Britain is moving left while most of Europe is moving right.
Supporters wave French national flags during a campaign meeting of French far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party leader and leading candidate for the European Parliament Jordan Bardella and French far-right Rassemblement National (RN) parliamentary group leader Marine Le Pen, ahead of the upcoming European Union (EU) parliamentary elections, in Henin-Beaumont, northern France, on May 24, 2024.
Francois Lo Presti | AFP | beautiful pictures
LONDON — A strange and ironic political shift has taken place in Europe over the past few years.
In the formerly Brexit-minded, euro-sceptic UK, the pendulum has just swung back The center-left Labor Party, set to take power after a landslide election victoryending 14 years of Conservative Party rule.
A different picture is playing out in many Western European countries—and in countries that have shrugged off Brexit and the UK’s populist turn in recent years—and are now seeing their voters shift to the right, with nationalist, populist, and Eurosceptic parties leading in the polls and entering the halls of power.
While the UK and continental Europe are moving in different political directions, analysts say the driving force behind the shift in voting patterns is fundamentally the same: voters are desperate for change.
“There’s an anti-incumbency sentiment in Europe again,” Dan Stevens, a politics professor at the University of Exeter, told CNBC. Regardless of who the incumbent is, Stevens said, “there’s just general dissatisfaction and want to change.”
Capturing the spirit of the times among British voters, the British Labour Party has used “change” as a rallying cry for voters ahead of Thursday’s general election. which it won overwhelmingly, early signs showed on Friday morning..
The shift to the left follows a turbulent period in British politics under the last series of Conservative governments, with concerns over immigration and Euroscepticism culminating in the 2016 referendum to leave the EU. More challenges followed during the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the cost of living crisis. By the time the UK election was announced, analysts say, Britons were truly fed up.
Common interest
The UK is not the only country seeking political change. Similar change has been seen in many Western and Eastern European countries in recent years, with far-right populist and nationalist parties upending and overthrowing old political regimes.
Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and France have all seen far-right parties — such as Fratelli d’Italia, the Freedom Party, Alternative for Germany or the National Rally — rise in opinion polls or win elections.
Such parties often emerged as opposition factions, taking anti-immigration or Eurosceptic stances, but have since taken a more mainstream approach to appeal to a broader cross-section of voters who care about more universal issues such as jobs, education, health care, national identity and the economy.
The latter issue is the specific driver of the change in voting, with rising food and energy costs and falling disposable household income having the most direct and decisive impact on voters.
“If you have a very poor economic performance, then you would expect the political pendulum to swing, and when it swings, it swings to the opposite side of where it is now… It swings because people are struggling and frustrated. It’s that simple,” Christopher Granville, managing director of EMEA and global politics at TS Lombard, told CNBC, suggesting that the shift is not in the best interests of incumbent leaders.
“Of course, there is a big debate about the extent to which the governments involved are responsible for this poor economic situation… You can argue that they are grossly incompetent or you can argue that they are innocent victims of external shocks, such as the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine, the cost of living crisis, etc,” Granville added.
“No matter where you stand in this debate, the fact remains, voters want to change their minds.”
Vote against
Many political experts attribute the rise of the far right in Europe to voters who want to protest against the current political status quo and established parties and figures in government.
“Right-wing and far-right parties don’t just win because of immigration, yes, that’s their signature issue, but they can also win because they attract a coalition of voters who vote for them for a variety of reasons,” Sofia Vasilopoulou, professor of European politics at King’s College London, told CNBC.
“They have a number of what I call ‘fringe’ voters who tend to vote with them because of a lack of faith in politics, a lack of faith in institutions, a fatigue with the status quo,” she said. “It’s a general anti-politics kind of thing, and there are quite a few voters that they have because of that.”
Political analysts point out that although far-right political parties in France, Germany and Italy won the recent European Parliament elections, they did not achieve the expected results.
Furthermore, the centre-right European People’s Party – which includes Christian Democratic conservative parties across the EU – retained its dominant position in the parliamentary chamber. won 188 seats.
But right-wing coalitions have generally done well: the European Conservatives and Reformists, led by Italian right-wing leader Giorgia Meloni, made strong gains, taking its total number of seats in parliament to 84 and coming third behind the socialist S&D coalition. The far-right European Parliamentary group Identity and Democracy, led by French Nationalist Party leader Marine Le Pen, now has 57 seats.
Both right-wing groups now face another far-right rival as Hungary announces a new alliance, Patriots for Europe.
