The Little Black Book of the Populist Right

Read an exclusive extract from the essential new book by David Edgar and Jon Bloomfield

Across Europe and America national-populism is on the march. From Hungary via Italy to France the far right are either in power or knocking on the door. In America, Donald Trump is odds-on to retake the presidency. Even in Britain – an oasis of social-democratic success – the Reform Party has out-performed its predecessors, split the Tory vote, and provided an exemplar for a Conservative right keen to recapture the red wall. In The Little Black Book of the Populist Right, Jon Bloomfield and David Edgar chart the rise of national-populism, and expose the flaws and fallacies of its ideology. In this edited extract, Bloomfield and Edgar outline the threat increasingly posed by national-populism to the postwar progressive consensus.

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The rise of national populism across the world over the last two decades has been moulded by powerful and wealthy forces on the right of politics. They have reached out to the self-employed, the working classes and poorer sections of society, left exposed and vulnerable by the economic and social effects of the tech revolution and broader global change.

These new cross-class coalitions led from the right, often with a charismatic figurehead – think Trump, Bolsonaro, Johnson, Orbán, Meloni – have received vocal backing from much of the billionaire press , plus privately funded TV channels like GB News and new social media which largely skew to the populist right.

The impact of national populists and their media supporters has been immense: they have not only encouraged voting for national populist parties and policies, but have tried to pull the political centre of gravity rightwards.

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Broken promises: disappointing the converts

National populism’s key strategy is to appeal to its target constituencies on both culture and economics. In the US, Trump promised to end deindustrialisation. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party implemented economically interventionist policies like raising the minimum wage, and abolishing university tuition fees. In 2019, Boris Johnson’s Conservatives promised 40 new hospitals by 2030, and a ‘levelling-up’ programme to tackle the relative deprivation of the Midlands and North.

These promises proved to be empty rhetoric. In terms of infrastructure, all Trump managed was building some of his border wall; his major economic legacy was a spectacular tax cut for the rich. In Hungary, Orbán imposed a flat-rate tax of 16%, amended the Labour Code to weaken employee and trade union rights and reinstated student fees.

In the UK, the 2019 Conservatives’ new hospital promise was soon downgraded. In its first year, less than 3% of the Levelling-Up Fund was delivered, and, in the year to March 2022, the South-East received £9.2m as against the North-East’s £4.9m.

As 2019 manifesto policy chief Rachel Wolf admitted a year later, the Conservative government had a choice, either to focus on the “just about managing” or on “affluent Britain” but could not do both. They chose the latter. Accordingly, national populist politicians and commentators downgraded economic issues and mobilise their supporters around issues of culture, tradition, nationhood and identity. Indeed, against the evidence of opinion polls, John Gray argues that “early 21st century political conflict is more value based than it is economic in origin”.

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Rolling back gains on gender, sexuality and race

In Hungary, Orbán’s Fidesz stresses women’s role as mothers and child-bearers, with the government offering extended tax breaks for those rearing more children. Similar pro-natalist, socially conservative preoccupations are a key feature of the New Conservative group in the UK co-founded by evangelist former MP Miriam Cates. Poland’s Law & Justice Party outlawed LGBT+ rights and abortion; while in the US the Republican-dominated Supreme Court also criminalised abortion in many states.

Yet the most common, indeed ubiquitous, element that unites national populists is hostility to newcomers, migrants and refugees. This was central to Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016; to the success of the Leave campaign in the Brexit referendum; and to the rise of populist parties across Europe. Anti-migrant rhetoric has also pulled mainstream parties to the right. In 2016, Austria’s social democrat chancellor Werner Faymann reversed a decision to back Angela Merkel’s opening of German borders to Syrian refugees. In 2021, Denmark’s social democratic prime minister Mette Frederiksen announced her ambition for Denmark not to offer asylum to any refugees at all. In 2023, France’s President Macron’s government passed an anti-immigration law which Marine le Pen described as an “ideological victory” for National Rally.

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The threat to democracy

Everywhere national populists are fighting a multi-targeted culture war with a single objective: to divide and split the old alliance of the working and professional classes which brought about so much progressive reform last century. Since populists claim that in their battle against elites they alone represent the ‘will of the people’, in power they usually seek to erode the checks and balances of a liberal democratic system. They have undermined the independence of the judiciary in Poland, Hungary and the United States; they appointed political loyalists to control the state media in Poland and Hungary; Donald Trump has promised his followers “I am your retribution”, threatening to use presidential powers to pardon the 6 January 2021 rioters, to prosecute enemies and to use the Insurrection Act to crush domestic protest.

In addition, anti-democratic opinions and advocates are becoming increasingly popular, particularly among the young. A worldwide 2023 survey by Open Society Foundations found that only 57% of 18–35-year-olds were supportive of democracy, and 35% felt a strong leader who didn’t hold elections or consult parliament was “a good way to run a country”. A 2019 Hansard audit found that more than half of British voters favoured rule by “a strong leader willing to break the rules”.

The populist danger is real. Conspiracy theories with terrifying antecedents are taking hold. Almost half (47%) of Leave voters believed the government deliberately concealed the truth about how many immigrants live in the UK, while 31% of Leave voters believed that Muslim immigration was part of a wider plot to make Muslims the majority in Britain. Conspiratorialist and authoritarian ideas are spreading from national populist ideologues via leading figures in mainstream parties into the wider population.

Progressives must recognise the danger and fight back, rebuilding the pluralist coalition that did so much good in the past.

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To read more about the history of the populist Right and its leaders, the flaws and fallacies of its ideology, and how to build a popular alternative to it you can buy a copy of the book in bookshops, directly from Byline Books.