Is this the end of Populism?

Friday 17th March

It was as if the world had gone slightly mad, 2016 was certainly a scary year, what with Brexit and the election of Donald Trump.  And there was a fear that this contagion, this sudden rise of Populism would sweep across Europe bringing chaos and rampant Nationalism in its wake.  2017 is a big year for European elections too; Holland, Denmark and of course France and Germany are all going to the polls.  And just as we had the outlandish, larger than life figure of Farage here in England, not to mention the parody of all-American excess Donald Trump, in Holland they had the foppish yet charismatic Gert Wilders and in France, the ever-present threat of Marine Le Pen.  In both Denmark and Germany the far-right were also gaining momentum with their simple solutions – anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, make the country great again, take back control.  Oh, if it were that simple….

We live in an inter-connected world.  As a young man, when I left home to go to London, barely 80 miles away – that was a huge move; now our children and grandchildren are leaving England and settling in far-off places, Hong Kong, America and Africa.  And likewise, our own country has been a destination for immigrants for generations; there is no such thing as a ‘normal’ English person now, skin colour and accent mean nothing, in fact it still sometimes brings you up short when you see a person of obviously Asian descent talking in a broad Bradford accent.  Immigration, like Globalisation is a fact of life – we live in a multi-cultural world, there is no going back to some mythical time when there weren’t any foreigners; that time never really existed.

And we have just had the results of the Dutch election and thankfully it is the status quo, no real change, no sudden surge for Gert Wilders and his policies of racism.  Common-sense has returned, at least for a while.  Maybe it was something to do with the unnecessary row with Turkey, or just possibly we are all waking up and seeing what a lunatic Donald Trump is and what a mess he is making in America, and thinking “Hang on a minute, we cannot have these, maybe charismatic, but ridiculous easy-solution merchants running the show”.

Anyway, let’s keep our fingers crossed for the French Presidential elections due in a month’s time….it may not be the end of Populism, but it may be the beginning of the end.