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January 6, 2025 - 1:00pm
It hasn’t been a good weekend for the Austrian political establishment. After months of fruitless effort, coalition talks between the centre-right People’s Party (ÖVP) and the centre-left social democrats (SPÖ) have finally collapsed. Such was the humiliation that the Austrian Chancellor and ÖVP leader, Karl Nehammer, announced his resignation from both roles. Even more stark is the news that Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen has given the green light to hard-Right Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) leader Herbert Kickl to attempt to form the new ruling coalition.
This confirms what many have known for some time: the mainstream parties have failed in their attempt to exclude the populist Right from power. That they’ve bungled things so badly is surprising because for many decades Austrian politics was a clientelist duopoly between the ÖVP and SPÖ. The pair are well-versed in the art of divvying up the spoils of power.
However, this helps explain why Austria became one of the first European counties to feel the impact of contemporary populism. In 1986, the charismatic Jörg Haider became leader of the marginal FPÖ, taking it sharply to the Right on an anti-immigration platform.
Along with the likes of Jean-Marie Le Pen in France, he became a pioneer of the new European populism. In fact, he went one further than Le Pen, gaining a share of national power by joining a coalition government with the ÖVP in 2000. At the time, this scandalised Europe and there was serious talk of ejecting Austria from the EU.
Of course, 25 years on, the post-war taboo is well and truly broken. Right-wing populists regularly participate in EU governments — as in Italy and the Netherlands. Or, alternatively, they exercise influence from offstage — as in France and Sweden. So having included the FPÖ in government three times before, why was the Austrian establishment so keen to exclude the populists now?
The main reason is that at the last general election in September, the FPÖ scored their best ever general election result, coming a clear first with 29% of the vote. Therefore the party wouldn’t just be joining a coalition government, but leading it with its current leader, Herbert Kickl, as Chancellor. From an EU perspective that would have meant another seat for the hard Right on the European Council and probably on the European Commission too.
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Subscribedefinition: Populism is a range of political stances that emphasize the idea of the common ‘people’ and often position this group in opposition to a perceived ‘elite’.
It is no longer a pejorative term.
Tell that to the elderly progressives who run things in the press.
I love Right Wing populists! Well done them … hopefully they will do a much better job of looking after their country and their electorate plus keeping them safe from the religion of peace than the leftist loons in the UK.
What a farce: it was so obvious that the talks between the ÖVP, SPÖ and Neos were doomed from the outset. 100 wasted days when we could have just cut to the chase.
Let the FPÖ govern: if they mess up they’ll be out the next time and their support will collapse. I cannot be doing with this neurotic chicken dance where the only thing holding a coalition together is the determination to keep the FPÖ out.
Will look forward to the swearing in of a Kickl-led government: not because I like Kickl or the FPÖ but because it will be fun watching Van der Bellen, the symbol of the failed establishment that permitted this pantomime, looking like he’s sucking on 50,000 lemons.
Sounds like you’re a local or at least clued-in.
I don’t see the Ukraine thing as pro-Moscow more an affirmation of the inherent neutrality of Austria stemming from the post-WW2 settlement where the Red Army pulled out of Austria on condition of that neutrality.
Care to comment?
You have the basic gist of it, most Austrians are very fond of their neutrality and understand the value of not being dragged into foreign (mis)adventures by NATO, unfortunately this isn’t the case for the political class, by and large.
It’s a bit ironic that Austrian neutrality has been under assault by the establishment parties (which is everyone but the FPÖ unfortunately), with the outgoing chancellor taking steps to integrate Austria further into NATO “through the backdoor” (as Kickl said during the campaign).
Maybe the best way to go is to let them form a minority government, while the other parties to their best to stymie all their proposed legislation.
Excellent. May the dominoes fall and if populism turns out to be a delusion, let’s find Plan C. Plan A is dead. .
Exactly. Just quit feeding us the same neoliberal globalist schtick. They don’t even really believe it themselves, but they have nothing, no Plan C. The bottom line is that people are dissatisfied, and until they’re no longer dissatisfied, ordinary political parties will find themselves besieged by newcomers promising any sort of change. If Populism fails, the people won’t just go running back to the establishment, they’ll consider even more radical solutions. This only gets worse the longer they dither around trying to bail out a sinking ship.
Only one reference to “far right” in this article, but I probably missed a couple. It’s the go-to phrase in lazy journalism.
Message to establishment politicians and neoliberal globalists. The beatings will continue until your attitude changes. You can either show some humility and offer novel solutions that appeal to the people, or you can just keep delaying and offering more of the same failed policies that people are rejecting. One of those sounds like the better option even if it involves a lot of crow eating and short term sacrifice. The other path leads either to irrelevance and marginalization if they lose, and possibly revolution and civil strife if they somehow subvert democratic processes.
If FPO get 37% of the vote what would be their vote share of real Austrians? 50%? 60%?
“Real” Austrians as opposed to “cardboard cut out” Austrians?
Right wing populists…the go to phrase when the Left lose an election. And Left-concendus media outlets like Unherd (stupid, stupid name) write about it.
A dangerous moment given this party’s pro-Russia stances.
Not surprising. Austria has form in giving rise to far right figures.