Geoff Russ: Europe’s nationalist right smashes the failing centre left consensus

The business-first conservatives and social democrats who led the EU in the post-Cold War era have only themselves to blame for voters abandoning them in droves. This duopoly presided over two major economic downturns, first during the 2008 financial crisis, then after the COVID-19 pandemic. Mass immigration is a major problem in Europe, with 5.1 million newcomers arriving in 2022 alone. Surveys show Europeans are more than uncomfortable with those numbers and the radical social and economic change that comes with it, but the political duopoly have been reluctant to take it seriously. Still, European voters might have been prepared to look it over if their lives were getting better. Instead, they are getting worse and worse, and like the migration issue, the duopoly has had few or no answers. Even prior to the pandemic in 2019, there were questions about whether Europe would ever recover, from the Great Recession a decade earlier, which drove up youth unemployment to levels currently above 20 per cent in France. Wages were made stagnant, and inflation in the aftermath of the pandemic is squeezing Europe’s youth even tighter.