Trump and the European Populist Right

The past weekend’s elections for the European Parliament provided the clearest evidence yet that large numbers of voters have had enough of the bipartisan progressive-green-secularist-globalist consensus under which they have been governed for years. France, Germany, Spain, Italy and smaller countries saw huge advances by parties of the right that oppose mass immigration, reject extreme climate measures and resist the continuing dissolution of their civilization into a relativist, multicultural mush.

In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, which has campaigned for years against the erosion of the country’s national identity and security through mass immigration, especially by Muslims, led the poll with almost 32%. President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party scored less than half that. The political shock was so great, with Ms. Le Pen now firmly established as favorite in the 2027 presidential election, that Mr. Macron stunned the country by announcing immediate parliamentary elections ahead of the Paris Olympics next month. His thinking seemed to be that by translating the right’s victory in elections to a largely impotent European Union Parliament into control of a legislatively meaningful national Parliament, he might manage to expose their lack of governing capability in the run-up to 2027. It’s a high-risk bet.

In Germany the Social Democratic Party of Chancellor Olaf Scholz was roundly rejected, as were his green and liberal coalition allies. The right wing Alternative for Germany made big gains, as did the center-right Christian Democrats. In Spain Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist Party was beaten into second place by the mainstream conservatives, but again populist right-wing parties made the biggest advances. The only incumbent major European leader not to see her party trounced was Giorgia Meloni, whose populist Brothers of Italy is already the main governing party.

Much of the media—on both sides of the Atlantic—has reacted with predictable alarm, describing these as votes as victories for the “far right.” An instant implicit association with Nazis and fascists. But while some in these parties surely espouse an ugly extremism, the majority simply want to cut migration, put a brake on the self-destructive race to net-zero carbon emissions and address Europe’s chronic structural economic problems.

The big losers everywhere were the Green parties, which lost 21 of their 73 European seats, providing colorful confirmation of the progressives’ retreat everywhere.

What about the U.K., that former European Union member that has its own national election on July 4? Isn’t the Conservative Party about to be crushed by Labour—which is thoroughly green, woke and globalist—in what polls suggest may be the biggest defeat for the Tories since their founding nearly 200 years ago?

True, but look beyond who will step through the door of 10 Downing Street on July 5. A tectonic shift is taking place underneath the British surface.

The Conservatives are set for a drubbing as much because of their loss of votes to the Reform UK party, led by perennial right-wing gadfly Nigel Farage, whose campaign for Britain to leave the EU was a key reason for Brexit. He has been flaying the Tories under Rishi Sunak for failing to deal with immigration, for its green obsessions and for producing socialist-level taxation and spending.

He may not win a seat because of an electoral system that punishes small parties, but his influence over an annihilated postelection Conservative Party may grow dramatically

It was said of the 1848 revolutions in Europe—when sundry liberals, socialists and nationalists tried but failed to overthrow the anciens régimes of the Continent—that Europe, unlike America 70 years earlier, had reached a turning point and failed to turn. Perhaps Europe, emulating America this time, is now turning after all.