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.

A further reason for the determination to exclude the populists is the war in Ukraine. In 2023, FPÖ deputies staged a walk-out when Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the Austrian parliament. With Russia-friendly governments in neighbouring Hungary and Slovakia, an FPÖ-led Austria would consolidate a pro-Moscow bloc in the heart of Europe. Finally, with the German political establishment struggling to maintain the cordon sanitaire against the far-Right AfD, the last thing they need is their southern cousins setting a bad example.

As to what happens next in Austria, it’s reported that the new leadership of the ÖVP is now open to negotiations with the FPÖ, thus U-turning on the previous policy. But if those talks also fail, the only way forward is to hold fresh elections. But there’s a problem with that too. Austrian voters are severely unimpressed with the establishment attempt to exclude last year’s election winners from power. As a result, support for the FPÖ has soared to a record 37% against 21% for the second-placed conservatives.

If that’s reflected in the next election result, the heirs of Jörg Haider won’t just lead the next Austrian government, but dominate it.

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Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.

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