pean politics occurred a couple of months before the Brexit vote. This was the April 2016 referendum in The Netherlands that rejected closer EU links to Ukraine. In one of the most liberal nations in Europe, 64 per cent of voters rejected a political, trade and defence treaty that had already been signed by their government and approved by all other EU nations.

What was also remarkable about the Dutch referendum was that it occurred at all. The referendum was triggered by an internet petition launched by young Eurosceptic activist that swiftly gained more than 400,000 ­signatures. They were not interested in Ukraine but used the ­referendum as a pretext to kick the Dutch ­establishment in the face and to teach the Brussels bureaucracy a lesson.

“We are not going to play their game,” a group of law students in Amsterdam told me last May, adding: “We want out of the EU.”

The Dutch Eurosceptic activists and their supporters bore no resemblance to the media caricature of the illiterate racist populist who despises all things foreign. Like their Italian peers in the Five Star Movement they are young, idealistic and looking for a new way of doing politics.

The Five Star Movement is led by the clown Beppe Grillo, but the threat it ­represents to Italy’s traditional holders of power is no joke. In last December’s referendum it was instrumental in defeating the constitutional reform proposals advocated by former prime minister Matteo Renzi. Former prime ­minister, because the defeat in the referendum forced him to resign.

The results of the referendums in The Netherlands, Britain and Italy appear to suggest a common ­pattern where the exhaustion and evident isolation of the political ­establishment has encouraged new movements and parties to fill the space vacated by the former holders of power. The classic example of this trend is in Britain, where rising support for the UK Independence Party in recent elections has been paralleled by the Labour Party’s steady decline.

The implosion of traditional politics is striking in France. ­Neither of the country’s traditional ruling parties — the Socialists and the Republicans — has so far managed to field a credible candidate in the presidential elections to be held in April. The attention of the media is focused on Marine Le Pen, the leader and presidential candidate of the right-wing nationalist National Front, who is leading in the polls. However, what is really fascinating about French public life is the willingness of millions of citizens to abandon their political affiliations and look for new solutions, including new parties.

The likely beneficiary of the unravelling of France’s ruling ­parties may well be Emmanuel Macron and his En Marche (On the Move) campaign. The former Socialist Party politician saw the writing on the wall and decided it was time to bail out and launch a new movement.

These are the days when individual politicians can leave the old politics behind, launch a new movement and expect to be taken seriously as a candidate for the French presidency. Polls predict that he has a good chance of beating another outsider — ­Le Pen — in the presidential race to be French president.

In recent months I have travelled through Europe — Belgium, The Netherlands, France, Italy and Hungary — to try to make sense of why so many people are prepared to abandon their traditional party loyalties and reject the conventions and practices of the past. Commentators write of a “populist revolt”, they look for a “Trump effect” in the coming elections in The Netherlands and France, and often insist that the electorates of Europe are far more illiberal than in the past.

From my experience of talking to people, none of these designations captures a reality that is far more confusing and complex.

Populism is a term that anti-­populists use to describe people they don’t like. I have not yet come across a card-carrying populist. Populism is not a form of self-­designation and people do not knowingly refer to themselves as populist. Hungary is often described as the centre of European populism. When I ask people in Budapest about their populism, they look bemused. One history undergraduate student explains to me that when “you guys in the West call us populist, what you ­really mean is that we are a bunch of provincial hicks”.

There is no self-conscious populist movement in Europe, and movements that have been ­designated as populist often have radically different concerns and ideologies. Movements such as the Spanish Podemos or the French National Front are on opposite ends of the Left-Right political spectrum.

The only common ­variable between these movements and the people who support them is that they reject the pre­vailing values of their political and ­cultural establishments.

They do so, however, for very different ­reasons.

During the course of talking to people in the region of Pas-de-­Calais, I am struck by the number of times I am told “that this is a France I do not recognise” and “I wish that there was a party I could believe in”. Their words convey a message within which bitterness and frustration coexist with excitement and hope.

In parts of Europe, particularly in France and Hungary, the language of bitterness and frustration often overwhelms the language of hope.

In The Netherlands and Italy, I felt energised by the optimism and excitement that’s in the air. In Italy many are also looking for a party they can believe in, and many feel upbeat about the prospect for a genuine political renaissance. Even in staid old Britain, more and more people tell me that “now is the time for a new party”.

What people mean when they say “this is a France that I do not recognise” is that their values are no longer affirmed and that their way of life has become precarious. Some blame their pre­dicament on immigrants, others on faceless technocrats who have no empathy for their way of life, while others point the finger at the economic disruption caused by globalisation and what they call neoliberalism.

What underpins all of these different sentiments is a palpable mood of cultural uncertainty. In places like France, The Netherlands and Belgium, many people signal the concern that they no longer feel at home.

It was the unstated question of “what does it mean to be British” that led down the road to Brexit and the rejection of the cosmopolitan and trans­national values of the EU.

In the hesitant silent culture war sweeping Europe, the pivotal issue around which all the different concerns are focused is the aspiration of regaining a measure of control over community life. People attach an extraordinary importance to the value of belonging. And Europe’s political classes have not only failed to recognise this aspiration but also sought to devalue its importance.

Their constant refrain of “we live in a globalised world” served to devalue the meaning of home, community and nation. That is why national sovereignty has re-emerged as a key question of the 21st century.

It is not xenophobia or the fear of immigrants but the absence of borders that intensifies the mood of cultural uncertainty. “Control over our borders used to be called democracy,” a supporter of borders tells me in Amsterdam. For many supporters of Brexit, the exercise of sovereignty represents the precondition for assuming control over the conduct of public life.

When I talk to supporters of the old political class, they see a world that is totally different to that of the people they call populists. In their eyes, the reason why populists voted for Brexit is because they are racists or because they are too uneducated to understand the finer points of economic realities. They are convinced that all the setbacks they have suffered are because populist demagogues have exploited the issue of immigration. They only see hate and are unaware of the politics of hope that motivate many of their opponents.

They are totally indifferent to voters’ aspirations for sovereignty, and in between holding forth on the importance of the EU they infer that the sense of ­nationhood is a curse.

But they too must sense the rising demand for new politics.

Apparently Cory Bernardi believes that Europeans do not have a monopoly over launching a new movement and that there might be space for a new conservative party in Australia. Watch this space.

Frank Furedi’s What’s Happened to the University: A Sociological Exploration of Its Infantilisation, is published by Routledge.