Politically the news just gets grimmer. Here in the UK we face another chaotic week with the possibility of no deal, no government and no PM by Friday, as Theresa May forlornly throws the dice on her Withdrawal Agreement for the last (or almost the last) time. She got some movement from the EU yesterday but there is a mountain to climb as MPs put Party and personal interests before those of the country. The possibility of a catastrophic collapse in our parliamentary system over Brexit is becoming very real. Whatever happens, the cumulative damage of the past two years will take a generation to repair.
But elsewhere the news is also grim as the fall-out from a populist surge gathers pace. Take events in Hungary for example. Orban, the rampantly nationalistic premier, has curtailed a free press and promoted homophobia, xenophobia and anti-Semitism, the latter used most notably to try and run George Soros out of town. His party, Fidesz, is likely to be thrown out of the moderate centre-right European People’s Party in the European parliament only to join forces with ruling parties in Poland and Italy to create a far-right alliance.
In Poland, the Law and Justice party (somewhat of a misnomer) is trying to curtail judicial and media independence with some success. Matteo Salvini’s League party in Italy whips up anti-immigration sentiment, and in recent weeks has even shown solidarity with the Gilets jaunes in France as they oppose moderate Macron. All three of these parties in Hungary, Poland and Italy fuel prejudice in the name of populism.
In Germany, courtesy of Merkel, far-right populists are again present in mainstream politics and such politicians are never far from influence in France.
Then in the US, Trump uses barely concealed racist rhetoric to identify with his populist voter base. His America First policies pull US influence from the world stage as he embraces the likes of the new far-right Brazilian president, Bolsonaro, Kim Jong-un and Putin, but shuns the liberal democratic leaders of the EU, Canada, Australia, let alone NATO as a whole. Only his erratic behaviour and the constitution’s checks and balances keep him from inflicting more damage on America’s future, but it is an amoral presidency. In Russia, Putin’s nationalistic and murderous hold on power strengthens as he plunders the State with wholly fascist intent.
There is a real and growing threat to liberal democracy across the West. I am no longer with Matthew Parris’s recent analysis in The Times on this. We can no longer assume we can ‘muddle through’.
Which takes us to the UK, that bastion of moderation. We have Government ministers warning that failure to implement Brexit will lead to the rise of the far-right. As if this should dictate policy!! We have moderate women MPs subject to horrific online abuse and harassment by our own version of Gilets jaunes outside parliament, whilst the police looked on, initially failing to intervene. We have Tommy Robinson raising hundreds of thousands of pounds as he peddles his Islamophobic views. We have anti-Semitism rife and excused within the Labour Party. We have a Tory Party driven to the right by the ideological toxicity of the Brexit debate.
Nothing can be taken for granted anymore and moderates need to rise up. In the UK, and probably much of elsewhere, the vast majority of voters and politicians sit broadly in the centre ground, but they need to wake up and be counted. Two cheers at least for The Independent Group. It will be too late when, through complacency, we realise the liberal democratic politics of the last few decades, and the benefits it has brought, has gone.
Inside Right Politics 