Can Populist Parties Wield Power?

My speech to the MCC in Brussels

First off, let's get under the bonnet of what Populist means.

It popped up in the mid 19th century as an antonym to ‘aristocratic.’ Today, it is the far more polite, yet still heavily weighted, term for parties that seek to unpick decades of Globalisation and see themselves as fighting legacy politics and their associated media organisations, along with the growing international unaccountable metropolitan elite.

And it was the word of the year in 2017, following Brexit and the election of Donald Trump.

The start of the Populist Revolution in The West caught everyone napping. The partially usurped elites hadn’t forged fire block strategies and so sought to overturn results instead, as they did with Brexit, or blame malign forces from Russia to Cambridge Analytica.

The term is of course, far preferable than the oft used alternatives ‘Far right’ and ‘hard right.’

And nomenclature is important. The use of pejorative terms to frame the political debate and label often entryist parties as a threat has been hugely influential, supressing support among ordinary, less politically engaged voters, and stymying electoral chances. I often wonder without the presence of persistent demonisation and the associated shame casting, how big the majorities of Populist Parties would actually be.

The wave of populism across Europe is in many respects the pure expression of long sublimated democracy that for decades has gone from being a solid structure of governance to a nebulous filigree of formless gesture politics - smoke and mirrors where an ever growing caucus of elected representatives is designed to give the impression of accountability while the true nucleus of decision making is instead handed ever upwards to a faceless, convoluted network of power, including big banking, big business and the supranational entities they largely plug in to, rather than democratically elected national governments.

Was it designed to be so?

Supranationalism has been both architected - UN, EU, ECHR - but has also grown amorphously with Globalism and global capitalism through ‘the markets’ - both welded together through the construct of an ever imperialist EU, with its 32,000 employees matched by the 30,000 corporate lobbyists. And of course Davos, which symbolises the masturbatory relationship between the ruling elites.

Brexit was the first chip in the armour. The first plebiscite that bellowed out a clarion call for revolution. And we saw how that played out. The scaremongering, the horror stories, the trip wires designed to lock the UK in regulatory orbit.

Everything from how the British economy would collapse to the reignition of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland. Both demonstrably untrue but enough to doom monger and erroneously justify the mechanisms that ensured sovereignty was far from delivered. Ironically we are seeing the consequences today. The 10% tariff from America - the UK's closest trade partner - is due to legacy forced alignment with EU barriers and their anti-Atlanticism. We dodged the worst because we are not in the Customs Union.

Since Brexit, Populism that has long been growing in Europe has been emboldened. As it has done so, we have seen that for it to wield power, major hurdles must be traversed

The first is reputation. While demonisation and othering has largely kept Populist Parties below the threshold at which they can seize total majority control, the effects of hyperbolic slander and scaremongering are lessening, when people can see for themselves the impacts of globalism on their lives, livelihoods and communities. The ever shifting Overton Window (demonstrated by the very fact this phrase has become one of the most overused in 2025) is leaving legacy entities at a loss. Were Establishment groupthink and social shame no longer factors in public debate, it stands to reason Populist Parties would be able to secure easy majorities given that their manifestos directly reflect and address the political Zeitgeist. Right-wing is becoming the new Rock and Roll.

Then having garnered significant support, the next hurdle is the barriers to electoral participation. As we have seen in Romania and France, and as was attempted audaciously in America, lawfare is increasingly being used to try to block Populist movements from even partaking in elections. The illusion of a rules based system is quite the contrary. Rules are made up ad hoc to ensure certain players are not allowed in the game. Snap elections are called and super coalitions botched together in an effort to put guard rails up against any insurgent force. Even if it means forging ties with frighteningly hard left entities.

If electoral participation is permitted, actually winning the ballot is the next hurdle. From the calling of irregular elections, the unlevel playing field in spend and media exposure, gerrymandering boundaries and lowering the age of enfranchisement tactics are wantonly used under the guise of ‘progress’ or ‘further democratisation’ to lock out Populism.

Even if a Populist party does achieve the impossible, forging a governing entity is then often equally difficult. For most entryist parties, establishing a government is difficult when all other parties won’t work with you. Even if they do, as with the PVV in the Netherlands, Geert Wilders is still not Prime Minister. Relying on support to form a coalition, which is typically denied, castrates the party into near impotence and ensures that despite defeat, the legacy power still sits at the helm of government. Where it has been achieved, in America, where due to the weighting of the supreme Court recently tilting in favour of Republicanism, and where the Republicans won majorities in The Senate and in Congress, it is clear what power can be wielded when unadulterated.

But in Europe power in and of itself has proven elusive. Italy being a case in point. Due to the dissolution of domestic sovereignty through membership of supranational entities, even when all other obstructions have been swept away, the reality of ruling is little more than being a marionette subject to the whims of higher powers. Meloni has been blocked from delivering on some of her more strident promises on curtailing illegal migration. The EU knows it can hang the Sword Of Damacles of toxic structural debt and pending economic disaster after the Eurozone crisis to keep Italy in check with their world view. In the UK, should Reform sweep to power in 2029, it will be knee capped by the Bank of England, the Office for Budget Responsibility, a myriad quasi autonomous non governmental organisations - or quangos - the Supreme Court, the European courts, and even the civil service itself. Reform will need to usher in top to tail, radical Reform. In countries where a strong leader pays mere lip service to such entities, such as Hungary, the government is regarded as a Pariah state and a danger to democracy, a puppet to alternative dark powers and thus a threat to global order.

For Populism to prevail, it has to risk being extremely unpopular. It must abolish all ties to non domestic governance, it must eradicate internal structures that would hold back absolute control and in doing so, be regarded as an autocratic, tyrannical beast, big enough to best the behemoth of bureaucracy that stands in its way. It would potentially incur the wrath of international courts and legacy trade partners, market machinations and thus painful economic impacts of a strident volte face in governance. Without the sheer size and dominance of a country of the scale of America, can it be achieved?

Look at where we have come so far. The constant chipping away of the old world order, the perceptory change of public opinion and the realisation of what will be required to take back control has been on steroids for the last decade. The rate of revolution is perhaps faster than many of us anticipated.

But it took us 7 decades since the end of the Second World War to construct the Gordian Knot within which Populism and true democracy finds itself trapped. It will make many more years to unpick it.

Perhaps that is why, rather than try to dismantle the EU, right wing leaders such as Viktor Orban see sense in forging coalitions of like minded leaders within the extant structures. Where once, such a Head of State would struggle to find solidarity among peers, now the Populist bloc in the European Parliament is the third largest grouping. There is growing strength in numbers.

Where once, Barack Obama threatened Brexit Britain with threats of being ‘back of the queue’, Donald Trump is using his might and influence to try to drag Europe away from it’s self inflicted managed decline. The power structures that have controlled The West are visibly cracking.

One thing is worth remembering. Empires come, and empires go. Where once the convoluted expanse of the USSR would have seemed inescapable, within a mere decade, Russia’s strangehold on its satellite states was largely peacefully dismantled.

A New World Order beckons. And the momentum is clear.

The public cannot abide any more unfettered migration, indulgent Government waste and deindustrialisation. And as long as democracy exists, even in a diluted way, no Cordon Sanitaire will be strong enough to maintain the failing structures of the past.