What we got wrong about the populist right

This is part of a Data Points series on the UK election

Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) party won a record 32 per cent of the vote in last weekend’s French legislative elections, doubling the share it secured two years ago and securing 143 seats in parliament. While it lost out to the leftist and centrist coalitions, its place as the largest single party now in the legislature is nonetheless emblematic of the ongoing rise of the populist right across continental Europe.

By contrast, for all the talk of a Reform UK “surge” — and speculation that Nigel Farage’s party might overtake the Conservatives — it ended up with 14 per cent of the vote in the UK’s general election. This was only a marginal improvement over its predecessor Ukip’s 13 per cent in the 2015 general election, and with fewer top-two finishes at the constituency level than Ukip had then.

Evidently British voters stand alone as bastions of sanity and moderation against the dark forces sweeping the continent. Or do we?

The problem with the “rise of the right” narrative has always been that the extent to which parties of the radical right succeed or fail has as much, if not more, to do with the supply of effective parties and politicians as demand for them.

A recent survey by FocalData found that 37 per cent of Britons would consider supporting a hypothetical party that believes immigration, LGBT+ rights and environmentalism have gone too far and that the country’s culture is under attack. This is a higher share than those asked the same question in France, Germany, Italy or the Netherlands (all of these calculations excluded “don’t knows”). The latter two countries are currently governed by coalitions of which hard-right parties are the leading component.

Why is this appetite for rightwing populism met in some countries but not others?

One factor is competition, both on the issues and in the depth of attachment to existing parties. Focaldata found that a plurality of Britain’s populist right sympathisers usually vote for Labour, followed by the Conservatives, with Reform third. Long-established ties to the enduring main parties are hard to break.

Similarly important is what the parties offer beyond rightwing positions on culture. The most successful such parties in Europe — Fidesz in Hungary and the conservative nationalist Law and Justice in Poland — are left-leaning on economics while rightwing on social issues, positioning themselves squarely in the quadrant inhabited by most voters. In France, RN has moved in a similar direction, as has Geert Wilders’ PVV party, which now forms part of the Dutch government. Giorgia Meloni’s ruling Brothers of Italy party (FdI) is no crusader for free markets.

Reform’s more freewheeling libertarian politics appeal to a much smaller base. Farage offers sweeping tax cuts, and tax relief for private healthcare and health insurance. Maybe this platform works on the American right but it has a very limited audience here.

Another factor is the size and reach of the party machine. RN has had hundreds of local councillors elected across France for decades, giving the party a local track record in many areas as well as the resources to campaign effectively almost anywhere. By contrast, Reform has just 15 local councillors: so far, it’s more a cult of personality than a serious party.

Finally there is the question of visible representation. The prominence of Le Pen and RN’s 28-year-old social media savvy party president Jordan Bardella probably plays a part in garnering just as many votes from twenty-somethings as sixtysomethings, and among women as men.

Reform, by contrast, fronted by an older and exclusively male cast, has so far fared much worse with younger voters than older ones, although there are burgeoning signs of some success in appealing to young British men. On July 4, Reform came second only to Labour among 18-24-year-old men, and was more popular with this group than with men aged 30.

The UK may be bucking some of what we’ve seen elsewhere in Europe, but British liberals should be neither smug nor complacent. Reform has such a low ceiling not because voters in the UK are any less nativist or reactionary than their continental counterparts, but because it has distanced itself from the electorate on other key issues, lacks a serious party machine, and fails to reflect the faces of modern Britain. Give it time, and a more effective team of politicians could well bring the rise of the radical right to British shores.

john.burn-murdoch@ft.com, @jburnmurdoch