May 24, 2021 - 7:00am
So that’s Eurovision done for another year. We can stop caring about songs we’ll never hear again sung by people we’ll never see again.
Instead, let’s turn our attention to the votes that actually matter i.e. those that elect the governments of our closest neighbours.
This is a contest with a very different vibe. Consider Spain. Until recently, this was one of the last European strongholds of the centre-Left. However, the conservative People’s Party is making a major comeback — bolstered by public frustration with lockdown. Normally, good news for the mainstream party of the centre-Right would be bad news for any challenger party of the hard Right. But not in Spain where the populist Vox party continues to prosper. Rather it is the liberal Citizens’ party that has suffered. Indeed, it’s close to extinction.
Spain, Sigma Dos poll:
PP-EPP: 31% (+5)
PSOE-S&D: 26% (-3)
VOX-ECR: 16% (+3)
UP-LEFT: 10% (-2)
MP-G/EFA: 4% (+3)
Cs-RE: 3% (-4)
ERC-G/EFA: 3%
JxCAT-NI: 2%
PNV-RE: 2%+/- vs. 7 December 2020
Fieldwork: 17 May 2021
Sample size: N/A➤https://t.co/NOkUdsZPR9 pic.twitter.com/bDXLqGYQ2K
— Europe Elects (@EuropeElects) May 21, 2021
Therefore if the People’s Party wins the next election then its obvious coalition partner is Vox, not the political centre. With a renewed migration crisis brewing, Spain could become as big a headache for the EU as Italy is.
Speaking of which, the ‘post-fascist’ Brothers of Italy party is now beginning to hit second place in opinion polls — just a sliver behind The League, another Right-wing populist party. Together the two command more than 40% of the vote. The technocratic government of Mario Draghi is all that’s stopping new elections, which would most likely result in victory for the hard Right. The main uncertainty is whether Matteo Salvini of the League or Giorgia Meloni of the Brothers would become Prime Minister. As things stand, Salvini is still in pole position, but the momentum is with Meloni.
Meanwhile the polls show that the Right-wing populist parties — or presidential candidates — are out in front in France, the Flemish part of Belgium and Finland. They also have a major presence in most other Western European nations (the UK being the biggest exception). As for the eastern half of the continent, let’s not even go there.
The Eurovision Song Contest is a rainbow-coloured vision of tolerance and togetherness. For hardcore British Remainers — always more interested in the European ideal than the reality — it symbolises a paradise lost.
Perhaps if they paid more attention to the continent’s actual politics, it would lessen their heartache.
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SubscribeWell, yes, if you kick normal, working people in the teeth every day for 30 or 40 years, then bring into their country millions of people who hate the West and wish to abolish it, then people will, eventually, kick back. The only sadness is that it took so long.
As the BBC didn’t point out in a very biased piece about the French police the other day, 59 French police men and women have been killed in the last six years. In contrast, six have been killed in the UK – and the UK is a somewhat criminal and violent country by western European standards. So, don’t be too surprised if le Pen wins next year.
The fact is that so-called ‘populism’ is the only thing standing between the West and a descent into third world ****holeism under the sword of a certain religious/political system. At least people are, finally, starting to fight back.
I wonder what they were discussing and in the Hofbräuhaus in München, a hundred years ago today?
Do you think the English people should have a secure existence in their own home, and an English future for their children; or do you think it’s “n a z i” for the English to do what they must to survive? If the latter, why?
The future of England is of paramount importance.
Currently this is under threat, and those in command should be aware of historical precedents for what may happen if they exceed their authority.
The catalyst for those happy drinkers in the Hofbräuhaus was 7 million unemployed, and then the ‘drum began to beat’.
‘We’ have a clear warning from history, and the omens are not good.
The pendulum never stops in the middle. Whatever point it sits on today is roughly the same point on the other side of the axis that it may reach. But since you raised the spectre of Germany, current day politics has done a fine job of ushering a new round of pogroms and a digital version of book burnings.
I agree, the countdown has begun.
“There’s a breathless hush in the Close to-night—
Ten to make and the match to win—
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.”*
(* Vitai Lampada:
Sir Henry Newbolt.)
Do you think the English must secure their existence and an English future for their children, or die out for something called equality?
Answer the question. And no more hit lerum ad absurdum, which shames you.
‘Here, too, there can be no compromise – there are only two possibilities: either victory of the Aryan, or annihilation of the Aryan and the victory of the Jew.’
Yep. You sound like one of them. You just updated the race/religion you hate.
Why are you an anti-white racist, Mark? Why do you hate the native when he is white-skinned?
You are almost a full century behind, Bridgeford. The nationalist branch of socialists were a temporary glitch in the socialist fabric, and since a long time it’s back to default standard business: international socialism is the ideology of antisemites, exemplified by the UK’s Labour Party and its catchy slogan “For the j¡had¡, not the Jew” [courtesy of J. Corbyn, the artist formerly known as ‘tragic grandpa‘].
I would agree with the multi people idea if it were world wide but it isn’t-whole continents are not safe for Europeans but the small continent of Europe should continue to be over crowded-doesn’t make sense. As most people are not asylum seekers-leaving countries in which they are the majority-why do people come here? Can only assume a financial benefit-surely thats not good enough. We’ll all go & move to Mark’s lovely house-wouldn’t be fair would it?
Well said. The un-contextualised way in which MSM reporters describe Le Pen et al as “populist” is part of a propaganda campaign designed to hobble the people’s judgement. In fact, such parties are no more than mainstream proponents of a small-c conservative nationalism. This outlook was common to all leading politicians, yes – even those of the left – until the later 1980s. It is because Labour abandoned this approach that it’s base has forsaken it. And why did Labour make this blunder? Because the Marxist assumptions of its apparat required an “oppressed group” in whose name to carry out “revolution”. Alongside this nonsense came the further folly of imagining that any rejection of “change” could be dismissed as “reactionary”. To react, apparently, is impermissible – even when disasters such as Rotherham or Nice or “BLM” are staring you in the face. The hard left’s long game requires that indigenous electorates will be too old or too demoralised – perhaps even outnumbered – before they realise their predicament. Like the Schlieffen plan, this game is in danger of failing – and we on the right have a small, closing window of opportunity. Let’s hope we use it.
“..normal working people every day”
So the people that voted for Macron (66%) are not normal?
Approximately 20% voted for Macron in the first round, I think. And that’s about 20% of the 75 to 80% that voted in total, so about 15% of the overall population. Sure, he got 66% in the two-candidate run off with the help of a massive media campaign in his favour, and Le Pen’s dismal performance in the debates. Right now the projections are that he would barely beat Le Pen in the run-off and those polls are within the margin of error. I have even seen some suggestions that in private polling Le Pen might be winning, which is why Barnier is desperately and hypocritically proposing a ban on immigration for three to five years. The fact is that many ‘normal working’ people voted for Blair and New Label, before realizing the error of their ways, albeit 20 years too late. And now those ‘normal working’ people vote for the Tories, because they do at least offer some hope of competence occasionally and perhaps a smidgen of integrity here and there.
Head to head she lost the votes. And “media campaign” didn’t stop her from making it to the final round.
It is quite fascinating to watch your mental gymnastics about ACTUAL votes.
Even after the GE2005 (remember that?) the normal people voted for the mainstream parties that supported the War.
You live in Blackpool (and you have been a burden on the state for most your life) = normal people as long as they vote YOUR way.
I was in my house in France during the election. Our mayor delivered a letter to every household urging them to vote for M.Macron, and claiming that anyone who voted for Le Pen was risking the reinstatement of a fascist state. This was in an area where the German/nasties had committed several atrocities during the Occupation.
Many people just decided not to vote at all. They couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Macron, and they feared their conscience if they voted for Le Pen. So the tactic worked.
ironically, Macron then appropriated a large part of the local taxation away from local government and sniffled it for himself/ central government.
Agreed!
Well said
These are parties attempting to speak for the true people of their land. For some reason this is considered immoral. Instead, it is moral, apparently, for political parties to speak against the people of the land and for corporate interests, colonising migrant peoples, international elites, and neo-marxists.
The world turned upside down.
Why do journalists and media commentators in general always talk and write as though a resurgence of the right is in and of itself an undesirable thing? More than that, why do they always talk and write as though all of us out here in the unwashed masses agree with them that it’s undesirable. We don’t. Many of us are sick, weary and tired of the left’s “compassion” for us. We just want it to stop.
The media’s job has long since moved from reflecting public sentiment about things to attempts at shaping it. In media speak, “right-wing” = bad; in addition, the media has often had an appeal to authority syndrome where the political class is concerned, oblivious to how the electeds’ vaunted experience has often made things worse.
The media. People tearing down statues = mostly peaceful protesters. People opposing the tearing down of statues = far right activists.
Was it not Tom Wolfe who coined the expression “Right stuff”?
Many thanks.
Indeed. I would actually quite like to try life under a really hard right regime. How could it be worse than Labour? What would be wrong with it?
Le Pen doesn’t strike me as that right wing. Pretty centrist, but she says unsayable things about immigrants, so the establishment reaches for the usual smears.
We are I think past the point when we get a new Mussolini somewhere in Europe. Had I to guess I’d say it will be Italy, Spain or France, and within about 10 years.
It’ll be a good thing. There are some minority gob5hites who need stamping on, good and hard.
Even closer to home – The (S)Socialist (N) Nationalist (P)Populist party of Scotland…….but then why worry about them….. they’re on the Left, and the Left are ALWAYS cute, cuddly and would never abuse the system, would they ?
The SNP’s hubris is bound to result in overreach.
It appears that any illegal immigrants, living in England, who have reached the end of the appeals process can get a bus up here and be home and dry. This might be rude awakening for SNP voters.
Whoops. That might backfire on them once the reality of immigration hits home. When Dundee starts looking like Bradford, they’ll maybe reconsider how wonderful multiculturalism is
It guarantees a hard border post-Joxit too. We simply cannot have any old Tom, Abdul and Harry who’d never be allowed into England going to Scawtlun instead and then being waved across the border. If the SNP wasn’t an open-doors immigration policy they can live with it.
Will we witness a European wide Reconquista.
It won’t start in Britain, but Italy, France and Spain are all good places for the spark to take hold.
But the establishment will be agains’t them, so they will need to get their supporters on the streets and ultimately arm them.
Brit’s must be willing to head to Europe to take part when it happens.
Millions will be given just weeks to jump on a plane and leave, while those that refuse will be expelled to the North of Africa en-masse.
‘Iacta alea est’.
I am afraid you are just showing your ignorance, if you cannot type in English.
With the possible exception of ‘Consummatum est’, & et tu Brute, it must one of the best known Latin quotations in common usage.
I am astonished that you do not know lt.
I’ll give you a clue. It was famously uttered by Caesar* when crossing the Rubicon.
(* although he pinched it from the earlier Greek playwright Menander.)
Never heard of it.
But I did give up Latin at school in favour of maths
You made the correct choice.
However to put you out of your misery, the traditional translation is : “The die* is cast”.
Caesar made it when deciding to cross the river Rubicon and thus initiate the Civil War.
A war between the Establishment, the good, the smug and the rich, men like Pompey and Cicero.
Against the maverick, rank outsider and leader of the ‘populares’*,*
Julius Caesar.
Does this remind you of anyone, or any recent events?
(* Die= Dice.)
(** the mob, or plebeians.)
It is Alea iacta est
at least that’s what it was in Asterix
Not according to Suetonius.*
However either will do . There is also the problem that est was a copyist mistake ** and it should be esto.
It would be an unwarranted imposition on the patience of UnHerd
Readers to take the matter further.
(*Suetonius, Vita Divi Iuli (The Life of the deified Julius), 121 AD, paragraph 32.)
(**Semi literate Medieval Monks.)
You might wish to believe in a Nueva Reconquista, but from where I stand in France I see millions of big strong fit Middle Eastern and African men on the one side opposing an apathetic, physically challenged, quasi-comatose European population with high levels of obesity, many of whom look like they couldn’t punch their way out of their own over-stretched shirts, on the other. Suddenly, the reintroduction of two years of military service seems like a damn good idea.
Rather, Europe looks ripe for a Reconquista via the Straits of Gibraltar by believers in the Caliphate, who have never lost sight of Spain and southern France at the very least in their desire for a global Umma that encompasses all of Europe.
Western Europe has tiny armies and reduced military budgets. What’s to stop 800,000 rather than 8,000 crossing the Straits one day to join the hundreds of thousands of potential insurgents already here and arriving daily? Would the spineless, useless EU have the wherewithal to blow them out of the water, or would it simply welcome them with open arms?
Read Algerian authors Yasmina Khadra or Boualem Sansal to see how Islamic governance really operates and how many so-called moderates become fanatics or just go with the flow and accept the exactions against infidels once the extremists are in the ascendancy. Michel Houellebecq’s Submission is the most benign and least likely option for an Islamized France or Europe. No civilization, as far as I know, has ever survived a massive influx of peoples with different ideas and cultures.
Insubstantial, pointless article by the way!
Tanks and bombers should level things up – just as they do in Israel.
I would hope so, provided they don’t hide among the civilian population, as in Israel. Complacency and believing something cannot happen are at the root of many military disasters.
Only if someone is willing to use them. Our ‘leaders’ aren’t. The future is Islamic, because nobody with the power to do so is willing to stop it.
One Trident submarine could/should consign Islam to the dustbin of history.
Would that it could! The religion of peace has implanted itself all over the world and is slowly undermining its hosts everywhere. Where exactly would you aim your missiles? Mecca, Jerusalem, Istanbul, Jakarta, Manila, Brussels, Paris; or somewhere closer to home like Bradford, Birmingham or Leicester?
Well that’s an interesting question.
With 24 *missiles to play with all, major centres of population outside Europe, must be the obvious targets.
For European Operations I dare say there would plenty of “volunteers “ if they were suitably rewarded.
There are, you must know, plenty of historical precedents for a course of action.
(* per submarine.)
Perhaps a preemptive strike on Karachi and Lahore before Pakistan can fire off any of its nuclear weapons? Our friends in India might not appreciate it, but then again, Modi is hellbent on a policy of eradicating all traces of colonialism from India at the moment, and by that he largely means the Moguls – at least from what I could gather during a recent reportage on Arte. Partition is beginning to look more and more like an eminently good idea.
Yes definitely Pakistani must be the primary target as that would emasculate
rest of Islam fairly smartly.
With modern technology there should be no ‘fall-out’ if the weapon is dropped at the correct height. So India has nothing to fear.
As for secondary targets, Mecca must be high on the list, if only for its morale effect.
Perhaps, but our domestic Pakistani population might not be too happy about it. How would you deal with the repercussions? They might not content themselves with burning a few effigies and books.
Wishful thinking
‘Kristallnacht’?
It’s not in the least surprising. If you spend every waking moment nagging people about what they ought to be thinking, saying and doing, eventually people will want to tell you to shove your virtue-signalling right up where the sun doesn’t shine.
I think I know what would work as a counter to far right populism (so-called – it’s probably not much more than common sense policy making), and that is ‘do nothing’.
If I had the appetite and wherewithal I would start a political party that had as its one manifesto commitment to make absolutely no change for five years.
No green agenda pursued, no wonderful this or amazing that, just a whole bunch of nothing at all.
Why would this be attractive to people?
Because people are so desperately sick of bouncy bouncy people brimming with enthusiasm who have no regard whatsoever for the impact on ordinary people’s lives of their gosh isn’t it wonderful policies.
I would vote in a heartbeat for a politician who just said: “right, we are going to leave you alone for a bit. Enjoy the peace and quiet, because in five years there may be something we have to change. But right now we are not going to. So relax, aaaand breathe.”.
Also, when invited to explain my terrible policy of doing nothing, I would tell every interviewer to go f**k himself, and say that I offer no explanation, only a commitment. Vote for it if you like, don’t if you don’t.
It’s almost as if citizens have figured out that the professional political class is perhaps less professional than its members would like to believe, that self-service has replaced public service and that many of those citizens are treated more like subjects.
Good. This is far less about right and left than it is about competence. People have grown tired of being told that this issue or that is somehow their fault despite billions of their dollars being taken to allegedly address that issue. The American conservative William F. Buckley had a famous quote about preferring to be governed by the first 100 names in the Cambridge phone directory than by the Harvard faculty. Seems a few people in Europe have reached a similar conclusion.
If the UK can leave the EU due to right wing populist pressure, then any other country can do the same. Eventually and probably suddenly, the EU will fall apart much the same as the USSR did. In 1988 nobody thought that was likely either. A few years later it had all gone
Continental populism won’t necessarily translate into leaving the EU.
In France its about reducing non european immigration
It wasn’t right wing populist pressure. It was across-the-board populist pressure.
Its deeply sad that those who hold/defend the socially conservative viewpoint of “no taxation without representation” are increasingly mis-labelled as ‘right-wing’ and populist.
Why is right wing deemed “Populism”? Not sure I agree with the opening statement. I thought it was popular to have liberal, left wing views? Would it not be more appropriate to have the heading “Across Europe, the populists are on the retreat.”
I was expecting something a tad more interesting to read… Instead the “article” just stopped there, going nowhere and without making any real point
How do I downvote an article?
yes – it should have explored Eastern Europe – instead of saying ‘let’s not even go there’.
“Populist” is just the word politicians use for parties other than their own that are irritatingly popular with actual voters.
Quite, as in parties that actually want your vote, as opposed to parties that want to tell you how to think
These days everything right of progressive is alt-right, populist, fascist, ……. – insert another trigger word.
What is ‘populist’ ? Isn’t it just a contemptuous alternative to ‘popular’, uttered with a sneer by the self-styled ‘elite’ ? An excuse to dismiss widely held opinions and beliefs?
It’s the code word used for parties that offer the general public what they want, instead of telling them that what they want is evil and they need to shut up and accept the opposite.
This seems an odd statement. Under FPTP our major parties are de facto coalitions, as is the current government, which has many features of right-wing populism. It seems very hard to argue that the UK is exceptionally free of right-wing populism.
I’m afraid things are a little more complicated than your explanation, at least in Spain. Currently we have a centre left party in government along with a communist party and just about all the regional nationalist parties whose stated goal is the dismemberment of Spain. For this reason, almost entirely ,(there’s also the current government’s ineptitude in just about everything) the centre right PP has made a comeback. People are frightened by the very real threat to democracy of the current government.
With the flight to the High Ground of the once-centre-left PSOE, the centre right has moved over on the spectrum and now reflects the interests of the majority better than any party self-identifying as left. Not an isolated case is it?
I find it interesting that Le Pen appears to be aligning with environmentalist policy positions. But I don’t know how serious this is. This would be an interesting deviation from the usual expectation.
Aren’t the greens getting very popular in Germany? Usually fond of left wing policies but if they are serious will have to limit population entry to deal with scarce resources.-which would make them right wing
I think they have more things like preservation of the planet in mind rather than their country. So, population control might be a fitting policy.
Having said that, cliché example but the National Socialists were a prominent example of combining progressive ideas of the time (e.g. eugenics) with a nationalist outlook.
If the ‘fringe’ and ‘populist’ parties continue to shift the political centre of gravity, this may be even more important than winning any single election.The politicians can keep chasing the political centre but it’s a moving target.
Well here’s one yank who has gotten an unexpected sociology lesson reading every single comment below.
Maybe some of you discouraged limeys should jump ship and come to America. We have a lot more room to breathe here.
And we could use a little help over here, rebuilding the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan; ‘t’is no easy task striving to drag a comatose elephant out of a trumpian mudhole.
Look it is just ridiculous to let in people in such numbers that they break off into independent communities. On top of that, to have governments so thoroughly scared of them, that they enforce the law unequally.
I didn’t pay attention to the title, and certainly things are lost or edited on the internet, but, a number of years back, I saw video of certain folks demonstrating against other folks in a Westfalien German city, raising their arms in N*zi salutes. The policeman in front of them was conveniently looking away from them. Good thing, since the N*zi salute ispunishable by law. And, no, these people were not the far right, but the usual suspects, who must never be named.