The charlatans are clearly here to stay

New European

2 days ago

We, on the old continent and elsewhere, wondered if the electorate or the candidate were to blame. Are Republican voters especially gullible or is Donald Trump simply inevitable? It's still too early to tell. It is also becoming clear that, regrettably, we can't just point to the other side of the Atlantic and wince anymore. As it turns out, just about enough people on our side of the pond are gluttons for punishment too.
For a little while, it looked like the US were the exception. Americans voted for a hard- right populist and things went about as well as expected, and so he got voted out again. A term later, however, just about enough people decided that, actually, they just hadn't had enough yet, and so they brought the charlatan back into power.
Back in 2023, Poland finally voted to oust the increasingly, worryingly populist Law and Order Party, and make centre-right Donald Tusk Pprime Miminister instead. It felt like good news both for the country and for the European Union, though the former eurocrat struggled to be as effective as he wanted. Andrzej Duda, the president, hailed from Law and Order, and swore to be a thorn in the government's side.
There were hopes that things would change this year, as the country was due to elect a new president last month. In the end, after a nail-biter of an election night, Trump supporter and eurosceptic Karol Nawrocki won against centrist Rafal Trzaskowski. Tusk has said that the election won't change a thing, but is likely to be putting on a brave face. Poland got close, briefly, to entering a new era of politics, but has instead chosen to take a step backwards.
It isn't yet guaranteed that the Czech Republic will follow suit later this year, but things aren't looking great. According to opinion polls, Andrej Babiš is currently the frontrunner and projected to become prime minister again, four years after being booted out of office.
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Another populist, Babiš, is a famous Kremlin sympathiser. His election would spell trouble for Ukraine, which has, so far during the war, been able to rely on the country as a steadfast ally. He has also been investigated multiple times for, among others, fraud, conflict of interest, corruption and intimidation, which may remind you of a certain someone.
It seems remarkable that Czech voters would give him another run at governing the country but, unless something drastic happens between now and the autumn, Babiš is all but certain to become prime minister again.
Both sets of elections are concerning in and of themselves, but also because of what they represent. There was a hope, once upon a time, that most people only ever voted for populist parties because they were fed up with the establishment and wanted to shake things up a bit. They didn't actually want those people in power or, at the very least, would realise they'd made a mistake quickly enough.
Mainstream parties and commentators also assumed, perhaps too smugly, that populists couldn't govern and would end up being their own worst enemies. Give them enough rope and… well, you know the rest. A decade on, it seems worth asking: how's that working out for us, then? Is sunshine the best disinfectant after all, or should we find a better way to deal with populism in our democracies?
These are questions which should be haunting Downing Street. Britain elected a centre- left government last year, but current opinion polls don't make for happy reading in Labour circles. Nigel Farage is once again stalking British politics, and it doesn't seem clear that anyone knows how to stop him before the next election.
That both the traditional left and right are trying to neutralise Reform by aping their language and policy positions hardly feels like a good sign. It's a method that's been tried and tested around the world, and the results speak for themselves. In any case, 2025 ought to be the year when those in power and in the mainstream realise that the populist right cannot be treated as an aberration any longer.
Like it or not, it will not vanish by itself. There is a lot that separates American politics from its equivalents both in Europe and on our shores, but we're all facing similar problems. Neither panic nor pandering have worked to solve them so far, but a way forward must be found, as the charlatans are clearly here to stay.