The global war against populism

From Argentina to the Netherlands, countries are toppling like dominoes.

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

It's been a catastrophic week. A week of defeat. One of those weeks where you stare in disbelief at the world around you and start to ask some very dark questions about where it all ends. A week where countries topple like dominoes to the populist banner.

Argentina fell to Javier Milei, a freakshow Hayekian cosplay fanatic. In the Netherlands, longtime far-right provocateur and fashion disaster Geert Wilders secured the most votes in the general election. In the US, polls showed Donald Trump beating Biden at the election next year. And in the EU, Hungary's wannabe tinpot tyrant Viktor Orban was successfully managing to stall Ukraine accession talks in honour of his boss, Vladimir Putin. 

Just one week. And it felt like the balance of political power was tilting once again in the direction of chaos and authoritarianism.

We fooled ourselves into thinking that this period was over. Biden beat Trump in 2019. Brexit, the curtain opener on the global populist wave, has turned from a glistening promise into a poisoned pill, with a commensurate collapse in Tory support. Lula da Silva succeeded in turfing out the belligerent supervillain Jair Bolsonaro last year. In Poland, an astonishing display of resistance by liberals under Donald Tusk managed to seize back the country from proto-despotism last month. 

But it's not over. This is a long war, in which individual battles will be won and lost. Around the world, country after country is making the choice: let's play roulette. Let's just spin the wheel and see how this completely insane right-wing dipshit does. 

For some undernanalysed reason, you can analyse modern politics through hairstyle. The rule is this: if they have a despicable haircut, they'll have despicable politics. It's like a 60s Bond screenwriter is in charge of the global storyline. To Boris Johnson and Trump, we can now add Milei and Wilders. 

Milei is the one who doesn't quite fit the narrative. He supports Ukraine against Russia. He's liberal on sex work, drugs and gender identity. He's a far-flung laissez faire libertarian, rather than an outright authoritarian. But he is also profoundly right-wing and quite completely insane. He has pledged to liquidate nearly all government departments, regularly boasts of "remaining three months without ejaculating", dresses up as a cosplay superhero called General AnCap, claims to have direct communication with God, and takes political instruction from conversations with the clone of his dog Conan.

Wilders is on the opposite end of the spectrum. He is exactly what we expect. We've seen him prancing around Dutch politics for decades, selling the kind of hateful political outlook which has become mainstream around Europe: Anti-Islam, anti-immigration, anti-EU. He's now won the most seats at the Dutch election, opening the way for coalition talks if anyone will work with him. And now we see that dark-stained process which has defined far-right history: the accommodation of conservatives with that which they should reject.

Dilan Yeşilgöz, head of the liberal-conservative People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, is making subtle noises which indicate she may be willing to work with Wilders. Pieter Omtzigt, leader of the new centre-right New Social Contract, is doing the same. Taken together, these three parties would total 81 seats - a majority in the 150-seat chamber.

If it takes place, it would just be the most recent accommodation. Ideologically, it has already happened. The election campaign was dominated by the issue of immigration, Wilders' chosen topic, and framed by opposition to it, his favoured approach. When political parties try to ape the far-right, they merely validate them. They tacitly accept their views and therefore prompt voters to ask themselves the worst of all questions: Why not just go for the full-fat version?

In the US, poll after poll shows Trump surging forward. An NBC News poll last Sunday had him leading Biden 46% to 44%, a Yahoo News/YouGov poll put it at 44% to 42%, and a Quinnipiac University poll on Wednesday had it at 48% to 46%. But the bleaker picture emerges on the economic issue. 

Biden's economic agenda has been a masterclass in how to grapple with the substantive issues of populism. It's been a test case in the progressive debate over how you tackle the enemy. He went straight for the genuine economic anxieties which led people to Trump and did something about them. None of the hands-off neoliberalism of the Bill Clinton or Tony Blair era. 

Instead, the Inflation Reduction Act provided a massive Keynesian stimulus package, pumping up to $1.2 trillion into the economy and drawing in at least $270 billion in private sector investments. It helped prompt a spectacular period of post-pandemic growth, the likes of which we can only dream about in Britain - 2.6% GDP growth and an unemployment rate of just 3.5%, coupled with more moderate inflation than we've seen elsewhere.

The money has been directed at the most substantial climate change initiative in American history, delivering investment into wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicle batteries. US solar output is expected to be 50% higher in a decade than it would have been otherwise. Solar and wind are projected to contribute 40% of US electricity by 2030, contributing to a 41% fall in US greenhouse gas emissions from 2005.

Crucially, this left-wing position is delivered in a bow intended to appeal to patriotic voters. Its 'Buy American'  provisions provide subsidies and tax credits for battery components and cars to be produced in US factories or with countries it has a free trade agreement with. These provisions are so strenuous, the EU says they mutilate the post-war liberal world order's insistence on free trade and are incompatible with World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules.

The thinking is ingenuous and the results are extraordinary. But here's the thing: It hasn't worked. Fifty-eight per cent of Americans say Biden's economic policies have made the economy worse, up from 50% a year ago. Only two per cent of Republicans and 48% of Democrats say economic conditions had improved under Biden. It's as if the objective reality of the American economy has come completely unmoored from people's perceptions. 

Things are at their most acute in the EU. Not so long ago, it felt as if the Union had found a way to manage the tinpot wannabe despots in its midst. Through an extraordinary act of deal-brokering, it managed to get a rule-of-law mechanism through the Council, providing the ability to economically punish countries like Poland and Hungary when they undermined an independent judiciary. 

It's because of this mechanism that Europe has been able to halt the corrosion of basic liberal democratic values in member states. Orban, Hungary's leader and arguably the archetype of the modern populist phenomenon, is missing €13 billion from EU funds because of it, and €37 billion more widely. He has consequently started to moderate and partly reverse his attacks on Hungarian society, including through an anti-corruption institution.

But the restraint imposed on him has now started to fall apart. Reports this week from Politico and European political analyst Mujtaba Rahman show that Orban is on the verge of successfully sabotaging Ukraine's ascension talks to the EU.

He is aiming at the beating heart of the populist war. Ukraine is where the battle of ideas is at its most acute, where words have turned to slaughter. It is a pivot in world history. If it falls, Putin's worldview will be validated and spread through his proxies. If it stands firm, authoritarianism will have been pushed back and the basic values of the West will be confirmed.

The EU could never compete with the US on military equipment. It doesn't have the stock, the reserves, or the capacity. But it could contribute two things: Money and a political home. It could fund the Ukrainian state, the army, civil servants, pensioners - basically help it stay solvent. And it could offer EU membership, the dream of which originally motivated the protestors who took to Independence Square for the revolution a decade ago. 

But there is a problem. Accession, like so much else in the EU, requires unanimity. That hands Orban all the cards. This one crackpot pro-Putin belligerent can hold up the whole process. And that is precisely what he is doing. 

Orban's gambit is powerfully effective. He has maximum leverage. He seems likely to remove any hope of progress at the Council meeting in December. 

This is the state of play. It's not pretty. It's not pleasant to look at it. But we have to grapple with reality. 

Next year is crucial. In Britain, we've become giddy and complacent, because our own elections are likely to draw the populist nightmare to a close. But that is not the picture internationally. 

European parliamentary elections in June could follow the Dutch experience, centring on immigration and returning countless right-wing populists, effectively turning the European parliament into a cancerous far-right body operating at a continental scale. In the US, current polls - with all the obvious caveats about how far out we are - could return Trump to power. From there, he could eradicate Ukraine's ability to defend itself against Russian aggression, working in tandem with the European crank-army to obliterate its defence and open up the continent to Putin's dominance.

It all seems unconscionable and alarmist. It is all perfectly possible. 

We're not in 2016 yet. But we are in 2015, that period of innocence before the storm, in which there is still time to change course if people who believe in liberal democracy see the flashing warning signs and commit to acting upon them: no cooperation with populism, no accepting its framing, no elections on the policy battlegrounds, no tolerance of its advance. A recognition that the survival of our societies and our values involves the full-blooded and total rejection of that which would destroy them. 

We can't make the same mistakes all over again. If this week doesn't wake us up, nothing will.

Who to follow

Two people helped me with this piece and really should be on your list if they're not already. 

The first is US pundit Molly Jong-Fast, host of the Fast Politics podcast, and generally one of the funniest, wittiest and most acute observers of US politics. You can follow her here.

And the second is Mujtaba Rahman, a one man oasis of trust-worthy and morally clear-sighted insight into what is going on in Europe. His thread on what is going on with Orban, Ukraine and the EU is absolutely vital reading. You can follow him here.

What brought me joy this week

I’ll try to be more cheerful next week. But sweet Christ, it doesn’t come naturally and the world offers precious little opportunity to change.

The one thing that helps is Christmas sandwiches. It’s culturally insane that we restricts these delicacies to a few months a year. Something magical happens when you combine turkey, stuffing, gravy and pigs-in-blankets in a sandwich, especially when you add roast potatoes. It’s partly the taste. But ultimately it is psychological triumph of knowing you have inserted a left-over dinner between bread slices, a tender transgression.

It’s improved by the fact that pigs in blankets is one of the most fucked names for food. It’s so ridiculously creepy. Yes, let’s just tuck you in, nice and warm, in a blanket made up of slices of your own back. Anyway, that’s what cheered me up this week.