On Sunday, the European Union held its parliamentary elections, and some startling trends are emerging as the results have come in. Various right-wing parties made gains in the EU parliament, and one left-wing politician despaired, calling it "a bitter evening" that left leftists like her "disappointed."
In France, National Rally, the party led by polarizing figure Marine Le Pen, won roughly twice as many votes as President Emmanuel Macron's Renaissance. The results so shook Macron that he called for national assembly elections set for June 30 and July 7, a move that The Spectator’s John Keiger suggests is “an attempt to scare French voters into rejecting Le Pen.”
A German coalition of center-right parties won 30% of the vote, while the far-right AfD outperformed the country’s leading Social Democrats to the tune of 16% to 14%. These results don’t bode well for the Social Democrats just over a year before national elections.
In Italy, Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy increased its support, winning 29% of the votes. Spain’s right-leaning People’s Party claimed just over a third of the vote, while two other parties on the right, Vox and the entertainingly named Se Acabó La Fiesta — “The Party’s Over” — made impressive, if low, showings.
Europeans are fed up with unfettered immigration and crippling inflation — why does that sound familiar? — so they’re rejecting the left-wing status quo and turning to various parties on the right. These parties operate off varying degrees of populism and nationalism rather than the conservatism that we’re used to here in the States, but it does look like the European right is breaking through.
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The mainstream media on both sides of the Atlantic have tried to tar and feather these parties with the scary epithet "far right," although that doesn't always fit. Instead, I'd borrow a term my friend and colleague VodkaPundit coined: "further right."
“Can the ‘far right’ still really be called the ‘far right’ if it becomes the mainstream?” The Spectator’s Freddy Gray muses. “That’s a question for political scientists to ponder as Sunday’s European Union elections results came tumbling in.”
He also points out:
The European Parliament elections are often dismissed as little more than an opinion poll — since the Parliament’s powers are limited and it is the EU Commission which makes the decisions that most affect people’s lives. But the general political direction of the continent is clear: parties that stand strongly against immigration, that embrace anti-globalist rhetoric, and reject green ideology are doing well. The Greens are in retreat.
The once-unacceptable right is now in power in Italy, Hungary, and Slovakia. It is part of governing coalitions in Sweden (where it is in retreat) and Finland and will be in the Netherlands shortly. It’s leading polls in Belgium and Austria too. After the weekend’s European results, which gave Flemish nationalists a victory, the Belgian prime minister Alexander De Croo announced his resignation.
This shift in Europe is coming as the UK looks to lurch to the left. The election set for July 4 will most likely be a bloodbath for Britain’s Conservative Party, thanks in part to the Tories not behaving all that much like conservatives, but even the left-wing Labour Party has had to pivot somewhat toward the center to lure voters in.
However, there’s a potential silver lining for conservatives in Britain. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK could overtake the Tories in the polls, making his party the official opposition if and when Labour wins. If Reform UK gains a greater foothold, Gray says that “the anti-establishment right will have triumphed in Britain too.”
“If we overtake them, well, you could find a big surprise result in terms of who gives that voice of opposition,” Farage told the BBC. And Suella Braverman, a conservative member of Parliament, has suggested that the Tories merge with Reform UK to "unite the right."
It might not be American-style conservatism taking hold in the EU, but it's encouraging to see the right starting to break through. And if Reform UK can give Britain a genuine conservative option, there might even be more to be excited about. Now, let's make some real change here in the U.S. this November.
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