‘Is that him? It’s the sound of his motorbike escort, I’m sure of it!”
The heaving crowd I found myself in under the scorching Sicilian sun late last September was edgy, expectant and oh-so Italian. Selfie-primed, fake diamond-cased mobile phones glittered all around, while local journalists posed purposefully behind impossibly glamorous sunglasses.
And who was the handsome leather-clad biker who appeared on a purring Piaggio amid whoops and yells of adulation? No film star or pop idol, I soon discovered, but Alessandro di Battista, a prominent figure in the populist Five Star Movement — an opposition party, but Italy’s most talked-about political group. Why the bike and leathers — couldn’t he preach in a suit on a stage like other politicians, I inquired? Because, he told me, gesturing to the crowd of admirers, Five Star was different: “of the people, for the people”.
Di Battista’s slogan is not dissimilar to Donald Trump’s rallying cry to “put America first”. It’s a sentiment I’ve been exposed to increasingly of late while filming ‘After Brexit: The Battle for Europe’. From Sicily I travelled to Brussels, Paris and Berlin meeting the nationalist-minded, anti-establishment leaders taking Europe by storm. The languages may change, but the message does not.
‘Au nom du peuple’ — ‘In the name of the people’ — is the banner under which French populist Marine Le Pen is fighting to become her country’s next president. Once on the fringes of the far right, the National Front party has recently seen a surge in its popularity. Marine, as she likes to be called, has worked hard to cleanse her party of the virulently anti-Semitic, xenophobic image that thrived under her father’s leadership. French voters are no longer ashamed to admit they support the National Front.
So does that mean France is lurching to the far right? And that the millions of Europeans now supporting the Danish People’s Party, the Freedom Party of Austria, the Alternative for Germany, the Netherlands’ Party for Freedom and similar movements across Europe are all white supremacist xenophobes? Hardly.
Are all these parties now entirely free of racist, far-right elements? Absolutely not. But their party leadership detected yawning gaps in European politics, which they’re now successfully exploiting. Take Stockholm, where I met a couple of smartly dressed twenty-somethings at the height of Europe’s recent migrant crisis. There were more asylum seekers per capita in Sweden than any other European country. Famed for its liberal values and open society, it was not deemed permissible to question immigration openly.
It was for that reason Jenny and Per were new converts to the far-right Sweden Democrats. They did not regard themselves as extremists, but the Sweden Democrats was the only party echoing their concerns, calling for a ban on new arrivals. They had felt voiceless in the country’s political centre. A few cross-European flights later and I found myself at a fast-food stand in Berlin, listening to a heated conversation about what three German office workers deemed the “umpteenth Greek bailout”. “We have to help,” a middle-aged woman at the table said. “What have those poor Greeks got?”
“That’s what I hate about the damned euro,” exploded her colleague. “We’re forced to help. But why on earth should I dig deep into my pockets?”
It turned out that the euro-hater, Joerg, a computer programmer, was an enthusiastic supporter of the Alternative for Germany party. “Why do Germans have be economically liable for everyone else? “I haven’t bothered voting for years,” Joerg admitted. “But AfD says out loud what I think. Finally I feel represented.”
This is election year in Germany and the party has now set its sights on the raging immigration debate, prompted by a recent slew of attempted and successful terrorist attacks and the arrival of more than a million asylum seekers.
“I hate the racist overtones,” a businesswoman in the genteel spa town of Baden Baden told me, “but we can’t continue saying yes to anything and everything European because we’re so desperate to prove ourselves after our dark history. Someone has to say stop. For now that’s the AfD.” This is how Europe’s populists have been able to storm their way up the public opinion polls. There’s always a part of society that feels ignored, neglected and left behind by the political establishment but the number of angry and resentful voters has exploded in Europe.
The 2008 economic crash, with its devastating impact in the Eurozone countries of the south, the bank bailouts, the apparent inability to control the migrant crisis or protect people from terrorist attacks has left a growing number of Europeans feeling vulnerable and afraid for the future of their families. During our own Brexit debate, traditional political parties, big business and the European Union were regularly dismissed as detached, self-serving elites.
“2016 was the year the Anglo-Saxon world woke up — first with Brexit, then with Donald Trump,” Marine Le Pen told me at her campaign HQ in Paris. “2017 will be the year of European patriots, Madame. You’ll see.”
With elections in France, Germany, the Netherlands, and possibly Italy, this year, we soon will. Though their policies vary, a Euro-sceptic, anti-immigration and nostalgic nationalist vein runs through all of those moving right. Yet the stigma of the National Front and Austria’s Freedom Party has led them to claim they are ‘’neither of the right, nor the left”.
They have leftist social policies, such as demanding dignity for workers, while striking the security-minded tones so popular with the right — but, above all, they have launched a marketing drive to entice Europe’s anxious middle classes of the political centre. Whether these parties are elected to office or not, the rise of Ukip in Britain has shown that you don’t have to be in government to effect national politics significantly if public opinion is blowing in your favour. I’m not convinced that Le Pen will emerge victorious — but it is more likely that Europe’s anti-establishment parties will perform so well that their shouting from the sidelines will become even more influential.
It is that prospect which is troubling the EU and Nato. Many of Europe’s populists, notably Le Pen, are close to Moscow. They are also admirers of President Trump. Anti-migrant Geert Wilders, leader of the Netherlands’ Party for Freedom, trumpeted that politics would never be the same again after Trump’s presidential victory. A weaker Europe and a fractured, even vanquished European Union, would suit Vladimir Putin and his American counterpart.
For protectionist Trump it would open up better trade possibilities. For geostrategist Putin it could make easier his aim to reassert Russian influence over eastern and central Europe. This is where the explosion of populism in Europe takes on a more global dimension: with much at stake and many nervous of how Trump’s presidency may evolve — particularly after his recent attempted travel ban on citizens from seven countries — voters may be tempted back into the better-the-devil-you-know camp of political parties. But there is no telling what might happen: polls are unreliable, accepted wisdom crushed. Europe’s voters are in a volatile frame of mind.
The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2017
