Lega Nord supporters. Credit: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images
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Blue-collar or conservative populists currently hold some share of power in at least 11 Western countries1 but little attention has been paid to what they actually do in office, rather than what they say.
Generally, they have succeeded in implementing many aspects of their agenda, pushing the political conversation toward their direction. They also start to become ‘normal’ political parties, subject to the same types of activities and bargaining found in more traditional parties. Their stances are clearly not to everyone’s liking, but their impact and durability can no longer be denied.
Blue-collar populists have had the most success in their signature issue, restricting migration. Norway2, Denmark3, Switzerland4, and Austria5 have all tightened their policies on refugees since populist parties entered into government, and Italy’s government6 is in the process of following suit. America’s populist president, Donald Trump, is yet again embroiled in a dispute with Congress over immigration policy as he attempts to reduce the number of illegal migrants who enter and reside within America. Poland7 and Hungary’s8 populist governments have also rejected pressure from the European Union to accept Syrian and other Middle Eastern refugees as part of the EU’s common policy.
Just the threat that blue-collar populist parties could take power has often been enough to push governments to propose migration restrictions. The Dutch Prime Minister fought off a challenge from conservative populist Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom in 2017 when he took a more demanding tone towards migrants, telling them in an open letter “act normal or get out”, and he has played a strong role in reducing African migration into the EU9. Sweden’s major parties both tacked to the right on immigration in this year’s general election to fend off the Sweden Democrats, as did Norway’s Labour and Centre parties in that country’s 2017 election. Angela Merkel’s government followed suit this year in a bid to help her CDU/CSU alliance win two recent state elections. Even French President Emmanuel Macron recently mentioned immigration as a concern to be dealt within his speech addressing the gilets jaunes protestors.
Denmark’s blue-collar populist Danish People’s Party’s (DF) two-decade growth in strength has even forced the long dominant Social Democrats to abandon allies on the left in the run up to next year’s campaign. Breaking a twenty-five-year agreement with the Social Liberal Party, Social Democratic leader Mette Frederiksen has led her party to vote with the bourgeois-populist government on a number of immigration restriction measures in the current parliament, including a ban on wearing burkas in public10 and a controversial effort to combat “ghettos” where many Muslim immigrants live.11 The populists have been so successful that there is now a new party to its right, the New Right, which argues that the DF is not tough enough on migration. Polls currently show it is likely to surpass the 2% threshold to enter the Folketing.
Even Hillary Clinton has got in on the act, recently saying that Europe needs to “get a handle on immigration” to stop the rise of blue-collar populism. Restricting immigration and reducing the number of Muslim refugees may remain very unwelcome policies among Western elites, but virtually everywhere else it’s a winning issue, forcing any leader who seeks to form a government to shift with the prevailing winds and endorse policies that would have been unacceptable five years ago.
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