Complacent Liberals to blame for rise of the right

France’s National Assembly party leader Marine Le Pen (L) and Italy's Prime Minister and leader of Italiy’s Brothers of Italy Giorgia Meloni. Picture: AFP.

The results of the European parliament elections have caused widespread shock and alarm in liberal circles. That’s because a variety of anti-immigration and “populist” parties have made record gains.

In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally won about 32 per cent of the vote, more than double the 15 per cent of President Macron’s coalition. In Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) won 16 per cent, coming second in the popular vote despite a string of scandals. In Italy, Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy also soared, winning about 28 per cent ahead of centre-left parties. In Spain, Belgium and Austria, populists also gained. And the Greens took a hammering.

Other results offered a more mixed picture. There were gains by some centrists and far-left parties, while in Hungary President Orban’s nationalist Fidesz party suffered its worst setback for years at the hands of rival centrist-conservatives. However, if the “populists” were to form a single group (which they won’t) this would be the second largest force in the European parliament.

Marine Le Pen and party President Jordan Bardella speak to supporters. Picture: AFP.

The shock is because these are all said to be parties of the “right”, “far right” or “hard right”; choose your epithet. And as all right-thinking (ie left-wing or liberal) folk know, the “right” are always wrong.

But what is the “right"? While the left is an identifiable thing supporting big government, universalist ideologies and disdain for the nation, the “right” supposedly includes conservatives and free-market liberals; “centrist dads” such as David Cameron and populist disrupters like Nigel Farage; born-again Europhiles like Meloni and risen-from-the-dead neo-Nazis such as the AfD. They are divided over social and economic matters, European enlargement, China, relations between the EU and the US and, most important, Russia and Ukraine.

The term “right-wing” is used chiefly as an insult for anyone who stands against the groupthink of received liberal opinion. I myself have skin in this particular game. When I successively opposed progressive education, defended the traditional family, sounded the alarm over multiculturalism and Islamisation and defended Israel against demonisation and delegitimisation, I became in short order “right-wing”, “very right-wing”,"hard-right”, “racist”, “Islamophobic”, and then a “hard-right, racist, Islamophobic Zionist Jew”. It was enough to turn a girl’s head.

Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni (L) looks on behind France's President Emmanuel Macron at the EU headquarters. Picture: AFP.

The attitude was that anyone who defied the liberal consensus on anything wasn’t just wrong but positively evil and beyond the pale. Now, however, millions of Europeans have voted for “hard-right populists”. So are all these millions also beyond the pale? Yes, say the liberals, and the reason is that evil right-wing people have manipulated them because the public are credulous and stupid. Apparently. One is reminded of the line in Bertolt Brecht’s satirical poem about the East German uprising of 1953 that the government should “dissolve the people and elect another”. It never occurs to the liberal establishment that the problem might be them.

What the “populists” have in common, and what is bringing them to power, is that they represent a revolt against a homogeneous political establishment that ignores, scorns or punishes eminently reasonable, and indeed necessary, concerns. This establishment has turned immigration and the related issue of Islamisation into a taboo. Anyone who opposes mass, uncontrolled immigration and the rapid growth of a minority of which a significant proportion want to Islamise western society is anathematised as a racist or Islamophobe.

Yet it’s reasonable to cherish a culture that you recognise as home, that upholds values you hold dear and that you share with others. It’s reasonable to want this not to be taken away by politicians who have never asked if you wanted your culture and nation to be transformed. It’s reasonable to want your borders to be controlled and the rates of mass and uncontrolled immigration to be scaled back. It’s reasonable to object to being denounced as a bigot or Islamophobe if you want any of these things. The liberal establishment, however, refuses to attend to these concerns and instead terms them unreasonable and “deplorable”. That’s what has fuelled this “populist” surge.

Nigel Farage represents the anti-Establishment insurgency. Picture: Getty Images.

Liberal society has created a vacuum in which has arisen an anti-Establishment insurgency with a range of political parties. Some of these are quite reasonable; others are a potential menace. The liberal establishment is responsible for them all. This insurgency is, of course, precisely what Farage represents. It is precisely what Brexit was all about.

Those who provoked this insurgency possess zero humility and maximum arrogance. They professed shock and disdain over Brexit, over Farage’s return to the political front line and now over the European election results. But this is all their own doing.

The EU parliamentary elections won’t themselves change much. The EU is anything but democratic, and the nomenklatura of the European Commission and European Central Bank will continue to call the shots. But what the results illuminate is the fracture between leaders and led. The implications of this go well beyond the EU as an institution. Panicked by Le Pen’s advance, Macron has called a snap election to call her bluff. Maybe his ploy will work. Equally, maybe France will soon have a “populist” prime minister.

Ultimately, this insurgency will threaten to transform other national governments too. The liberal nose-holding classes have only themselves to blame.

The Times