Post-Farage UKIP and Trump’s Republicans: Populists can derail themselves, too

 

The first seven months of 2016 have seen big, consensus-upsetting scores by populist parties across Europe.

The election in Italy of two women from Beppe Grillo’s “Five Star Movement” to become mayors of Rome and Turin (the present capital and the residence of Italy’s founding Savoy dynasty, respectively) in June; the success of Dutch populists (Wilders’ PVV and the weblog “GeenStijl”) and British populists (UKIP) at two big EU-related national referenda in April and June, and the breakthrough of Germany’s racist “Alternative für Deutschland” (AfD) in three German regional elections (biggest score: 24,3% in Saxony-Anhalt) in March, all were seen as portents of big electoral upsets, threatening established party-political balances of power.

The success of the Five Star Movement (M5s), chairing, together with UKIP and AfD, the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy group in the European Parliament, could have played a role in the launching of the plan to finally save a struggling Italian bank before the upcoming Constitutional Referendum this Autumn. If the bank(s) failed and the referendum was lost, the Italian government could resign, opening the way to the M5s as a new government party committed to (a referendum about) exiting the European Monetary Union.

And Donald Trump winning the nomination of the American Republican Party for the presidential election appeared to imply that the USA too was in for a combustible political era in the near future.

But recent developments within the Trump/Republican campaigns (for President, for the Congress and for Governors) and UKIP show that even having the wind behind them, Populist parties and party leaders too can derail themselves.

Trump had the first Republican Party Convention in living memory with much of his party’s political establishment absenting themselves; and a Washington Post article of August 3, 2016 describes how Trump’s habit of taking positions and insulting people without regard to what his party’s politicians and electoral experts say, is driving other parts of the Republican’s bananas.

Republican campaign experts are desperate that Trump’s verbal gaffes are distracting from the central Republican campaign message: “If you think Trump is bad, Hillary is even far worse”, and leave the field free for the Clinton/Obama campaign to show their unity and launch concrete policy proposals for big social problems like inequality. A Republican campaign veteran is quoted saying: [the Trump bandwagon] “is not driving on the pavement; he’s in the ditch”. And due to the structure and constitution of both the Republican and Democratic parties, neither their federal executives nor any of their politicians have the power to correct presidential candidates who lose their way by going out on a limb.

And after Farage’s umpteenth stepping down as UKIP party leader, the feud between the Farage-wing and the “Tory wing” (around MP Carswell and Welsh Assembly party leader Neil Hamilton) has opened up in earnest following the denying by its National Executive Committee, on a technicality, of the candidacy of “favourite son of Farage” Steven Woolfe for the party leadership. The BBC’s political correspondent Tom Bateman has written that Farage could initiate a movement to get 25% of UKIP branches to demand a special party congress; and a UKIP source told The Guardian that Farage was “open to coming back, but not immediately”.

This once again proves that the centrality of a charismatic, media-savvy party leader can be the biggest asset, but also a destructive curse, for populist parties; and that thwarted ambitions of secondary figures in those parties can stoke the flames of disunity once the party leader goes out on a limb once too often, or when he (or she) leaves the stage when it fits him/her far more than the party.

 

* Dr. Bernard Aris is a historian, a D66 parliamentary researcher and a LibDem supporting member.

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6 Comments

  • Richard Underhill 9th Aug '16 - 10:54am

    Farage could still challenge the general election result on Tory expenses.
    The AfD also wants to take Germany (!) out of the euro.

  • The words Farage and sensible are a bit of a mixed metaphor, so good luck with that one.
    I don’t find that particular ex public school ex commodity broker equivalent of Trump D. particularly compelling.

  • David Lowrence 10th Aug '16 - 9:10am

    Perhaps you are on the wrong forum!

  • Bernard Aris 10th Aug '16 - 2:55pm

    To Mrs. Lowell

    Talking about the infallible Mr. Farage, by first marring a German Lady called Mehr (“more” in German) and then using her as a secretary (paid out of his EU salary as MEP), Farage is having an “ever closer Union” (German: “immer Mehr Union”) for himself while trying to deny it to everybody else.

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